The Village Voice, November 5 - 11, 2003

by JOSHUA LAND

Regarded by many as a terrorist training camp, the U.S. Army's School of the
Americas has graduated some 60,000 Latin American soldiers, including several
notorious future dictators. John H. Smihula's compelling video documentary
aims for both hearts and minds in making the case against the SOA—a lightning rod
for protesters against U.S. policy in Latin America. Smihula relies on
interviews with anti-SOA activists and scholars, as well as military personnel and
members of Congress on both sides of the issue, but makes no apologies for the
emotionally charged nature of the stories told by survivors of SOA-trained
death squads, forcefully intercutting a Salvadoran woman's testimony with images
of dead bodies being loaded onto a truck. Even more unsettling is the film's
subtle indictment of the American taxpayer's passive complicity; as its title
suggests, this doc's essential subject is the limits of American tolerance for atrocity.