Between 1996 and 1999, 3200 members of Air Transportation groups of the Special Forces (GAFE) of the Mexican Army "will take two-week courses with the 7th Group of the Special Forces of the United States," in order to then return to Mexico to train "rapid response" units," noted Darrin Wood, European expert on Latin American military affairs.
Citing information from the US newspaper, The Washington Post, he said Mexican officials will be accompanied in these courses by the same Green Berets who were in El Salvador in the 80's, during the confrontations with the insurgent guerrillas.
Wood notes that the campaigns carried out by independent organizations - national and foreign - against this training in military centers in the United States, do not seem to have affected the image of President Ernesto Zedillo's government, to such a degree that, now, "with zedillismo (sic), Mexico has more members of their armed forces receiving training than any other country in the world."
In his analysis he indicates the kind of influence US officials have on Mexican military personnel, and he notes that it has to do with United States interests in Latin America.
The specialist points out that, among the first 90 officials and military soldiers who arrived at the School of the Americas (SOA) between 1953 and 1960, one of the most notable was, in 1959, Juan Lopez Ortiz, then a lieutenant, who studied weapons and infantry tactics.
Years later, now a general, "he was in charge of fighting the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in Ocosingo, in January 1994, where there was a summary execution of zapatista prisoners in the public market," Wood adds.
"In fact, the 70's marked the first great surge of Mexican military personnel active in the SOA; in 10 years Mexico had more officials taking courses than in the previous twenty, who, over the course of time, have come to hold important positions in the counterinsurgency activities of the 90's."
For example, the expert says, in 1971 there were four Mexican military persons in the SOA, and two of them were in Chiapas during the EZLN uprising. They were high ranking officials, Gaston Menchaca Arias, who attended the course on guerrilla warfare operations, from March 29 to June 4, 1971, and Miguel Leyva Garcia, in commando and General Staff operations, from March 15 to December 13 of the same year.
Menchaca Arias was designated as Commander of the 31st Military Zone in Rancho Nuevo, Chiapas, and Leyva Garcia commanded the 83rd Infantry Battalion in the same Military Zone.
In 1972, Harold H. Rabling studied guerrilla warfare operations, from February 28 to May 5, and Carmelo Teran Montero, military intelligence, from January 10 to April 28. "In the 90's they were concentrated in Chiapas to confront the zapatistas," Darrin Wood notes.
Another Mexican military person in this situation is Jose Luis Lopez Ruvalcaba, who took courses in jungle operations and, years later, held the post of Commander of the Mixed Operational Base of the Seventh Military Region in Chiapas.
However, not all of them had the same luck. Gerardo R. Serrano Herrera attended the advanced course for officers in combat weaponry from April 16 to December 28, 1979. Years later he went to Guerrero, and, because of his presumed violations of human rights, he was denounced by the Prodh, on March 20, 1997, Wood explains.
The number of courses taken by Mexican military personnel went from 22 in 1979, to 115 in 1980.
Other Mexican Army officials who received instruction in the United States, and then years later carried out operations against the EZLN in Chiapas, are Enrique Alonso Garrido and Jose Ruben Rivas Pena. After his participation in Chiapas, the latter was sent to Oaxaca as the new Commander of the 28th Military Zone.
For his part, Gilberto R. Garcia Gonzalez was named Commander of the 27th Military Zone in Acapulco, a position which he occupied until his death, when the helicopter he was flying in crashed, in 1996.
The words of Carlos Fazio in his book, The Third Link, do not escape Wood's work, in respect to statements by Retired Colonel Jack Cope, concerning William Perry's visit to Mexico, on October 23, 1995, which, in his opinion, signified a landmark in the US strategy of convincing Mexican armed forces that, in the era following the Free Trade Agreement {NAFTA}, their country had ceased to be an interventionist "adversary," and was now an "ally," worthy of confidence and with shared national security interests.
It is recalled that Perry, who was accompanied to Mexico by General Barry McCaffrey, then Chief of the Southern Command, and now anti-drug czar, was received at the 1st Military camp in an impressive ceremony,by the staff officers of the Mexican armed forces, and in front of almost 10,000 soldiers and cadets.
Wood also notes that "the United States has never said that their military aid was for fighting the zapatistas," and he relates in his investigation, Mexico Campus of the School for Assassins, what was said by journalist Carlos Marin, in the journal, Proceso, on January 3, 1998, about the Army's plan for Chiapas since 1994: create paramilitary bands, displace the population, destroy the EZLN support bases...In addition to mentioning General Jose Ruben Rivas Pena as author of an "historical, sociological, economics, political and religious analysis of the conflict" in Chiapas.
In that document the former Commander of the 31st Military Zone states that "it has been since the arrival of the Bishop of the diocese of San Cristobal de Las Casas, Samuel Ruiz Garcia, that the traditional values had begun to be disturbed, for the purpose, at first, of dignifying them, taking them out of their ignorance, povery and margination (sic). Regrettably, this change in indigenous values was seen to be directly influenced by the theologians of liberation..."
For Rivas Pena, "The Vatican is the primary indirect cause of the conflict in Chiapas, directly sponsoring the corrupt trend of liberation theology in Mexico, supported by their counterparts in Latin America, and by the majority of the national Catholic clergy, using socialist and political organizations, gangsters and groups against the government to carry it out...As one can see, it is not surprising that an SOA graduate would have such reactionary ideas concerning liberation theology," the specialist concludes.
TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH BY irlandesa FOR NUEVO AMANECER PRESS (Spanish Original available at: http://www.nuclecu.unam.mx/~jornada/980816.dir/mexico.html NUEVO AMANECER PRESS- N.A.P. To know about N.A.P. visit: http://www.nap.cuhm.mx/nap0.htm