 The SOA was an American-funded military training school, located in the Canal Zone the US controlled until 1999. Purportedly it propagated democracy in Latin America. But many of its alumni became despots famed for political killings, massacres, torture and coups.
In its heyday, the SOA even issued its pupils with handy pamphlets on torture techniques.
Between 1946 and 2001, the SOA trained more than 60,000 Latin American soldiers and policemen, and a reunion would gather a grim band of dictators who all learnt the techniques of repression on the site where businessmen now relax in air-conditioned luxury.
SOA graduates include former Argentine dictator Leopoldo Galtieri, whose reign saw the torture and murder of 30,000 suspected dissidents. In Chile, the school's graduates ran both Augusto |
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| In its heyday, the SOA even issued its pupils with handy pamphlets on torture techniques |
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Pinochet's secret police and his three principal concentration camps. Then there's General Hector Gramajo, former Guatemalan defense minister who was responsible for the torture and murder of thousands; Salvadoran death-squad leader Major Roberto D'Aubuisson; and top-of-the-class General Hugo Banzer, who ran Bolivia between 1971-1978 and arrested more than 3,000 opponents. Two hundred were killed; his goons just tortured the rest.
The school was moved to Fort Benning, Georgia, in 2001; where pressure group School of the Americas Watch claim it continues to offer its grim curriculum to the employees of select foreign powers.
Later, at the bar, I ask a group of Lebanese shippers if the hotel's grim past bothers them. "Not at all. Business is business," says one, sternly. "And the breakfast buffet is excellent." 
FIRST POSTED AUGUST 14, 2006
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