In 1946, the United States Army founded the Latin American Training Center-Ground Division (Centro de Entrenamiento Latino Americano, Division Terrestre)[3] at Fort Amador in the Panama Canal Zone to centralize the "administrative tasks involved in training the increasing number of Latin Americans attending U.S. service schools in the canal zone.

"[3][4] The school trained Latin American military personnel to use artillery and advanced weapons purchased from the United States and provided instruction in nation-building.

The army soon renamed the division the Latin American Ground School (Escuela Latino Americana Terrestre) and divided it into three departments: engineering, communications, and weapons and tactics.

[3] Chronic under-enrollment occurred during the school's first few years, as Latin American officials preferred to have personnel trained within the continental United States.

When a group of Argentine officers attended a three-month course in 1948, the school painstakingly structured the program to convince them that the U.S. was "enterprising, efficient, and powerful."

[5] Scholar Lesley Gill has argued that the Ground School not only trained students, but incorporated them "into the ideology of the 'American way of life' by steeping them in a vision of empire that identified their aspirations with those of the United States.

In 1961, General Lyman Lemnitzer suggested that Latin American students could be utilized to "review translations to insure conformance with individual country language and practical applicability.

"[14] In 1961, President John F. Kennedy ordered the school to focus on teaching "anti-communist" counterinsurgency training to military personnel from Latin America.

[18] To accommodate objectives of cooperation between the United States and Latin America established by President Kennedy in the Alliance for Progress in 1961, the school's curriculum was constructed and reorganized into two departments.

[19][citation needed] According to the Department of Defense, the school provided intelligence and counter-intelligence training to "foreign military personnel" under the Mutual Assistance Program.

[citation needed] The Department of Defense reported to President Lyndon B. Johnson that 180 students from the Continental U.S. Base had been trained in 1965, including 60 from the 1st Cavalry Division deployed in the Republic of Vietnam.

"[24] A feedback-loop created between the school and General Westmoreland's headquarters allowed the Army to ensure that "lessons learned" in Vietnam were incorporated into the curriculum.

[27] He considered the training conducted in Panama to be essential because it enhanced American "access to the politically influential leadership" of the Panamanian National Guard and instilled in its personnel "attitudes favorable to the United States".

[27] To justify his decision to "provision international military education and training" to Panama in 1980, Carter argued that not doing so would "endanger the future operation" of the School of the Americas and the Inter-American Air Force Academy.

[29] Hundreds of Hondurans were trained at the school during the 1980s, when the country became increasingly critical to President Ronald Reagan's efforts to overthrow and defeat the Nicaraguan Sandinistas and other revolutionary guerrilla movements in the region.

"[40][41] Rep. Nancy Pelosi addressed the issue in the congressional record:For years, some of us have had serious questions about the Army's School of the Americas and its connection to some of the worst human rights violators in our hemisphere.

Last weekend, information released by the Pentagon confirmed our worst suspicions: U.S. Army intelligence manuals, distributed to thousands of military officers throughout Latin America, promoted the use of executions, torture, blackmail, and other forms of coercion.

For almost 10 years, U.S. taxpayer dollars were used to promote an approach that advocates using, and I quote, "fear, payment of bounties for enemy dead, beatings, false imprisonment, executions, and the use of truth serum".

It has provided professional training to thousands of military and civilian police personnel from throughout Latin America, including extensive indoctrination in the principles of human rights and representative democracy.

I urge all of my colleagues to visit the school, learn more about the job it is doing, and not to rush to judgment on the basis of false and unfounded accusations made by people who may have good intentions, but who have little regard for the facts.

Joseph P. Kennedy II entered a counterargument into the congressional record:Mr. Speaker, in the next couple of hours, this House will have the opportunity of closing down the School of the Americas.

By 2000, the School of the Americas was under increasing criticism in the United States for training students who later participated in undemocratic governments and committed human rights abuses.

[47][48] In addition, The Intercept reported that Honduran plotters in the illegal 2009 military coup received "behind-the-scenes assistance" from CHDS officials working for Downie.

The detailed August 2017 article noted that Cresencio Arcos, a former U.S. ambassador to Honduras who was working at the Center at the time the coup occurred, received an angry call from a Congressional staffer who had met with the Honduran colonels who were meeting with Members of Congress in Washington.

Arcos confronted Downie and Center Deputy Director Ken LaPlante, telling them, "We cannot have this sort of thing happening, where we're supporting coups."

LaPlante was a former instructor at the notorious School of the Americas and an ardent defender of that institution while at what is now called the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies.

[53] In 2014–2015, the principal "Command & General Staff Officer" course had 65 graduates (60 male and five female) representing 13 nations: Belize, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and the U.S.[54] In 2004, Venezuela ceased all training of its soldiers at WHINSEC[55] after a long period of chilling relations between the United States and Venezuela.

[59] In 2012, President Rafael Correa announced that Ecuador would withdraw all their troops from the military school at Ft. Benning, citing links to human rights violations.

Its educational format incorporates guest lecturers and experts from sectors of US and international government, non-government, human rights, law enforcement, academic institutions, and interagency departments[71] to share best practices (as deemed by the USA) in pursuit of improved security cooperation between all nations of the Western Hemisphere.

The law called for a federal advisory committee – the Board of Visitors (BoV) – to maintain independent review, observation, and recommendations regarding operations of the institute.