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The U.S. Army’s School of the Americas (SOA) was founded in 1946 in the Panama Canal Zone (Fort Gulick, near Fort Amador) as the “Latin American Ground School,” to provide technical and tactical training to Latin American allies. In July 1963 it was officially renamed the School of the Americas . From the beginning its Spanish-language curriculum reflected U.S. hemispheric-strategy aims. In the early Cold War the SOA taught courses in infantry, artillery, military police, radio repair, engineering and other basic skills . After the Cuban Revolution (1959), SOA’s mission shifted sharply. U.S. strategists adopted a “National Security Doctrine” that…