Trained to Torture?

The Human Rights Effects of Military Training at the School of the

Americas
Author(s): Katherine E. McCoy
Source: Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 32, No. 6, Contested Terrains (Nov., 2005), pp. 47-64
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30040266 .
Accessed: 04/06/2011 16:24

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at .
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=sage. .

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Sage Publications, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Latin American
Perspectives.

http://www.jstor.org
 Trained to Torture?
The Human Rights Effects of Military
Training at the School of the Americas
by
Katherine E. McCoy

By exposing military leaders to democratic values and working to foster

respect for civilian authority and military professionalism, [foreign military
training] provides a window through which we can positively influence the
development offoreign military institutions and their role in a democratic soci-
ety. While such engagement cannot be expected to guarantee a perfect human
rights record on the part of any military force, it nonetheless represents an
important opportunity to encourage adherence to the rule of law, respect for
basic human rights, and appropriate professional conduct in the face of inter-
nal or external challenges.
-Department of State,Bureauof Political-Military
Affairs,March1, 2000

When the United States militaryprovides trainingto foreign soldiers, the

explicit assumption is that trainees will not only become more effective but
also adhereto higher standardsof democracy and the rule of law, including
respect for human rights. While this is a worthwhile goal, in most cases the
data that could test this assumption are either missing or incomplete. One
case in which such informationis availableis the militarytraininginstitution
formerly known as the School of the Americas (SOA).1 Located in Fort
Benning, Georgia, the SOA is a facility thatprovides short-term,specialized
trainingto military personnel from throughoutLatin America. For years it
has been a source of controversy between the U.S. governmentand human
rightsorganizations.On the one hand,the armysubmitsthatthe school's mis-
sion has always been to "providedoctrinallysound, relevantmilitary educa-
tion and trainingto the nations of LatinAmerica;to promotedemocraticval-
ues and respect for human rights; and to foster cooperation among
multinationalmilitary forces" (Office of the InspectorGeneral, 1997: 8). On
the other hand, activists and watchdog organizationsarguethat the rhetoric
fails to line up with reality and thatthereis an uncomfortablepatternlinking

KatherineE. McCoy is pursuingher Ph.D. in sociology at the Universityof Wisconsin, Madison.

She thanks Robert Young, Mark Suchman, Daniel Long, Cdsar Rodriguez, Carolina Milesi,
Michael Bell, Jane Morris, and Kara Sparks for their insights and suggestions.
LATINAMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 145, Vol. 32 No. 6, November 2005 47-64
DOI: 10.1177/0094582X05281113
© 2005 Latin American Perspectives

47
48 LATINAMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

SOA graduatesto "keyroles in nearlyevery coup and majorhumanrightsvio-

lation in Latin Americain the past fifty years" (Nelson-Pallmeyer,1997: 9).
This vigorous public debate has led to calls for greater transparency
(Amnesty International,2002: 34), prompting the release of government
records through the Freedom of Information Act. The availability of these
records, which tracktraineesof the school, makes the SOA uniquely appro-
priatefor a study of the humanrights effects of foreign militarytraining.Up
until now, the data have been used only selectively by the parties in the
debate.In an attemptto makea linkage between the trainingsoldiersreceived
and theirsubsequentcrimes, the watchdog organizationSOAWatchhas used
the recordsto compile a laundrylist of humanrights violations committedby
the school's graduates.The army and the Departmentof Defense assert that
only a "statistically insignificant" fraction of SOA graduates has been
accused of violating humanrights (Toomey, 2001) and that"thosegraduates
who have committed human rights violations did not commit the violence
because of their trainingat FortBenning, but ratherin spite of it" (Grimmett
and Sullivan, 1997: 5).
Using event history analysis, I examine the data to determinewhat, if any,
patterns emerge. By providing empirical evidence on the relationship
between SOA trainingandhumanrights, this study makes a contributionto a
public debate that has both policy implications and scholarly significance.
My results point to the effects of such training and raise questions for future
research.

HUMAN RIGHTS, MILITARY

PROFESSIONALIZATION, AND THE SOA

The United States currently trains over 100,000 foreign military and
police officers per year, makingit the world's single largestproviderof mili-
tary training to other nations. The current system of training is diffuse,
involving "over a dozen programs spread throughout several government
agencies and involving some 275 U.S. facilities" (Amnesty International,
2002: 5), including the SOA. Many of the nations that send troops to the
United States for trainingare enmeshed in conflict and have less than stellar
humanrights records (Amnesty International,2002: 4). While humanrights
groupspresentthis fact as problematic,advocates of foreign militarytraining
view it as appropriateandpowerful:it is precisely those countrieswhose mil-
itaries struggle with human rights and the rule of law that can most benefit
from U.S. training. This approach,called military professionalization, has
 McCoy / TRAINED TO TORTURE? 49

been one of the main arguments for foreign military training since such
programsbegan in the early twentieth century.
One of the originaljustifications for foreign militarytrainingwas the fact
thatmany Latin American militaries,initially among the largestrecipientsof
U.S. militarytraining,had reputationsfor flouting civilian rule and engaging
in coups and widespread repression. It was reasoned that exposure to mod-
em, professional military training (as exemplified by that of the United
States) could turn these seemingly unpredictable,impulsive, and undisci-
plined militariesinto modem, restrainedforces thatwould use theirnew pro-
fessional values-including respect for human rights-to help secure
democracy and stable markets in their home countries (see, e.g., Francis,
1964; Wolpin, 1975; Huntington, 1981; Marcella, 1990; Buchanan, 1996;
Leuer, 1996). For Huntington, an early proponent of military profes-
sionalization, "professionalism is what distinguishes the military officer of
today from the warriorsof previous ages" (1957: 7). While the undertrained
"warrior"may be prone to violent excesses and abuses, the "professional
military man" draws on his trainingto "contributea cautious, conservative,
restrainingvoice to the formulationof statepolicy" (Huntington,1957: 69). It
was in this context that the SOA was founded in Panamain 1946.2 Within
military circles, the school was considered a premier training facility for
Latin American forces on the road to professionalization(Leuer, 1996). Its
central function was as a "coordinatinginstitution for developing regional
military policy and standardizing military operations" in Latin America
(Leuer, 1996: 9).
Yet, despite SOA training and expanded U.S. military influence in the
region overall, militaryrepressionremaineda problemin many LatinAmeri-
can countriesthroughoutthe twentiethcentury.Beginning in the 1970s, U.S.
Congressionalhearings investigatedincidentsin which U.S. forces appeared
to have trainedor assisted foreign militaryoperativesin committing human
rights violations. In this context, the SOA itself startedto come under fire
from some sectors. In the 1980s, politicians andjournalistsin Panamabegan
to clamor for the school's closing, claiming that it promotedrepressive and
antidemocraticbehavior among its graduates.A leading Panamaniannews-
papernicknamedthe school "la escuela de golpes" (the School of Coups) for
its seeming propensity to produce dictators and their supporters.3Leaked
reportsin Panama-later echoed in the U.S. press-claimed that the school
taughttorturetechniques and that traineeshoned their skills on the abducted
beggarsand homeless of Panama(Haugaard,1996). In the early 1990s, after
the school had been moved to Fort Benning, two revelations sparkedpublic
opposition to it in the United States. The first was the fact that several SOA
graduateswere implicated in the 1989 massacreof six Jesuitpriests and two
50 LATINAMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

women atthe Universidadde Centroamdricain El Salvador.The second reve-

lation involved a federal investigation of seven training manuals that had
been in use at the school since the 1960s. The investigation determinedthat
the manuals contained "objectionable"passages promoting the use of tor-
ture, abduction,and extrajudicialexecutions. As a result, activists began to
question the SOA's relation to repressive forces and starteda movement to
close it.
In response, the U.S. governmentbegan enacting a numberof reforms to
the school's curriculumand structure.These included adding human rights
instruction,discontinuing use of the "objectionable"trainingmanuals, and
placing the school underthe direction of the Departmentof Defense rather
than the army.Even as these changes were enacted, the school's defenders
stressed that it had always promoted professionalization and human rights
andthatthe reformswere intendedto strengthenthattradition.4Humanrights
advocates rejectedwhat they saw as a revisionist history of the SOA and the
reforms offered by the government,which they considered window dressing
(http//soaw.org/new/index.php).The movement's stance is thatSOA training
actually makes soldiers more likely to engage in human rights violations by
providingthe means andlegitimacy for such abuses to occur (Amnesty Inter-
national, 2002: 5-6).
Thus, the centralquestionis whether SOA-style militarytraininghelps or
hurts human rights. This debate need not remain entrenched in ideology.
Using a dataset to be describedbelow, I test two of the key hypotheses under-
lying the debate, both of which take the SOA as an example of military
professionalization.The firstof these is thatthe more professionaltrainingan
SOA attendeehas, the less likely he or she is to violate humanrights.I test this
hypothesis by examining whether students who took multiple courses at the
school were less likely to violate human rights than students who took only
one course. The second hypothesis springs from the assumption of
professionalizationtheory thatmilitary training evolves over time. Hunting-
ton's contemporaryMorris Janowitz implies this progression in his discus-
sion of military professionalization,which he links to advances in science,
technology, public administration,and democracy (1977). While proponents
of the SOA maintainthatit has always promoted professionalizationand the
rule of law, they also acknowledge that in the past there have been some
concerns, such as the use of the condemned training manuals. They are
quick to add that, since the late 1980s and early 1990s, a combination of
reforms and evolving professional standardshave helped the school accom-
plish its goals of contributingto the formation of modern, professional mili-
taries. In their report to Congress, Grimmett and Sullivan point out that
"since 1989, [the SOA] has begun to emphasize human rights training
 McCoy / TRAINED TO TORTURE? 51

throughoutits curriculum, making it unique among U.S. Army Schools"

(1997: 6). Hence, the second hypothesis is that more recent SOA graduates
will be less likely to engage in abusive behavior than their predecessors. If
professionalizationtheory holds in the SOA case, we will observe a general
downward trend to human rights violations with each successive decade,
with a more markeddecline at the end of the cold war.

DATA AND METHODS

As statedabove, the available data on SOA graduatesis unusual in thatit

emerged in the context of public debate. In response to a Freedom of Infor-
mation request submitted by SOAWatch,the U.S. governmentreleased the
student records of nearly 60,000 SOA graduates,dating back to 1946 and
covering 14 countries. At the time of this study, the most recent available
records were from the year 2000. The government records provided the
name, rank,and country of each student,along with the title and date of each
course he or she took. Researchers at SOAWatchthen cross-referencedthese
names with information on human rights abusersto determine who among
the school's graduates had been implicatedin such crimes. The information
on abusers was drawn from United Nations Truth Commission reports,
national Truth Commission reports, reports by human rights monitoring
organizations(such as Human Rights Watch),and unclassified government
documents. To my knowledge, this representsthe most complete publicly
availablerecord on graduates of U.S. foreign military trainingprograms.

STRENGTHS AND LIMITATIONS OF THE DATA SET

There are three main factors that proved challenging for the use of these
data:the key roles played by the two sides in the debatein compiling the data
set, the use of human rights records across several countries and several
decades, and the fact that the data set leaves out severalvariablesof potential
interest.The best available data on the SOA come from militaryrecordsaug-
mented by a human rights organization, and the immediate question that
comes to mind is whether the informationcompiled by SOAWatchis in any
way biased. Since the organizationis openly opposed to the SOA, it is reason-
able to assume that its researchers are interestedin compiling as much evi-
dence as possible against it. This high level of scrutinycan be an asset in that
it creates a very complete and unique data set, but it also opens up the possi-
bility that the researchers will pay more attention to abuses committed by
SOA graduatesthan by soldiers who had not attendedthe SOA. This would
52 LATINAMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

be problematicin a comparativestudy between these two populations(SOA

graduatesand non-SOA graduates).I avoid this potential problem by com-
paring SOA graduateswith one anotheron the basis of the amount and type
of trainingthey received.
Another complication arising from the involvement of SOAWatchmight
be the credibility of the humanrights information itself. This factor is miti-
gated by the fact that SOAWatchonly compiles the data ratherthan generat-
ing them (i.e., monitoringhuman rights firsthand and making accusations).
The fact thatthe humanrightsdatawere drawnfrom recognized, mainstream
organizations dedicated to human rights monitoring (such as UN reports,
State Departmentfiles, etc.), means that there is little reason to believe that
these data are any more problematicthan other human rights data.
Otherwritershave pointed to the complications inherentin using human
rights data for quantitativestudies (see esp. Blanton, 1999: 236). These
include heterogeneity of outcomes, underreporting,and changes in human
rights monitoringover time. Because of the political natureof humanrights
violations and the outsiderrole of most human rights monitoringorganiza-
tions, human rights violations are reported differently from other types of
crimes. Whereas most crime statistics look at convictions, human rights
abuses arecommittedby the governmentor other politically powerfulforces,
making conviction unlikely and impunity the norm.5As a result, human
rights data include some people who were convicted and some who were
determinedguilty afterthoroughinvestigation by a humanrights monitoring
organization,subsequentgovernmentalcommission, or UN body. Nonethe-
less, such dataconstitutethe humanrights record of a countryand as such are
regularlyused by governmentsand the UN in determiningaid anddiplomatic
relations. In practice such records have a high degree of credibility and
influence.
Anothercomplication of using longitudinal human rights datais the pos-
sibility thathumanrightsmonitoringand reportinghave improvedover time,
creating potential variationin the data. To the best of my knowledge, there
have been no systematic attempts to measure the change in human rights
monitoringover time. Therefore,there is no way to controlfor or even verify
this possible source of variation.
A final complication of using human rights data arises from the fact that,
no matterhow advancedthe system of monitoring, human rights abuses are
almost certainlyunderreported.While this is an unfortunatelimitationof the
data, in effect it also means thatany results produced here are likely based on
conservative estimates of the actual levels of human rights abuses.
Many variablesthatI would like to have used were missing from the gov-
ernment records. There is no information on students' ages, educational
 McCoy / TRAINED TO TORTURE? 53

attainment,or numbersof years spentin the military.The recordsaremute on

whattypes of militarytrainingand experiencea soldier hadbefore coming to
the SOA. Beyond the course title, in most cases the records do not provide
any informationon the content of the SOA curriculum.They are essentially
rostersof studentdata.The paucity of this informationhighlights the fact that
foreign military training is largely a black box offering the civilian scholar
little opportunityto peek inside.
Withthese limitations in mind, the dataset exhibits many strengths.First,
it is very large: it contains the records of nearly 60,000 students. These
recordscomprise the entire population of SOA graduatesbetween 1946 and
2000. Second, these records cover 14 countries, allowing us to examine the
generaleffect of the school ratherthanthe specific effect on any one country.
Third, while the data offer merely snapshots of the lives of individual sol-
diers, together these offer a longitudinal perspectiveon the life cycle of the
institution.Fourth,they constitute the most complete and accurateinforma-
tion available on a foreign military trainingprogram.

THE SAMPLE

Using this data set, I created a sample of 11,792 graduates,each of whom

was assigned a unique identifying number.6This sample was then used to
carry out an institutional analysis of the likelihood of human rights abuses
among SOA graduates based on the variables listed below. The sample
includes the entire population of studentsfrom six countrieswho took one or
more courses at the school between 1960 and 2000.7
I selected 1960 as the first year in the studybecause it roughlycorresponds
to the birth of a system of internationalhuman rights monitoring before
which no reliable data were available. In LatinAmerica, the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights of the Organizationof the American States
(OAS) was established in 1959. The first global human rights monitoring
organization, Amnesty International,was founded in 1961. I have chosen
1960 as a reasonable halfway point between those two dates.
The six countries I used for this study are Argentina,Brazil, Peru, Guate-
mala, El Salvador, and Panama. I used all of the studentrecords from these
six countries that fell between 1960 and 2000, meaning that the sample
includes the entire population of SOA graduatesfrom these countries during
thattime period. I chose these countries as a representativesample of coun-
tries that sent students to the school. The sample includes three countries
from CentralAmerica and three countries from South America. It includes
countriesthat have had extended civil wars or dictatorshipsas well as coun-
tries thathave experienced relative peace. It incorporatescountriesthathave
54 LATINAMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

sent a relativelylargeportionof their soldiers to the school (Peru,with 4,009

graduates)and countriesthat have sent relatively few students(Brazil, with
291 graduates).While the sample includes two countries (El Salvador and
Guatemala)that sent many studentsto the school during a protractedcoun-
terinsurgency war, it excludes other countries (Colombia, Honduras, and
Mexico) thatalso sent a largenumberof studentsto the school andhad a large
number of reported abusers.8Thus, the six countries used here should be
fairly representativeof the patternacross all the countries.

VARIABLES

The dependentvariablewas the timing of human rights abuses, of which

there were 153 reportedcases in the sample. "Human rights abuses" here
means violations of "rightsto personal integrity."These rights protect an
individual'sbasic physical and psychological well-being, and theirviolation
includes torture, extrajudicialexecution, forced disappearance,and illegal
detention. I also include dictators and persons directly involved in violent
coups as human rights abusers.
Following hypothesis 1, the independent variable was the number of
courses studentstook at the school, which ranged from one to five in the sam-
ple but was here divided into the categories of studentswho took one, two, or
three or more courses (listed as 2_crs and 3+_crs, with one course being the
reference category).9
Both sides of the debate have raised the question of course content.
Humanrights advocatesexpress concern over the inclusion of counterinsur-
gency courses, while proponentsof the SOA highlight the fact thatit teaches
standard military courses (such as infantry and weapons training) and
includes courses on human rights and "democratic sustainment"(see, e.g.,
Grimmettand Sullivan, 1997; Leuer, 1996). I created a set of variablesbased
on the type of training students received at the school in order to explore
whether different types of courses were associated with the presence or
absence of human rights violations. I used course titles and, in some cases,
supplementalmaterials'1to divide courses into three main categories:Coun-
terinsurgency(cio), Infantryand Weapons (inf), and Non-Combat Opera-
tions (the omitted category in Table 2).11
Obviously there are key factors exogenous to the SOA that might greatly
affect human rights outcomes. I generated two related sets of control vari-
ables to account for relevantpolitical and military conditions in a student's
home country.One set of variablescontrols for the effect of militarydictator-
ships (dictator) or civil wars (civil war) that take place any time after a stu-
dent completes his or her first class at the SOA. The second set of variables
 McCoy / TRAINED TO TORTURE? 55

TABLE 1
Periods of Civil War and Dictatorship by Country, 1960-2000

Country Dictatorshipa Civil War

Argentina 1976-1983 1976-1983

Brazil 1967-1983 n.a.
El Salvador 1979-1984 1980-1992
Guatemala 1960-1986 1960-1996
Panama 1968-1989 n.a.
Peru 1968-1980 1980-1992b

a. This variableapplies to historical periods in which a militarygovernmentwas in power,includ-

ing years in which civilian presidents headed militaryjuntas. Although some military dictator-
ships (such as the 1954 military coup in Guatemala)predate1960, here we can only set variables
according to the earliest times that appear in the sample.
b. The Perucivil war variable refers to the most intense periods of conflict between government
forces and the guerrilla forces of Tupac Amaru and Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), ending
with the captureof the majorleaders of these insurgenciesandthe waningof the conflict in 1992.

controlsfor the same conditions in a student'shome countryduring his or her

trainingat the SOA (trn_dict or trn_civil),on the assumptionthat such events
could impact the training a student receives or his or her experience of such
training.The dates used for these variables are shown in Table 1.
Some historical variables, such as the cold war, can be presumed to have
impactedall countries simultaneously. Since the need for counterinsurgency
trainingwas generallyjustified in termsof cold warpolitics, we would expect
the humanrights situation to have improvedafter 1989. We can also expect
this dateto have had particularsalience for the SOA, for we are told that"the
School has undergone significant changes since the end of the Cold War"
(U.S. Army School of the Americas official web site: http://carlisle-www
.army.mil/usamhi/usarsa/main.htm). Thus, we can expect studentswho were
firsttrainedat the school in the post-cold-war erato have lower ratesof viola-
tions thantheir predecessors. Using the same distinctionemployed for dicta-
torships and civil wars, I generated a set of variables to control for the cold
war (cold war and trn_cold).12
Beyond the impact of the cold war, hypothesis 2 predicts a steady
improvementin human rights over time. I used two sets of measurementsto
control for time: historical decade (from the 1960s to the 1990s) and five-
year intervals during the same time period. The first variable is listed as
"Decade";the second is discussed below.
Lastly,I createda control variablefor a student'srankduringhis or herini-
tial course at the SOA. I divided rankinto two basic categories: (1) commis-
sioned officers, listed simply as "Officers"in the variablelist and comprising
56 LATINAMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

21.9 percent of the sample, and (2) noncommissioned officers (NCOs) and
cadets, including various specialists, comprising 77.4 percent of the sam-
ple.13The professionalizationargumentposits that soldiers with more pro-
fessional formation-presumably, those of higher rank-are more likely to
respect the rule of law and therefore less likely to violate human rights. If
professionalizationtheoryis correctin this case, we should expect officers to
be less likely to violate humanrights than lower-ranking students.

EVENT HISTORY ANALYSIS

While some scholars have conducted quantitative analyses of human

rights outcomes (see, e.g., Wright, 1978; Poe and Tate, 1994; and Blanton,
1999), few have examinedforeign military or security trainingprograms(but
see CockerhamandCohen, 1980; and Norris, Birbeck, andGabald6n,2002).
Many studies of human rights outcomes (Mitchell and McCormick, 1988;
Henderson, 1991; McKinlayand Cohan, 1975 and 1976; Poe andTate, 1994)
use an entire nation as the unit of analysis ratherthan individualtrainees or
soldiers, making it difficult to attributechanges in human rights records to
particularmilitaryunits or trainingprograms.The small datasets and limited
statistical tools used in these studies also make it hard to produce
generalizable results that account for change over time (see, e.g., Poe and
Tate, 1994; Blanton, 1999). For this study I drew upon a large longitudinal
data set thattrackedthe individualoutcomes of a single militarytrainingpro-
gram and then applied a more complex statistical approachthan had previ-
ously been used to study humanrights. The combination of the data set and
the statistical tools make this study a significant improvement over the
existing quantitativeliteratureon human rights.
I chose event history as the statistical approachfor this analysisl4because
it is ideally suitedto trackingevents in individuals' lives overtime. Event his-
tory or survival analysis is commonly used in demography and medical
researchto study the timing of death. It has also been appliedto the timing of
other events in people's lives, such as school dropout,pregnancy,and unem-
ployment (see, e.g., Singer and Willett, 2003; Willett and Singer, 1991; Wu,
2003). I used event history methods to track the occurrence and timing of
human rights violations in the lives of SOA graduates. Each student was
tracked from the date of his or her first course at the school until either the
reporteddate of a humanrights violation (if there was one) or the year 2000
(if no violation was reported).15 As mentioned earlier,manyhistoricalfactors
might also come into play duringthis period. Some studentswere firsttrained
in 1961, others in 1994. Students from Argentina who attendedthe SOA in
1978 did so in the context of a civil war, while their classmates from Panama
 McCoy / TRAINED TO TORTURE? 57

faced no such threat.Because it tracksthe trajectoriesof individual soldiers

overtime, this analysis is able to accountfor these importantsources of varia-
tion among graduates. This method is thereforeoptimal for testing the two
hypothesesby measuringa student'srelativerisk16of committingan abuse.

RESULTS

Looking at the sample as a whole, only 1.3 percentof graduatesare listed

as humanrights abusers. This finding is consistentwith the army's claim that
only a small fraction of the school's graduateswas reportedfor humanrights
violations. Taken alone, this seems to lend credence to Grimmett and
Sullivan's assertion that graduatesengage in abuses in spite of, not because
of, their SOA training (1997: 5). However, when the sample is broken down
by the number of courses students took, a more complex picture emerges.
The results presented in Figure 1 indicate precisely the opposite trend from
the one predicted by the professionalization argument.
Here, we see a clear leap in ratesof abuseamonggraduateswho took more
than one course. This leap is especially notable in the jump from one to two
courses. These data imply that, while the overall rate of reported abuses is
low, people who attend the SOA more than once are also more likely to vio-
late humanrights. While the abuse rate for studentswith one course is only
0.8 percent, that figure jumps to 4.6 percent for students who took two
courses and 5.6 percent for those who took three or more courses.
These results stand up to statistical scrutiny.Even when control variables
are added,the patternremains essentially unchangedand the outcome is sta-
tistically significant. Table 2 provides the results of an event history analysis
using humanrights violations as the dependentvariable.It shows the statisti-
cal output of the simplest model, which accounts only for the number of
courses, and the two fuller models used in the analysis. Looking at model 1,
we see thatwhen we compare studentswho took only one course with those
who took more courses, the odds of committing a violation are 5.61 times
higher for students who took two courses and 6.94 times higher for students
who took three or more courses. This confirms the findings in Figure 1 and
directly contradicts hypothesis 1, suggesting that more courses are in fact
associated with much higher rates of abuse. This relationship between more
courses and increased likelihood of abuse is displayed in Figure 2, which
shows the change in the relative risk of abuse for each time a studentreturns
to the SOA before accounting for other variables. Students who took two
courses have a much higher risk of violating humanrightsthan studentswho
took only one course, and students who took three courses not only have an
58 LATINAMERICANPERSPECTIVES

of 4

Abusers
2
Percentage

0
1 2 3+

Number of Courses

Figure 1: Percentage of Abusers by Number of Courses

even higherrateof abusebutalso commit abuses sooner aftergraduationthan

studentswho took one or two courses. Again, these results are all highly sta-
tistically significant (p < .001).
These results hold when other variables are included in the analysis.
When we controlfor the type of trainingstudentsreceived while at the school
(cio and inf), we still find strongand highly significant effects for the number
of courses. Both civil war and the presence of a dictatorshiphave a strong,
highly significant correlationwith human rights abuses, but even when we
control for these variablesthe effect of multiple courses remains. There are
no significant effects for historical decade, meaning thatreportedabuses did
not change significantlyover time. However, the cold war variableis signifi-
cant in model 2, implying that regardless of when students were trained,
human rights violations were more likely to occur duringthe cold war.
The effect of a student'srankis also strong and highly significant.In mod-
els 2 and 3, officers arenearlyfour times more likely to be reportedas abusers
than enlisted soldiers. There could be various explanations for this result,
which apparentlycontradictsa professionalization argument.One possibil-
ity is that officers truly are much more likely to violate human rights than
lower-rankingsoldiers. Anotheris that human rights monitorshave an inter-
est in placing blame as high up the hierarchy as possible, in which case
higher-rankingofficers will be overrepresented among human rights abus-
ers. It could also be argued,however, that governments have an incentive to
scapegoat lower-rankedsoldiers while hiding the roles of their superiors, in
which case lower-rankedsoldiers will be overrepresentedamong abusersand
 McCoy / TRAINED TO TORTURE? 59

TABLE 2
Relative Risk of Human Rights Violations by SOA Graduates

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

2_crs 5.611*** 3.703*** 3.889***

(1.009) (0.751) (0.79)
3+_crs 6.944*** 2.934*** 3.327***
(2.014) (0.991) (1.136)
cio 1.308 1.266
(0.41) (0.401)
inf 1.494 1.475
(0.316) (0.312)
officer 3.817** 3.862***
(0.833) (0.843)
off_cio 1.667 1.579
(0.589) (0.563)
cold war 1.990*
(0.675)
civil war 3.095*** 4.122***
(0.573) (0.794)
dictator 2.204*** 2.631***
(0.475) (0.553)
decade 1.022 1.006
(0.018) (0.014)
trn cold 1.411
(1.495)
trn civ 0.649
(0.148)
trn_dict 0.914
(0.177)
n = 11,792 n= 11,792 n= 11,792
df=2 df= 10 df= 12
LR = 92.67 LR = 286.07 LR = 287.88
*p < .05** p .01*** p .001

this result will actually underestimate the difference between officers and
enlisted soldiers. Whatever the explanation, these results show a striking
difference between higher- and lower-rankedsoldiers.
The introduction of rank into this model reduces the effect of three or
more courses to just below thatof two courses.While it is possible thattaking
two courses has a strongereffect than takingthreeor morecourses, it is likely
thatthe inclusion of rank has a strongermitigatingeffect on the "3+ courses"
variable, since a higher percentage of studentsin this category are officers.17
Taken together, these measures of the effects of additionalcourses provide
60 LATINAMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

0.15

0.10

Hazard
0.05

0.00
0 10 20 30 40 50
Years
totalcrs=1 ----- totatcrs= 2
---. totalcrs=3

Figure 2: Nelson-Aalen Cumulative Hazard Curve by Total Courses

strong evidence againsthypothesis 1, which predicts thatincreasedexposure

to SOA-style professional training will reduce the likelihood that a student
will engage in humanrights violations.
Hypothesis 2 predictsthatrates of human rights abuses will decrease with
each subsequent class of SOA graduates. When students are divided into
five-year intervalsaccordingto the date of their initial trainingat the school,
only two of the eight time periods yields statistically significantresults in the
simple model regressing each one of those time periods individually.'8As
could be predictedfromthese results, the variablefor whethera graduatewas
trainedduringor afterthe cold war also failed to achieve significance. In fact,
none of the variablesaccounting for when graduateswere trained achieved
statistical significance. Thus, contrary to the expectations of military
professionalization, the data reveal no improvement in the human rights
records of SOA graduatesover time.

CONCLUSION

The results of this study do not support the prediction that students with
the most exposure to professional military training will show the greatest
 McCoy / TRAINED TO TORTURE? 61

respect for human rights. Looking at SOA graduates, we see that while the
overall number of abusers is small, the abusers themselves are disproportion-
ately represented by officers (at nearly four times the rate of enlisted soldiers)
and by repeat graduates: students who took multiple courses at the school are
more than three times more likely to violate human rights than their counter-
parts who took only one course. These findings are highly significant across
all analyses and over 40 years, implying that repeated exposure to SOA train-
ing is associated with increased human rights violations in times of war and
peace, under democratic and dictatorial regimes, and both during and after
the cold war.
As with any study that attempts to show large-scale patterns, there are
many important issues that are not addressed here. What types of soldiers
attend the SOA and similar training programs? What does the training pro-
cess entail? What place does SOA training occupy in a soldier's overall
career? While the answers to these questions might contribute to a broader
picture of the politics and psychology of SOA-style training, such questions
cannot be adequately addressed with the limited information available on
SOA graduates. Yet, despite the challenge of limited information, more
research is urgently needed on foreign military training programs. The
results of this study suggest that such programs are problematic for human
rights and that systematic oversight and greater transparency are needed. The
fact that the School of the Americas, which fares poorly on human rights in
this study, is perhaps the most transparent U.S. foreign training program
leaves one to wonder about the effects of dozens of other such programs both
in the United States and abroad. Given the results of this study, it is not unrea-
sonable to ask whether such programs are in fact training people to torture.

NOTES

1. In 2001 the School of the Americas was convertedinto the WesternHemisphere Institute
for SecurityCooperation.Since this paper addressesthe periodfrom 1960 to 2000, I refer to the
institute by the name that it held throughout most of that period.
2. The school has been moved a numberof times. It was first establishedin Fort Amador, in
the PanamaCanalZone, as the Latin America Center,GroundDivision. In 1949 it was moved to
FortGulick (also in the PanamaCanal Zone) andrenamedthe U.S. ArmyCaribbeanSchool. Up
until that point, the curriculumhad been bilingual English-Spanishand U.S. troops had been
trainedalongsidetheirLatin American counterparts.In 1963, the namewas again changed, to the
U.S. Army School of the Americas. Under the termsof the PanamaCanalTreaty,in 1984 it was
moved to Fort Benning, GA. In 1990 its name was shortened to simply the School of the
Americas.
3. Dictators who graduatedfrom the school include Hugo Banzer of Bolivia (1971-1978),
who enacted the "Banzer Plan" to wipe out leftist activities; Leopoldo Galtieri of Argentina
62 LATINAMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

(1981-1982) andhis predecessorLt. GeneralRoberto Viola (1981), who oversawthe "dirtywar"

in thatcountry;ManuelNoriegaof Panama(1983-1989), arrestedon chargesof drugtrafficking,
corruption,andrepression;Gen. OmarTorrijos(1968-1981), also of Panama,who overthrewthe
civilian government;MajorGeneralJuanVelasco Alvarado(1968-1975) of Peru;MajorGeneral
Guillermo Rodriguez(1972-1976) of Ecuador; and HondurandictatorBrigadierGeneral Juan
Melgar Castro(1975-1978).
4. An army memorandumon human rights posted on the official SOA web page states:
"Instructionon InternationalHumanitarianLaw (Law of Land Warfare)has always been pro-
vided to our students."
5. Many countries, such as Colombia, Argentina, and Bolivia, have adopted or proposed
amnesty laws to ensure that humanrights abusers cannot be tried.
6. Some studentsappearseveral times in the SOA data, and every effort was made to deter-
mine which entries correspondedto which individuals. In many cases, an exact name would
appearmorethanonce, andthese entries were assigned the same identificationnumber.In other
cases, namesthatwere apparentlythe same appearedin slightly differentvariations,such as one
entry with a first name, middle name, and last name and a second entry with a matching first
name, middle initial, andlast name.In potentially ambiguous cases such as these, I looked to the
time span between the entries as well as the change in rank over time to determinewhether the
second entrycould reasonablybe consideredthe same individualas the firstentry.In cases where
similar permutationsof very common names appeared (such as Jose Rodriguez and Jose
Rodriguez Martinez),I determinedthat there was too little informationto assume that the two
entries representedthe same individualand assigned each a distinct identificationnumber.
7. Ilimited the studyto six countriesin orderto keep the task of datacoding andanalysis man-
ageable.
8. In the 1990s, Colombia and Mexico took the lead in sending studentsto the SOA. At that
time, Colombiawas steppingup its civil conflict against leftist guerrillagroupsand Mexico was
beginning its offensive againstthe Zapatistas. Hondurasalso sent a large numberof studentsto
the SOA duringthe counterinsurgencyoperations of the 1980s, including entire battalions that
received specializedtrainingthere.All three countries had a relatively high proportionof human
rights abusersamong their students.
9. Although some studentstook up to five courses, there were too few students in the four-
and five-course categories to justify the creation of separate indicatorsfor each of those.
10. Army field manualsavailablefor some courses.
11. "Counterinsurgency"includes courses such as "Counterinsurgency,""Jungle Opera-
tions," and "UrbanWarfare.""Infantryand Weapons" includes courses of that name as well as
cadet and officer trainingcourses. "Non-combat operations"includes courses such as vehicle
maintenance,logistics, and democratic sustainment.
12. This is a simple dummy variable coded as "1" for the period from 1960 to 1989 (1989
markingthe fall of the Berlin Wall), and "0" for the period from 1990 to 2000. While the same
informationcould be obtainedby contrastingthe 1990 decade with otherdecades, having a spe-
cific variablefor the cold war makes it easier to compare that time period with general changes
across time as controlled in the "Decade"variable.
13. In addition,0.68 percentof the graduates were listed as civilians, had no rank listed, or
had a rankthat was not interpretable.
14. I employ a Cox proportionalhazard model.
15. In eventhistoryanalysis, these occurrences are known as "theeventof interest"and"cen-
soring,"respectively.
 McCoy / TRAINED TO TORTURE? 63

16. Relative risk is the equivalent of an odds ratio in logistic regression.Thus, a coefficient
less than one signifies a decreased risk (or odds) of committing an abuse, while a coefficient
greaterthanone signifies an increasedrisk or odds of abuse.Normalconventionsregardinglevels
of statistical significance apply here.
17. Officersmade up 21.52 percent of studentswho took only one course,29.5 percent of stu-
dents who took two courses, and 43.9 percent of studentswho took threeor more courses. The
fact that there are fewer students in the "3+" category overall (287 studentstook three or more
courses, as opposed to 1,109 students who took two courses) also makesthe results potentially
more susceptible to change than those in the two-course category.
18. Those periods were 1966-1970, with a coefficient of 1.73, and 1981-1985, with a coeffi-
cient of 0.323.

REFERENCES

Amnesty International
2002 UnmatchedPower UnmetPrinciples: TheHumanRightsDimensions of U.S. Training
of Foreign Military and Police Forces. New York:Amnesty InternationalU.S.A. Publica-
tions.
Blanton, ShannonLindsey
1999 "Instrumentsof security or tools of repression?Arms importsandhumanrights condi-
tions in developing countries."Journal of Peace Research 36: 233-244.
Buchanan,Paul G.
1996 "U.S. defense policy for the WesternHemisphere:new wine in old bottles, old wine in
new bottles, or something completely different?"Journalof Interamerican Studies and
WorldAffairs 38: 1-31.
Cockerham,William C. and Lawrence E. Cohen
1980 "Obedienceto orders:issues of moralityandlegality in combatamong U.S. Army para-
troopers."Social Forces 58: 1272-1288.
Departmentof State, Bureau of Political-Military Affairs
2000 Foreign Military Training and DoD EngagementActivities of Interest. Vol. 1. Joint
Report to Congress, March 1. Washington, DC.
Francis, Michael J.
1964 "Militaryaid to Latin America in the U.S. Congress."Journaloflnteramerican Studies
and WorldAffairs 6: 45-82.
Grimmett,RichardF. and Mark P. Sullivan
1997 U.S. Army School of the Americas: Backgroundand Congressional Concerns: Con-
gressional Research Service Report to Congress, July 22, 1997. Washington,DC.
Haugaard,Lisa
1996 "Torture101."In These Times, October 14, 14-16.
Henderson, Conway W.
1991 "Conditionsaffecting the use of political repression."Journalof Conflict Resolution
35: 120-142.
Huntington,Samuel P.
1957 The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-MilitaryRelations. Cam-
bridge: Belknap Press of HarvardUniversity Press.
1981 TheDilemma ofAmerican Ideals and Institutionsin ForeignPolicy. Washington, DC:
American EnterpriseInstitute for Public Policy Research.
64 LATINAMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

Janowitz, Morris
1977 MilitaryInstitutionsand Coercion in the Developing Nations. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Leuer, JosephC.
1996 "School of the Americas and foreign policy attainmentin Latin America."MS.
Marcella, Gabriel
1990 "The Latin American military, low intensity conflict, and democracy."Journal of
InteramericanStudies and WorldAffairs 31: 45-82.
1988 "Economicand political explanations of human rights violations." WorldPolitics 40:
476-498.
McKinlay, R. D. and A. S. Cohan
1975 "A comparativeanalysis of the political and economic performanceof military and
civilian regimes:a cross-nationalaggregate study."ComparativePolitics 8: 1-30.
1976 "Performanceand instability in military and nonmilitaryregime systems."American
Political Science Review 70: 850-864.
Nelson-Pallmeyer,Jack
1997 School of the Assassins. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
Norris, Michael, ChristopherBirbeck, and Luis GerardoGabald6n
2002 "Practicingwhat we preach:outcomes of exportingU.S. trainingin police use of force
to Latin America."Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological
Association, Chicago.
Office of the InspectorGeneral, Departmentof Defense
1997 "Evaluationreport on training of foreign military personnel-phase 2: School of the
Americas,"in Policy and OversightReport PO 98-601, November 14. Washington,D.C.
Poe, Steven C. and C. Neal Tate
1994 "Repressionof human rights to personal integrity in the 1980s: a global analysis."
AmericanPolitical Science Review 88: 853-872.
Singer, J. D. and J. B. Willett
2003 AppliedLongitudinalAnalysis: Modeling Change and Event Occurrence.New York:
Oxford UniversityPress.
Toomey, Christine
2001 "Thekilling fields."Sunday Timesof London, November 18.
Willett, J. B. and J. D. Singer
1991 "Fromwhetherto when: new methods for studying student dropoutand teacher attri-
tion."Reviewof Educational Research 61: 407-450.
Wolpin, Miles D.
1975 "Externalpolitical socialization as a source of conservative military behavior in the
ThirdWorld,"pp. 259-281 in KennethFidel (ed.), Militarism in Developing Countries.New
Brunswick:TransactionBooks.
Wright, Steve
1978 "New police technologies: an exploration of the social implications and unforeseen
impacts of some recent developments."Journal of Peace Research 15: 305-322.
Wu, LawrenceL.
2003 "Eventhistory models for life course analysis," pp. 477-502 in J. Mortimer and M.
Shanahan(eds.), Handbookof the Life Course. New York:Plenum.