by Rod Hughes

A Security Minister Fernando Berrocal’s recommendation that Costa Rican police receive advance training at a school at Fr. Benning, Ga., has stirred an outcry of protest from peace advocates in Costa Rica, the English-language weekly The Tico Times reported recently.

Berrocal visited the United States inspecting schools to send local police to hone their skills, stopping in Miami, New Mexico—and spending two days at the WHINSEC facility in Georgia. The facility is the former infamous School of the Americas that trained some of the most notorious torturers and human rights violators in the Cold War in Latin America.

The school changed its name in 2000, reopening as WHINSEC with a different charter. But peace groups, remembering the oppressive techniques of Latin American regimes in the 1970s and ’80s, are not at all sure that the leopard has changed its spots. They also noted that it is run by the U.S. Defense Dept., which has shown itself willing to bend or break rules of the Geneva Convention.

None of the peace advocates deny the need for Costa Rica’s cops to bring themselves up to date with techniques of combatting organized crime and violent drug traffickers. But they point out that President Oscar Arias specifically promised a peace delegation last May that none of the 150 officers to be sent for two years’ training would go to the former School of the Americas.

The editorial position of The Tico Times was made clear by its editorial headline: “Don’t Send Police to WHINSEC.” The editorial urged that the policemen be sent to Miami and New Mxico, despite those two schools not having all their classes in Spanish as does WHINSEC. A Nobel Peace Prize Laureate should not “support a highly controversial military training program,” scolded the editorial.