New recruits perform physical exercises directed by Salvadoran army officers trained at the School of the Americas, SOA, in Fort Benning, Georgia, USA, at a Salvadoran army base in San Miguel, El Salvador, July 1, 1982. SOA was founded in 1946 by the United States Department of Defense as a training school for Latin American military and police forces. At the advent of the Cold War, the school was assigned an aggressive anti-communist counterinsurgency agenda and many graduates returned to their countries to lead and participate in repressive regimes plagued with human rights abuses.