Expandiendo La Herida: How US Training Exacerbated Human Rights Violations During Chile’s Dictatorship

Chile's dictatorship from [1973][1974][1975][1976][1977][1978][1979][1980][1981][1982][1983][1984][1985][1986][1987][1988][1989][1990] was marked by extreme human rights violations committed by the state against its population.The legacy of this period has left what human rights advocates call an enduring 21st-century "herida abierta" (open wound) in Chile.Numerous scholars and human rights advocates argue that the US's training of Chilean personnel exacerbated torture, disappearances, and inhumane treatment.However, the particular mechanisms through which the US shaped Chilean security personnel behavior remain unclear.This paper uses declassified CIA documents, Chilean reports, and a roster of 60,000 Latin Americans who graduated from the US School of the Americas training facility to demonstrate that (1) the US trained a large number of Chilean officers, (2) US curriculum taught repressive methods that violated human rights under the UDHR, (3) Chilean personnel who committed violations used methods that closely resembled techniques discussed in the US curriculum, and (4) a substantial number of US-trained Chileans are linked to human rights violations.This study highlights the importance of restrictions on the types of training that US military forces offer foreign security personnel.