Trump Has Brought American Paramilitary Violence Home

Unrestrained, unaccountable political violence became a recurring theme of U.S.-backed paramilitary operations. “We see way higher rates of human rights violations in conflicts [involving paramilitary units], and in particular, we have higher rates of violations that are what we call ‘agent-centric violations,’” Erica De Bruin, associate professor of government at Hamilton College, who researches the history and impact of civil-military relations, told me. “And what that means is the individual militia member or paramilitary member has discretion during an encounter to use force or not use force, and so that tends to be extrajudicial killings. Torture increases, and other violations of civil liberties increase.”

Such state-endorsed ruthlessness was often effective, and it would prove to have bipartisan support in Washington. Fearing a growing Red Menace, the Kennedy administration “took great pains to transform our regular armies into counterinsurgency brigades, accepting the new strategy of the death squads,” wrote the president of the Colombian Permanent Committee for Human Rights, former Minister of Foreign Affairs Alfredo Vázquez Carrizosa. Paramilitaries were particularly active in Latin America, a region of special concern to U.S. policymakers, thanks both to its proximity and to the Monroe Doctrine, which asserted this nation’s right to behave with impunity in its “sphere of influence” in the Americas. As a result, in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Colombia, the paramilitary threat reigned supreme. Trade unionists, social workers—anyone, really, who was deemed a potential communist sympathizer—were exterminated by secret police, militias, and death squads, many of whom were trained by U.S. intelligence officers at the notorious School of the Americas—an academy created by the Defense Department on the border between Georgia and Alabama.

Even as the Cold War wound down, U.S. support for paramilitarism remained steadfast. When, in the early 1980s, a coalition of peasants, religious leaders, union organizers, teachers, and journalists attempted to topple the murderous military junta in Guatemala, ad hoc, U.S.-backed hit squads proved critical in suppressing the uprising.