It was 6 a.m. on Nov. 16, 1989, when a
gardener named Obdulio Ramos saw that six Jesuit priests and his wife
and daughter had been gunned down by soldiers in El Salvador.
After years of lobbying by human rights activists, Congress has approved the release of information on the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly known as the School of the Americas, the military training facility infamous for producing some of Latin America’s most notorious human rights violators.
The day after Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was deposed, President Barack Obama cautioned
against repeating Latin America's "dark past," decades when military
coups regularly overrode the results of democratic elections. Obama
went on to acknowledge, in his understated way, "The United States has
not always stood as it should with some of these fledgling democracies."
President
Barack Obama has reversed a few of the Bush administration's most
egregious policies violating human rights and international law, such
as the announced closure of the detention center in Guantánamo. But it
remains to be seen to what extent he will lead the military toward
respect for human rights, and change the institutional impunity to
which American commanders and U.S. military allies have become
accustomed.
