School of the Americas / WHINSEC

The US Army School of the Americas (SOA), renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) in 2001, trained Latin American military and police at Fort Benning, Georgia. Graduates include numerous figures later implicated in human rights abuses, coups, and drug trafficking (the GAFE deserters who formed Los Zetas being the most notable case).

The SOA/WHINSEC connection to Los Zetas exemplifies a recurring pattern in US-Latin American relations: military training programs designed for counter-narcotics or counterinsurgency producing unintended blowback when trainees apply their skills outside state structures.