Y2K Anxieties in Panama
Lindsay-Poland, John
On the eve of the transfer of the Panama Canal, U.S. conservatives are invoking the specter of imminent chaos in Latin America in an effort to maintain U.S. control over the Panamanian...
...A businessman and cattle rancher, Martinelli gained fame in the early 1990s when he attempted to privatize the country's social security and health insurance system...
...Southern Command...
...One of Panama's biggest challenges in taking over canal lands will be in the conversion of three large military bases across the canal from Panama City, constituting nearly half the infrastructure of all the bases...
...Polls indicate that a majority of Puerto Ricans want the U.S...
...forces from Panama," said Rep...
...The widow of three-time President Arnulfo Arias, Moscoso triumphed in May over Martin Torrijos, son of the strongman who forged the 1977 Canal Treaties for Panama...
...Army tested Agent Orange in Panama in the 1960s and 1970s, a contention long denied by the U.S...
...After the May 1999 closing of Howard, where the Air Force reportedly ran 2,000 espionage flights a year, Washington negotiated temporary agreements for use of airstrips in Aruba, Curaqao, and Manta, Ecuador...
...We have given the farm away without a shot being fired," he said in reference to port concessions made in 1997 to Hutchison Whampoa, a Hong Kong-based shipping conglomerate...
...But Venezuelan President Hugo Chdvez's refusal to give blanket permission for U.S...
...The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have long been crossing over the border into Panama's thinly populated Darien province for rest and to evade military or paramilitary operations...
...The school that trained human rights abusers from all over the hemisphere will soon become a five-star hotel that overlooks Gatun Lake on three sides...
...In fact, ships transiting the canal are piloted by Canal Commission, soon to be Canal Authority, personnel...
...The agency responsible for managing canal-area lands, the Interoceanic Region Authority (ARI), is run by Nicolis Ardito Barletta, a former vice-president of the World Bank...
...military presence," said U.S...
...Combat training in Vieques, however, has been suspended since April, when errant Navy bombs killed a Puerto Rican guard...
...Drug warriors are livid about the departure of U.S...
...Navy to leave Vieques...
...Panama rejected the deal because the U.S...
...For many Panamanians, ending the enclave status of the canal area requires that the lands not be freighted with environmental risks...
...rguing that Panamanian police "are neither organized nor equipped to deal with incursions by Colombian insurgents into the Darien and San Blas Provinces," Southern Command chief General Charles Wilhelm said in June that the Southern Command would "intensify our engagement" with Panamanian police and has lobbied hard for increased military aid...
...In the last two years, however, the paramilitary groups known as the Peasant Self-Defense Units of C6rdoba and Urabi (ACCU), a subdivision of the United Self-Defense Units of Colombia (AUC) have pursued FARC units, sometimes threatening and killing local residents suspected of assisting the guerrillas...
...He just wants to see how much he can get out of it...
...The infrastructure of the military bases, valued by the World Bank at $4 billion, could serve to jumpstart such social programs and narrow the gap between rich and poor in Panama...
...Foreign Minister Jos6 Miguel Alemin has signaled that the new Panamanian government is open to a deal...
...control over the isthmus...
...The larger issue, which some say is the most important decision confronting the new government, is whether and how to build a third set of canal locks...
...Army operations in Latin America and the Caribbean...
...Failing to gather support even within the ruling Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD), Panama backed out of the deal after a premature announcement in December 1997...
...Congressional Republicans have heaped criticism on the Clinton Administration since September 1998, when negotiations for a continued U.S...
...I am deeply alarmed by the administration's disjointed and half-hearted response to the impending withdrawal of U.S...
...We want to maintain excellent relationships with the United States," he told the Dallas Morning News in August, "and help in any matter that the United States would consider in its national security interests...
...Barletta sees the country as one big cash register," says one ARI employee...
...conservatives are also playing the China card...
...Benjamin Gilman, chairman of the House International Relations Committee, during hearings in May...
...military to 80% of the capacity it had at Howard...
...Perhaps the most ambitious baseconversion project is the so-called City of Knowledge, a complex of university and private research institutions that will inhabit the former Army headquarters on Fort Clayton...
...troops from Panama...
...The effort to broker a military base agreement after the U.S formally withdraws is not unprecedented...
...burial sites of chemical weapons in Panama, and has formally declared that the United States did not abandon chemical weapons in other countries, in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC...
...While the China card may be a last-ditch effort to keep the canal and military bases in U.S...
...The incursions have displayed the inability of Panamanian police to control the border...
...His complaint however, must be taken alongside his 1995 statement, when he was chief of the Southern Command, that "there is no function currently being performed in Panama that we can not perform from somewhere else...
...But if these resources are not channeled into social investment it will simply be a way for the rich to get even richer...
...lands for social development is complicated by the government's neoliberal economic policies...
...Panama hopes to turn the largest of them, Howard Air Base, into a multimodal transportation center for air and maritime cargo...
...Today, the canal itself is efficiently run by a work force that is 94% Panamanian and that guides 38 ships through the waterway each day...
...military presence in Panama...
...On the Caribbean side of the isthmus, Spanish investors are putting $20 million into renovation of the abandoned buildings of the infamous School of the Americas...
...Beneath the discourse about counterdrug operations is anxiety about the war in Colombia and State Department document acknowledge that the FOLs would be used to monitor the Colombian insurgency...
...Citing the FARC's incursions and the Neutrality Treaty, Wilhelm asserted: "It is our responsibility under the Neutrality Treaty, and we know we have the obligation to intervene, in cooperation with the Panamanians or unilaterally if the conditions dictate, so we are directing contingency plans to that end...
...hands, it is also indicative of Washington's superpower anxieties and how they are likely to play themselves out in Panama...
...These Forward Operating Locations, or FOLs, would bring the U.S...
...A week before President Moscoso's inauguration, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott wrote a letter to Secretary of Defense William Cohen asserting that China is on the verge of taking over the canal...
...There is also the thorny question of the cleanup of the military bases, which the Canal Treaty requires the United States to undertake "insofar as may be practicable...
...Half a million tourists visit Panama every year, but the country hopes to attract ecotourists by taking advantage of the hundreds of species of tropical and migratory birds and three million acres of national parks...
...Moscoso says she supports and will seek funds for the project, pending studies of the additional fresh-water capacity needed to support the new locks...
...military overflights of Venezuelan territory has restricted the military's complete regional surveillance capacity...
...Other drug warriors blame the Clinton Administration...
...A serious hazard for both ecotourists and loggers are the thousands of unexploded mortars and grenades that litter three large former artillery ranges on the canal's west bank...
...naval ships will be at the mercy of Chinesecontrolled pilots," Lott wrote, "and could even be denied passage through the Panama Canal by the Hutchison, an arm of the [Chinese] People's Liberation Army...
...Moscoso's administration will also have to face the issue of the deteriorating ecology of the canal's watershed, an area that feeds the canal with fresh water...
...fulfillment of its responsibility to clean up dangers to human health and safety...
...control over the Panamanian isthmus...
...While the rate of deforestation is considerably less than a few years ago, urbanization and demographic pressures continue to bring displaced peasants with few resources into the watershed...
...It seems that Panamanian sociologist Ratil Leis is right when he suggests that, "the ghost of military bases will always surround us...
...Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey has said that P6rez Balladares deceived the United States and that the "loss" of Howard "has put us in a scramble...
...Washington has refused to release documents on suspected Drug warriors are livid about the departure of U.S...
...military presence, which had dragged on for three years, formally collapsed...
...military in the country...
...The legacy of unexploded munitions and other hazards left on the bases is a concern for Panamanians across the political spectrum...
...The watershed's deforestation increases sedimentation and decreases the storage capacity of the lakes that feed the canal with fresh water...
...At the same time, evidence emerged that the U.S...
...Spillover from the conflict in Colombia and mainland China's commercial investment in the canal area are both being touted as justifications for a continued U.S...
...Spillover from the Colombian conflict and Chinese investment in the canal area are being touted by U.S...
...When asked about how the territory their country is receiving should be used, Panamanian high school students speak eloquently about the need for schools and libraries, centers for tourists, and the preservation of the area's rich diversity of natural wildlife...
...One of the ways that Panama is seeking to gain revenue is through ecotourism...
...conservatives as justifications for a continued U.S...
...These workers are often used by loggers, further contributing to soil erosion and deforestation...
...Tourism projects range from a mountain-top radar site that has been converted into a small hotel for bird-watchers to the $300-million effort backed largely by Korean capital to turn Fort Amador on the canal's Pacific entrance into a hotel and casino complex, complete with monorail transportation...
...The CWC requires ratifying states to declare chemical weapons they have abandoned in other countries, and if the other country has also ratified the CWC, to remove and destroy the abandoned weapons...
...administrations to seek greater U.S...
...Some 21 Panamanians have already been killed in accidents from explosives found on the ranges...
...Both grassroots and elite opponents of the agreement criticized the "counterdrug center" as thinly disguised military bases that would violate the intent of the Canal Treaties, and they prompted Panama to restrict the agreement to three years for counterdrug missions only-a position that was unacceptable to Washington...
...negotiator Thomas McNamara...
...Now his job is to sell...
...At the same time, however, media reports conflating the identities of guerrilla and paramilitary groups have also served to bolster Washington's focus on the FARC as the primary source of the region's security troubles...
...Ambassador Thomas McNamara signaled a similar intention in July when he testified before the Senate about the failed base negotiations in Panama...
...Abandoned chemical weapons that were tested by the United States are also in dispute both in the canal area and on sites used by the United States for chemical tests during World War II, such as San Jos6 Island, now privately owned and slated for tourism development...
...troops from Panama, and blame former Panamanian President Ernesto P6rez Balladares...
...Despite a Canal Treaty obligation to remove all threats to human health and safety, Washington waited until 1998 to begin the site investigations and cleanup of more than 8,000 acres of range lands contaminated with explosives, even though similar cleanups in the United States have taken up to 15 years...
...There was a miscalculation, prevalent among the military, that the Panamanians would, in the end, accept a large U.S...
...Meanwhile, Puerto Rico is being turned into the hub of U.S...
...Despite these and other obstacles to a Panamanian-controlled canal, some Panamanians have hope that the new lands will provide possibilities for social change...
...The idea has been under discussion since the 1930s as a way to accommodate wider and heavier ships and keep pace with growing maritime commerce, but its $8 billion price tag has always led decision makers to defer the task...
...It happened in the Philippines in May, when, eight years after the country's Senate rejected a military-base agreement with the United States, the two countries ratified a military-access agreement...
...While the transfer of the canal and military bases by December 31 as mandated by the 1977 Torrijos-Carter Treaties is virtually unstoppable, the conservative claims are positioning future John Lindsay-Poland coordinates the Latin America program of the Fellowship of Reconciliation in San Francisco, California...
...Hutchison outbid U.S.-based Bechtel Corporation for the concession in a bidding process criticized by the State Department for its lack of transparency...
...I strongly recommend that both countries adopt a cooling-off period of several years," he said, "before addressing again the issue of whether Panama would agree to the presence of U.S...
...While newly elected President Mireya Moscoso has promised to suspend the privatization binge carried out by the previous government, she is unlikely to reverse the policy of turning most of the assets reverting to Panama from the United States over to the market...
...Special Forces have been relocated from Panama to Puerto Rico...
...It remains to be seen whether Washington will meet that commitment...
...Panamanians are eager to assume control of the canal and bases as a matter of both national pride and material development...
...In August, Panama's National Police found a canister which had contained sarin nerve gas, prompting the Panamanian government to invite the Convention's technical secretariat in the Hague to inspect suspected chemical sites...
...issues has become the thorniest issue in the transition process...
...Under Panama's Constitution the agreement had to be approved in a popular plebiscite...
...The Special Forces, which devote a third of their time in the region to the training of Latin American militaries, will also conduct their own training at several sites, including the island of Vieques...
...At issue are concerns about how to use the former canal zone in ways that ensure social equity...
...The appointment of Ricardo Martinelli as the new government's canal minister has further deepened fears of privatization...
...Hutchison, whose Latin American operations are managed from London, has invested $100 million in two ports on either side of the canal...
...The full exercise of Panama's sovereignty is thus intimately linked to U.S...
...military insisted on including missions unrelated to the drug war in the center's mandate...
...military presence in Panama...
...Panama argues that the United States should continue cleanup of the area even after the Canal Treaty expires on December 31...
...The base talks had focused on the use of Howard Air Base for what was a billed as a "counterdrug center...
Vol. 33 • November 1999 • No. 3
