PANAMA The Other Side of Midnight
Leis, Raúl
I thought it was thunder. But the television set me straight. Channel 2, which belongs to the government, was announcing, "...attention, attention, Dignity Battalions: CODEPADI, emergency,...
...Can't you see it's like a G.I...
...The invading troops were concerned only with minimizing their own losses...
...The delicate instrument traced the succession of explosions for another 13 hours before giving out: A total of 422 bombs fell on the city, some of them tremendously destructive...
...The numbers seem to rise weekly...
...In the San Miguelito slums at the city's edge, a resident described the situation: "A helicopter bombarded three houses, destroying them all...
...Today nationalists are suspect and dangerous...
...The Southern Command is no longer a hostile power, but a friendly army that ought to remain...
...The Other Invasion In the midst of the horror, people raised barricades and looted the businesses where they work and shop...
...If they do it, so will I." "I am what I have...
...But the number of Panamanian dead could easily rise to several thousand...
...A tank destroyed it-along with 26 people inside...
...Southern Command's Channel 8 was broadcasting Code Echo-the fifth and maximum level of alert...
...the invading army became an army of liberation...
...Beside the U.S soldiers with their state-of-the-art combat gear, the new FP troops move like shadows, in old ill-fitting mechanic's overalls, carrying clubs or at most revolvers...
...It derived legitimacy from its electoral "It will be difficult to convince them not to cross the street again" triumph in May 1989, even though it was bom with the original sin of having been imposed by foreign troops...
...4 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS t Ci Sociologist and playwright Ra(d Leis is the director of the Panamanian Center for Research and Social Action (CEASPA...
...But transforming an army is not accomplished through sleight-of-hand nor an act of war...
...They made use of this opportunity to try out the supersecret Stealth bomber ($500 million apiece), the Apache AH-64 attack helicopter ($14 million apiece), the HMMWV jeeps, new vests and helmets, and even a new line of semi-dry rations...
...No one should feel proud that someone else pulls your chestnuts from the fire...
...It was painful," he continued, "agonizing...
...The years of crisis were fertile ground for the yearning to "get what you can...
...Primitive instincts triumphed over the Christian values of a believing people...
...It is the invasion that came long before the troops--creating idols, and blocking consciousness...
...soldiers were killed...
...There were about 80 of them...
...His name was Turry Aguilar-the neighborhood mechanic...
...But the United States with all its power could have found a better way to remove that one person from the city...
...When university students finally achieved an anti-imperialist alliance, the Defense Forces intervened and murdered one of them, Luis Gonzales, in cold blood...
...troops turned a tank's machine-guns and bazookas on a group of young men drinking beer: "One of them, his last name was Villareal, died instantly...
...soldiers under the headline: "They died for Panama...
...They ran into conflict with the political opposition, and later with the United States, insofar as they sought to monopolize control of the country...
...The Christian Democratic Party, with its polished rhetoric and international support, is the best prepared of the parties in power...
...It has the largest social base and the deepest political appeal...
...During the next four minutes it registered 67 more...
...At the stroke of midnight Panama suffered the twentieth invasion of its territory at the hands of the United States...
...Twentythree U.S...
...He feared his own people even more...
...According to the Canal Treaties, they may stay "on the other side of the street" until the year 2000...
...This was nowhere more evident than in Noriega's plans for defense, the Dignity Battalions, which never contemplated grassroots participation...
...Channel 2, which belongs to the government, was announcing, "...attention, attention, Dignity Battalions: CODEPADI, emergency, emergency, Code Cutarra, get your guns, emergency...
...The economy based on commerce and services spawned a Phoenician syndrome...
...Some 200 bodies were pulled out of the area around the Headquarters...
...In civilian affairs it takes orders from the government (in turn aligned with the United States) and in military matters from the Southern Command...
...national security interests (the Canal and U.S...
...The recent past is a tale of peoples who have struggled long and hard to throw off authoritarian regimes, using peaceful means as in Eastern Europe, Iran or the Philippines, or armed insurrection as in Nicaragua...
...the "civic" Church, a sector of the hierarchy, clerics and lay, particularly in Panama City, that gave moral support to the opposition and the invasion...
...The new Public Force (FP) is to work as an auxiliary to U.S...
...there were no shelters, no civil defense to protect them...
...troops in defense of the Canal and to guarantee internal security...
...Father Te6filo Cabrestrero calls it "the drug from up there...
...military forces, which hangs like Damocles' sword over the nation, blocking the natural unfolding of Panamanian society...
...soldier picking up a Panamanian girl...
...More than ever before, the character of Panama's politics will be determined by the presence of U.S...
...A Kuna Indian summed up Panama's plight: "It's as if we had a house full of mice eating our bread and rice...
...Amid all of this was the growing desire for foreign objects and foreign New Right crusaders in office: Vice President Ricardo Arias Calder6n, President Guillermo Endara, Vice President "Billy" Ford INIACLLA KrrkUK 1 UiN I1...
...From where I stood I could count 16 bodies of civilians, burned and bulletridden: Porky Platero and his wife, Miguel Acosta Gabino, La Sorda...
...When the Endara government strengthens Panama's adherence to IMF structural adjustment and privatization policies (which Noriega never questioned) and living standards fail to improve, a new sort of opposition will likely emerge...
...troops, acclaimed as the bearers of order...
...It controls the government and justice ministry, the education ministry and others...
...goal was not solely to remove the top brass, but to make the institution disappear altogether-"To change its ideology," a Southern Command official declared on television...
...Then a wave of accusations and acts of vengeance flooded the country...
...They hope the invasion and occupation will give birth to anew unity of economic, political and military power, and a new ideological hegemony under the protection of the United States...
...A local paper runs photos of dead U.S...
...The Church claims that 655 Panamanians died, most of them civilians, and more than 2,000 were injured...
...And the one who came to do the job for us did not come out of good will, but to defend his own interests...
...They had been doing it all along...
...Hundreds...
...We Panamanians had yet to use all our strength, nor had we exhausted all our possibilities...
...The process initiated by Torrijos and brought to a close by the invasion was characterized by a profound distrust of autonomous organizing by the poor...
...CCN's visible struggle against the dictatorial aspects of Noriega's government gave it legitimacy and appeal to a wide spectrum of society...
...The paths were diverse, but there was only one actor: the people...
...Its vitality was sapped by the lack of popular sovereignty and by illicit enrichment at the top-a clean flag in dirty hands...
...The seismograph needle at the University of Panama's Geosciences Institute marked the first bomb precisely: 46 minutes and 40.3 seconds after midnight, December 20, 1989...
...Latin America's vote in the OAS to censure the invasion is viewed as treason...
...The population was not prepared for war...
...Thousands...
...Amulfismo," the political movement founded by the late legendary caudillo Arnulfo Arias Madrid, is currently without a party, but that is undoubtedly a question of time...
...This New Right alliance, born out of shared opposition to Noriega, is not homogeneous, and some aspects of it are held together only by spit and a prayer...
...The National Civic Crusade, led by middle-class businessmen, occupies the vacuum created by the lack of a grassroots popular movement...
...Dozens...
...The bomb entered the side of the house, blowing the gas tank through the roof...
...But worst of all was her daughter, only months old, who was left with her arm and head full of shrapnel...
...In Chorrillo, a neighborhood of wooden barracks built to house the workers who dug the Canal at the beginning of this century, the invasion hit like a little Hiroshima...
...The gringos sent a lot of tanks into Chorrillo that night," recounted one resident...
...A bomb every two minutes...
...Underneath all this, the United States sought to make a revolution of sorts...
...Not from the ranks of Noriega supporters, but out of new struggles on the horizon...
...soldiers paid $6 for each body recovered...
...The opposition to Noriega took up people's legitimate democratic aspirations, and Panamanians' long history of nationalist sentiment was transcended by the dichotomy of democracy and dictatorship...
...They are not only anticommunist, they are against any policy which regulates or interferes with the free market...
...Nor did it record the shooting...
...It was not only in the wake of the invasion that all social classes participated in the looting of their own cities...
...Indeed, people came to live a reality in which democracy was irreconcilable with nationalism...
...The U.S...
...The seismograph did not register the bombardments in other parts of the country...
...Nor the toll in human suffering...
...Three others were injured...
...He bled to death by the side of the road...
...and four political parties-the National VOLUME XXIII, NUMBER 6 (APRIL 1990) _E 0 Civic Crusade (CCN), the Christian Democratic Party (PDC), "Amulfismo," and the Nationalist Republican Liberal Movement (MOLIRENA...
...wrote a columnist in the daily Panamd Amirica...
...Theirs is a crusade, rooted in indivisible-under-God Catholicism...
...The Panamanian military is defeated and disliked...
...Demobilization, and the co-optation and corruption of leaders were the result...
...Nationalism does not work when it is divorced from democracy, isolated from an organic program, and separated out from the concrete social and historical progress of the poor...
...And they are belligerent forces in Panama's political process...
...It received more votes than any other in the 1989 elections-though many of them were from supporters of the Panamefiista Party, which was kept off the ballot-and thus will have a majority in the new National Assembly...
...One woman was wounded in the knee...
...The U.S...
...The slum rose up in insurrection and the United States sent troops to this small isthmus for the first time...
...Noriega's Defense Forces (FD) were the authoritarian axis of national political power...
...Finally, MOLIRENA is the most conservative of the four, the product of an alliance of family-based oligarchic parties...
...Noriega not only feared the United States...
...People eagerly turned in their neighbors-military and paramilitary personnel, as well as normally law-abiding citizens-to U.S...
...How things have changed since the 1970s, when the country was united and defiantly proud of Gen...
...But most painful of all was the euphoria [that followed...
...The surviving officers-80% of whom are now in the FP-were not converted, but humiliated and obliged, stripped of their authority and privileges...
...The new government was the ace up the Bush Administration's sleeve...
...A resident of Huerta Sandoval, nextdoor to Chorrillo, recalled how U.S...
...A television commercial for a fast-food chain shows, approvingly, a U.S...
...History repeats itself...
...Noriega became the evil doer, the occupying troops the avenging angel...
...Of course we agree with getting rid of a dictator who damaged our country...
...But we tire of that, so we get a cat...
...The Central Headquarters of the Defense Forces lay in the heart of the barrio...
...It will be more difficult than ever to convince them not to cross the street again...
...A wounded man told of a bus on the Panama-Chorerra route which was attacked at one in the morning...
...the inhabitants were awakened by bombs, tracer bullets and flares--night turned into day...
...military bases) and to create a Panama totally aligned with those interests...
...The invasion was underway...
...We use poison and traps...
...Six major actors collaborate in this process: the business lobby, National Council of Private Enterprise (CNEP...
...The 1980s became a decade of gradual decomposition of consensual rule...
...The nation's economic powers-thatbe would like to repair the falling out between business and the state that occurred after President Nicolds Ardita Barletta was ousted in 1985...
...The first occurred 133 years ago when Jack Oliver, a traveler, refused to pay Jos6 Manuel Luna the price of a slice of watermelon...
...I _ 4 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICASRevolution from Outside Of the objectives the United States listed to justify the intervention, two were explicit and immediate: to protect the lives of U.S...
...A country of consumers...
...Others, meanwhile (the United States) carried out the dirty work of bringing down the dictatorship...
...Now the cat doesn't want to leave, and throwing it out will not be easy: The mice will come back, and the cat has very sharp claws...
...The old slogan, long used to slander Marxists,' '"The ends justify the means," was Panama's national motto...
...This is the logical outcome of military nationalism...
...A little Hong Kong...
...And that was precisely the most popular television series and the best-selling toy in Panama...
...It controls economic policy through the planning, labor and treasury ministries, and occupies the ministries of health and foreign relations...
...This was to be done so as to protect U.S...
...It is now enjoying a post-invasion honeymoon, but what will happen when the champagne goes flat...
...and they have all the support they need to remain beyond that date, should they wish...
...Even when the occupying troops are withdrawn, half or more will remain stationed in the Southern Command...
...How many died during the first days of the invasion...
...AN In,It A culture...
...forces are inspired by the worldview of the New Right: They perceive Panama's crisis as one of political and moral authority, eroding the hegemony of the proper order of things...
...In many areas the bodies were buried in alleys and patios, and information has been intentionally withheld...
...And they believe that reactivating entrepreneurial spirit will resolve it...
...Omar Torrijos for demanding that the Canal be returned to Panama...
...Everyone projected their own guilt onto Noriega, washing their hands of any responsibility for the nation's crisis...
...Democrats enshrine the paradigm of the United States...
...President Guillermo Endara belongs to this movement...
...residents, and to kill or capture Noriega...
...Noriega's nationalism, which demobilized the majority and failed to offer a credible path to a better society, was nothing but empty rhetoric...
...Get out of my way...
...They were in pieces-many dressed only in underwear...
...We took my brother to the Gorgas hospital where they operated on him in the parking lot...
...Those who resisted the invasion are not considered heroes or martyrs, but criminals who defended Noriega...
...A Panamanian mother tells her son not to be afraid: "Say hello, touch it, it won't hurt you...
...One had his leg severed at the knee...
...Noriega, with all the power in his hands, did not approve a single substantive law in favor of the poor who might have supported him...
...On another level, people experienced the invasion as a catharsis...
...The die had been cast...
...Those who have assumed the reins of government with the support of U.S...
...troops 5are the mentors of the new government and army...
...Once again a small nation is born under the protection of the United States...
Vol. 23 • April 1990 • No. 6
