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Book: The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas
by
Lesley Gill
Located at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia, the School of the Americas (SOA) is a U.S. Army center that has trained more than sixty thousand soldiers and police, mostly from Latin America, in counterinsurgency and combat-related skills since it was founded in 1946. So widely documented is the participation of the School's graduates in torture, murder, and political repression throughout Latin America that in 2001 the School officially changed its name to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.
Lesley Gill goes behind the facade and presents a comprehensive portrait of the School of the Americas. Talking to a retired Colombian general accused by international human rights organizations of terrible crimes, sitting in on classes, accompanying soa students and their families to an upscale local mall, listening to coca farmers in Colombia and Bolivia, conversing with anti-soa activists in the cramped office of the School of the Americas Watch, Gill exposes the School's institutionalization of state-sponsored violence, the havoc it has wrought in Latin America, and the strategies used by activists seeking to curtail it.
Based on her unprecedented level of access to the School of the Americas, Gill describes the School's mission and training methods and reveals how its students, alumni, and officers perceive themselves in relation to the dirty wars that have raged across Latin America. Assessing the School's role in U.S. empire-building, she shows how Latin America's brightest and most ambitious military officers are indoctrinated into a stark good-versus-evil worldview, seduced by consumer society and the American dream, and enlisted as proxies in Washington's war against drugs and subversion.
"Lesley Gill has produced an in-depth expose of the militaristic mentality, socio-ethnic tensions, and outrageous atrocities of the empire's Praetorian Guard. Insightful and richly researched, a work of superior quality." - Michael Parenti, author of "The Terrorism Trap" and "The Assassination of Julius Caesar"
"Lesley Gill's study of the premier military training operation in the Americas is a treasure trove of histories that will provoke a long overdue debate about the values and limits of U.S. engagement in the region." Robin Kirk, author of "More Terrible Than Death: Massacres, Drugs, and America's War in Colombia"
 Lesley Gill is Associate Professor of Anthropology at American University. She is the author of Teetering on the Rim: Global Restructuring, Daily Life, and the Armed Retreat of the Bolivian State; Precarious Dependencies: Gender, Class, and Domestic Service in Bolivia; and Peasants, Entrepreneurs, and Social Change: Frontier Development in Lowland Bolivia.
Photo: Lesley at the SOA Watch Book Signing and Reception on September 27, 2004 in Washington, DC. By Jeremy Bigwood, www.jeremybigwood.net.
Read and Download the An Interview with Leslie Gill
Read and Download the Discussion questions for School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas
July 2004. ISBN 0-8223-3392-9; 296pp., List price: $22.95. SOA Watch price: $20.00
With a VISA or MasterCard you can order this resource by calling the SOA Watch office at 202-234-3440. Or you can print out this page and return the bottom portion with your check or money order to:
SOA Watch
P.O. Box 4566
Washington DC 20017
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