The Cold War and Its Transnational Imprint in the Americas

This chapter addresses the geopolitics of the Cold War and its transnational imprint on Latin America. It starts by discussing the rise of the U.S. to hemispheric hegemony, and analyzes U.S. policies and their interplay with domestic constellations of power. Interested in curtailing the advance of the revolutionary Left and radical insurgent movements, the region witnessed a forceful takeover of power and the adoption of transnational counter-insurgency operations, such as Operation Condor, that undermined the rule of law and produced atrocious records of crimes against humanity. The chapter offers an overview of the impact of this geopolitical configuration on Latin American societies, including the controversial role of the School of the Americas, the prevailing doctrines of National Security and the organic conception of nations that led to a genocidal turn in the context of the Cold War.

Redemption Contests

This article investigates the role theology plays in generating political action in las Américas through research on the School of the Americas Watch. It commends theopolitics as a lens for analyzing the competing projects of US military training and protests against that training, both of which work under the sign of redemption. The materiality of these signs can be apprehended by asking who is saving whom from what, by what means, and for what end. Anthropological analysis of these redemption narratives reveals the regimes of the invisible that animate opposing political projects—redemption for one through imperial formations enabled by the messianic figure of the white, male, heterosexual warrior, and redemption for the other through the agential presence of the dead who haunt empire’s wake.

Why Governments Have Their Troops Trained Abroad: Evidence from Latin America

Why do governments send their soldiers abroad for military training? Governments frequently expose their troops to training offered by other countries, although this may undermine military control and even lead to coups. Focusing on the demand side of security assistance, I argue that governments accept these costs to achieve diplomatic and military goals. Governments first send some soldiers abroad to substantiate their cooperation with the host country. Once this diplomatic commitment is made, governments increase training rates to counter threats using military skills unavailable at home. I test both arguments by studying training patterns at the most notorious US training facility: the School of the Americas. Using original data based on more than 60,700 course attendance records between 1946 and 2004, I find support for the proposed diplomatic and military logics of foreign training. Governments were more likely to send soldiers to the school after they had aligned their foreign policy with that of the United States, and only increased training in response to insurgent attacks. The findings demonstrate why and when governments are willing to cede significant parts of their political power to foreign-trained soldiers and other states. This has important implications for understanding military effectiveness and security cooperation.

Liberation Theology and the Central America Solidarity Movement

This chapter examines the conditions that fostered liberation theology in Latin America. The chapter provides a brief overview of liberation theology’s central themes and how it fueled revolutionary movements in Central America, particularly in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. It surveys the Catholic hierarchy’s responses, ranging from sympathy to condemnation, and highlights several US religious movements that expressed solidarity with Central American Catholics who were fighting for social justice. These organizations included Witness for Peace, which brought US Christians to the war zones of Nicaragua to deter combat attacks, and also Pledge of Resistance, which mobilized tens of thousands into action when US policy toward the region grew more bellicose. Finally, the chapter describes the School of the Americas Watch, which aimed to stop US training of Latin American militaries that were responsible for human rights atrocities.

Plotting Justice

This chapter explores how the novel can plot out fantasies of justice, using Héctor Tobar’s novel The Tattooed Soldier to demonstrate how the novel can challenge mass impunity in the Americas. The novel’s protagonist takes advantage of the chaos of the Rodney King uprisings in Los Angles to shoot and kill the Guatemalan military soldier who murdered his wife and son and who received counterinsurgency training at the United States’ School of the Americas. These diverse acts of rage against institutionalized impunity are comparatively illuminated in the novel via intersecting plot lines, rotating points of view, disruptive flashbacks, iterative events, and shifting geographies. The chapter further unpacks the political and formal valences of plot, arguing that the novel’s structure is at odds with the two main protagonists’ narrative desires. Though the novel’s revenge plot is resolved, the novel does not resolve the larger plot for justice; the chapter ends by considering alternative means of generating social transformation and attaining justice.

¿Escuela de las Américas o escuela de violadores de derechos humanos?

La Escuela de las Américas (School of the Americas –SOA–) fue creada por los EE. UU. en 1946 en una de sus bases militares en Panamá. De acuerdo a sus creadores, el objetivo fundamental de la SOA fue el de profesionalizar a las Fuerzas Armadas (FF. AA.) de los países de América Latina. Sin embargo, el verdadero propósito de Washignton fue reasegurar su dominio en ese subcontinente, por medio de la indoctrinación anticomunista de dichas FF. AA., complementada con entrenamiento en brutalidad militar. La SOA se creó como una herramienta más de la geopolítica de Washington, para mantener su hegemonía hemisférica. El control de dichas FF. AA. permitió a la Casa Blanca minimizar el envío de sus propias tropas, para aplastar descontentos sociales en su autoagenciado “patio trasero”. En este artículo se enfatizará en el impacto de la SOA en El Salvador, en particular durante el período de 1980 a 1992. ECA Estudios Centroamericanos, Vol. 69, No. 739, 2014: 301-319.