American Corporations, Paramilitary Death Squads, Class Warfare and FARC

[Ed Jewett]

Colombian Paramilitary Confirms Collusion with SOA/WHINSEC Graduates

11 12 2010 Colombian Paramilitary Confirms Collusion with SOA/WHINSEC Graduates




Salvatore Mancuso, the former Commander of the right wing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, testified Tuesday that the paramilitaries, branded “foreign terrorist organizations” by the U.S. State Department in 2001, were aided by high ranking Colombian military officers in training and logistics. Mancuso, testifying in a closed hearing in the city of Medellin, said the Colombian state supported the paramilitaries since their creation in the 1980’s and that “paramilitaries are a state policy”.
Amongst the military and government officials signaled by Mancuso as collaborators are General Rito Alejo del Río, General Martín Carreño Sandoval, General Harold Bedoya Pizarro, General Fernando Landazabal, Colonel Alfonso Manosalva Flores, and the current Minister of Defense, Juan Manuel Santos. The six men received training or served as instructors at the U.S. Army School of the Americas and have been accused by Mancuso of inciting and promoting paramilitary intervention in certain regions of Colombia.
The strategy of using civilian paramilitary groups and death squads to avoid government oversight and accountability has been a common tactic of SOA/WHINSEC graduates throughout Latin America. Salvadoran SOA/WHINSEC graduate and ARENA party founder Roberto D’Aubussoin established the Death Squads that were responsible for much of the violence in El Salvador in the 1980′s. General Manuel B. Lucas Garcia, who attended the school in 1965 and 1970, masterminded the creation of the Civil Defense Patrols in Guatemala. Mexico’s Jose Ruben Rivas Pena, who took the SOA/WHINSEC’s elite Command and Staff Course, called for the “training and support for self-defense forces or other paramilitary organizations in Chiapas” as a response to the Zapatista uprising in 1994.
The Colombian military is the largest recipient of US military funding and training in Latin America and holds over 60% of the seats available to attend courses at WHINSEC.


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: capitalist fascism, state terrorism
Categories : crimes against humanity, death squads, How Do We Build the Resistance?, image of the beast, Organizing resistance, The Most Moral Army In the World?
U.S. Aid and Subsequent Abuse by Colombian Forces

11 12 2010 U.S. Aid and Subsequent Abuse by Colombian Forces


Return to FOR’s report on U.S. military aid and human rights abuses in Colombia.






Return to FOR’s report on U.S. military aid and human rights abuses in Colombia.




Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: capitalist fascism, state terrorism
Categories : crimes against humanity, death squads, How Do We Build the Resistance?, image of the beast, Organizing resistance, The Most Moral Army In the World?