The Journal

Issue date: 11/16/06 Section: News

Media Credit: PHOTO COURTESY OF ADRIAN A. LUGO / U.S. Army Webster University's Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs Randy Wright (right) presents WHINSEC Commandant Col. Giliberto Perez (middle) and Dean of Academics Donald Harrington with a plaque to commemorate the new partnership between the two institutions March 18, 2005.

A degree from the controversial Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly the School of the Americas, can get graduates up to 12 credit hours at any Webster University campus offering a graduate program.

WHINSEC, located at Fort Benning, Ga., gives government-sponsored training to Western Hemisphere military personnel, mostly Latin Americans. The school has a tumultuous past with human rights groups, who claim the school is a training ground for undemocratic revolutionaries.

Webster's program, in partnership with WHINSEC's Command and General Staff Officer Course, was started in March 2005, said Randy Wright, associate vice president for academic affairs. Wright said any graduate from the CGSOC could transfer credit to Webster to be applied to a master's degree in business administration, management and leadership, or human resources and development.

SOA changed its name in 2001 after many graduates were accused of human rights violations in their respective countries. One of the most recent instances was Oct. 22, 2003, when the Gulf Cartel, a Mexican drug-smuggling operation, hired 31 ex-Mexican soldiers to their assassin force. Mexico Secretary of Defense Gerardo Clemente Ricardo Vega García said at least one-third of the former soldiers were trained at SOA, according to SOA Watch, a non-profit group dedicated to shutting down the institution.

One major incident caught the attention of religious and human rights groups across the U.S. in 1989. According to SOA Watch, Salvadoran army officer Gonzalo Guevara Cerritos, who had just graduated from SOA the year before, was convicted of murdering six Jesuit priests, a housekeeper and her 14-year-old daughter in San Salvador.

On Oct. 18, 2006, police found Guevara Cerritos in Los Angeles where he had been living illegally for more than a year, according to the U.S. Customs and Immigration Office.

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