President Bush begins his weeklong journey today with the mission of reversing Latin America’s leftward turn. He’ll talk energy in Brazil, free trade in Uruguay and narcotics in Colombia—all the while working to stymie the rise of Hugo Chávez and regional alternatives to the Washington Consensus. But this diplomatic foray is hardly Bush’s lone strategy for shifting the hemisphere’s political landscape. Though well below the radar, the current Administration has continued Washington’s longstanding policy of employing military training and funding to shape the affairs of Latin America.
This reality became crystal clear in 2006, a year in which numerous leftist leaders achieved electoral success throughout the western hemisphere. In October, the White House waived restrictions on military training and funding for several Latin American countries that have shifted to the left in recent years, including Ecuador and Bolivia. The restrictions had been in place to pressure the governments of those countries to grant immunity to US soldiers in the International Criminal Court. The purpose of waiving the restrictions, however, was not to showcase a newfound sense of respect for the ICC; it was to enable the US military to assert greater influence in Latin America so as to counter the continuing political trend.
Such use of military training and funding in the western hemisphere marks familiar terrain for the Washington establishment. In cold war Latin America, the US government went to great lengths to support military dictatorships willing to play by its political rules. It trained and funded tens of thousands of foreign soldiers, knowing full well that doing so had devastating effects on human rights and political freedom. In fact, Pentagon documents later revealed that the US government not only knew of those effects, but encouraged them; from at least 1982-1991, officers at the US Army’s School of the Americas instructed Latin American soldiers in coercive interrogation techniques and extrajudicial executions. From El Salvador to Argentina, countless US-trained soldiers made careers of torturing political prisoners, assassinating priests and slaughtering children so as to seize and maintain power for unelected military regimes.
Though external circumstances have changed over time, the purported basis for the US military’s training and funding of Latin American soldiers in the cold war era was essentially the same as it is now: to promote democracy and security in the western hemisphere. That the result will be the same as well is a legitimate concern.