First, at least six of the military officers who implemented the coup and the subsequent Iran-like repression of pro-democracy protests are graduates of the (in)famous "School of the Americas." The SOA, providing US training to Latin American military personnel, has long been known throughout Latin America as the "School of Coups," or sometimes the "School of Assassins," because so many coup plotters and abusers of human rights have trained there. The coup leaders in Honduras, Generals Romeo Vasquez and Luis Suazo, are both SOA alumni, twice so in the case of Vasquez, and other coup plotters are also SOA grads. Although the SOA has officially changed its name to "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation," the old epithet "school of coups" evidently still fits. And despite the coup, Honduran soldiers are still training at the SOA as if nothing had changed.

A long-running movement to close the SOA as part of a new "good neighbor policy" toward Latin America has gained