Legacies of the US invasion of Panama

Although more than two decades have passed since the 1989 US invasion of Panama, its legacy lives on in profound ways that continue to shape this Latin American state's domestic and foreign policy.

Julio Yao

ON 20 December 1989, former president George HW Bush ordered the invasion of Panama. The US 82nd Airborne division pummelled Panama City from the air, as US soldiers from the 193rd Brigade clashed in the streets with troops from the Panamanian Defence Forces (PDF) and the Dignity Battalions, a militia of workers and campesinos (peasants). Thousands of civilians were caught in the crossfire as the heavily populated El Chorrillo neighbourhood was set ablaze. By the time General Manuel Noriega surrendered on 3 January 1990, 23 US soldiers and 314 PDF troops had been officially killed in the fighting.1 Civilian casualties were estimated in the thousands. According to an independent investigation by former US attorney general Ramsey Clark, as many as 7,000 people may have been killed.2 Mass graves were uncovered after US troops had withdrawn, and over 15,000 civilians were displaced.

Despite the civilian body count, no Panamanian government since has authorised a commission to investigate the killings that took place during the foreign military aggression. No administration has attempted to demand reparations from the United States, nor filed a lawsuit against the United States before the International Court of Justice at The Hague.

Over 22 years later, the US 'Christmas invasion' of Panama is being lost to memory, yet its legacy lives on in profound ways that continue to shape both domestic and foreign policy in Panama.

On the day of the invasion, shortly after US troops began to move, Guillermo Endara was sworn in as Panamanian president, along with his vice presidents, Guillermo Ford and Ricardo Arias Calder˘n, at Fort Clayton, a US military base in the Panama Canal Zone. In a telling sign of their political allegiance, few Panamanian citizens were present at the swearing-in, and Panama's new leaders remained at the base for 36 hours.3

Dismantling the PDF

Following the invasion, and in obedience to the invading forces, the new Endara government dismantled the PDF on 10 February 1990, replacing it with the unarmed National Police. The new government also dissolved the PDF's intelligence bodies and its personnel and eliminated the military character of the police force, allowing the Bush administration to appropriate the PDF's weapons, vehicles, and equipment. Panama's ability to defend itself was further prohibited when Panama's Legislative Assembly approved a constitutional amendment in 1994 that barred the creation of a standing military force.

The importance of these decisions can only be understood by taking into account the pre-invasion functions and responsibilities of the PDF - a police force composed of 16,000 troops, including 4,000 lightly-armed soldiers that lacked air, naval, and artillery capabilities. The PDF had a professional intelligence service, in addition to the National Department of Investigations (DENI). The intelligence service was charged with protecting national security and sovereignty, as well as other strategic and geopolitical tasks, including counterintelligence and spying.

Among other things, the PDF was responsible for ensuring that the United States adhered to treaties between the two countries, and containing US influence generated by the presence of 14 US military bases in Panama. It was tasked with monitoring and protecting national territory against interventions and aggressions, and regulating the movement of US troops. Finally, it supervised the state transfer of US-controlled Canal Zone areas to Panama, a process that began on 1 October 1979, as a result of the September 1977 treaties between US president Jimmy Carter and Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos, which set the timeline for the United States to return full sovereignty over the Panama Canal to Panama by 31 December 1999.

Apart from ensuring the United States' full respect for Panama's national sovereignty, the PDF carried out other strategic and geopolitical responsibilities, both nationally and internationally, which brought the defence force into contact with intelligence agencies in Cuba, Israel, the Soviet Union, Taiwan, and the United States. The PDF also maintained contact with national-liberation and insurgent movements, such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the 19th of April Movement (M-19), and the National Liberation Army (ELN) in Colombia, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in Nicaragua, the Farabundo Martˇ National Liberation Front (FMLN) in El Salvador, the Polisario Front in Morocco, and movements inside other nations including Libya.

Despite pressure from the US Southern Command -  which was based in Panama through 1997 and charged with military operations across the region - the PDF supported the 1983 decision to expel the School of the Americas from Panama. The PDF was responsible for fighting drug cartels, which were prohibited from bringing drugs into the country. In fact, before the invasion, drug addiction, drug trafficking, and gangs did not constitute a national problem in Panama as they do today. Moreover, the homicide rate averaged 2.1 murders per 100,000 people in the 1970s and early 1980s. By the 1990s, however, that number jumped to nearly 11 murders per 100,000 people and in 2011 was 20 murders per 100,000 people.4 Drug trafficking has also been on the rise. In 2009, Panama ranked the third highest in drug seizures behind Ecuador and Colombia, with over 58 tons of cocaine seized by police. That's up from almost six tons in 1994 and 13 tons in 1998.5

Four different administrations have been in power in Panama since the US invasion, and yet Panama still has no intelligence organisation. There is only a Security Council,which carries out illegal activities, including wiretapping, recording private conversations, making intimidating threats to protect the interests of foreign corporations, raising false charges against alleged enemies, and spying on the lives of private citizens.

Partial sovereignty

US interventions, military and otherwise, have been legalised by treaties that fail to meet constitutional requirements and international norms and principles, such as the Salas-Becker Agreement in 2002, which authorises free entry into national territory by land, water, and air; the Arias Cerjack-Watt Accord in 2003, which grants impunity to US war criminals; and the Escalona-Bolton Amendment in 2004, which allows the United States, along with two dozen other countries, to board Panamanian flagships on the open seas.

Currently, Panama has only partial sovereignty. The 1977 Neutrality Treaty, signed between Panama and the United States, prohibits any foreign military presence on Panamanian territory. Yet the treaty is not enforced because post-invasion governments have, without any formal agreement, allowed the United States to be responsible for the Canal's defence. Such is the case with the annual Panamax war-game manoeuvres that the US Southern Command coordinates with surrounding countries. In 2010, the manoeuvres were focused on a mock campesino-indigenous revolt (which ironically is almost precisely what is taking place with the Ng”be-Bugl‚ protests against mining and hydro projects on their indigenous reservation in western Panama). In 2011, 17 nations, including Canada, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, and Peru, participated in the military exercises in Panama.6

As uncovered by WikiLeaks, Panama has established more than a dozen air and naval bases with US financing and material support. In turn, however, the United States uses these bases to fight drug trafficking and the Colombian insurgency, further violating the Neutrality Treaty. Furthermore, there is increasing militarisation of Panama's police forces, including the National Border Service (SENAFRONT) and segments of the National Police, through arming police with heavy weapons like rocket launchers and training officers in interrogation, torture, and counterterrorism techniques at the School of the Americas. These measures violate Panama's constitution, which forbids the formation of a standing military.

Unlike in the past, a ceasefire policy no longer exists along Panama's southern border with Colombia's FARC guerrillas. In the past this respect ensured decades of peaceful coexistence between Panamanians and Colombians. However, encouraged by the United States, on 7 September 2010, Panamanian president Ricardo Martinelli declared war on the FARC. Panama has also raised police spending from $490 million in 2011 to an estimated $548 million this year, and has increasingly enrolled National Police personnel in the new School of the Americas, known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), in Fort Benning, Georgia, and in other military-training centres.

Crime and corruption

As a result of the PDF's disappearance and that of some of its national and international functions, drug consumption and trafficking in Panama is out of control. Gangs dependent on drug trafficking and international organised crime have proliferated. According to the government, about 238 gangs are operating in Panama, with more than 5,000 members.7 Gang activity has drastically increased the level of crime throughout the country, with 200 killed in 2009 alone as a result of gang violence.8 It is well known that all of the political parties that participated in the last election were financed by international organised crime.

Corruption existed during the governments of Torrijos (1972-81) and Noriega (1983-89), but it was limited. Now corruption has reached crisis proportions - even at the international level. This is largely a result of the Ricardo Martinelli government's elimination of all state controls and investigative mechanisms to prevent corruption. Since taking office in 2009, Martinelli has also limited the independence of state organisms and weakened the National Comptroller's Office and the National Environmental Authority, among other state offices, as part of a broader initiative to concentrate power in the executive, while dismantling Panama's democratic institutions.9

Martinelli's administration now controls every branch of Panama's government - executive, legislative, and judicial. In order to fix the upcoming 2014 presidential election, the only thing left to control is the Electoral Court, which Martinelli also appears to be working to bring under his control.

Foreign policy

Panama's tendency to submit to US policy has resulted in a foreign policy devoid of independence. For example, Panama is one of the few countries in the world that have not established diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China, though it maintains relations with Taiwan in accordance with 'chequebook diplomacy'. The US government has prohibited Panama's gestures toward diplomatic relations with Beijing.

Guided by this protectorate concept and right-wing policy, Martinelli's administration has offered its unconditional support to Israel and withdrawn all backing for Palestine. It has distanced Panama from the Central American process of regional integration, withdrawn from the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN), and increased ties with France and Italy's conservative former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who was blackmailed by Italian arms company Finmeccanica into brokering a corrupt bilateral security agreement with Panama in which Panama was overcharged for military hardware, including helicopters, radar, and mapping systems.10 It signed a free trade agreement with the United States and Canada, and has given natural resources to foreign corporations, especially mining companies, including Vancouver-based Bellhaven Copper and Gold, Ontario's Aur Resources, Toronto's Inmet Mining, and New York's Dominium Minerals Corporation.11 All of these actions are fully aligned with the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States.

This was, after all, the ultimate goal of the 1989 US invasion. At a meeting on 10 December 1985, four years before Bush ordered Operation Just Cause, then US national security adviser John Poindexter met with Noriega with several US demands: (1) Panama should allow the training of Nicaraguan Contras in the Canal Zone; (2) PDF troops should invade Nicaragua to justify US aggression toward Nicaragua's Sandinista government; (3) Panama should help dismantle the Contadora Group, a regional initiative to resolve the military conflicts that were  destabilising Central America; and (4) Panama should consent to continued US military presence in Panama.

Noriega rejected the demands and Poindexter warned him that he 'had better think of the consequences'.12 The rest is history. In retaliation, the United States refused to recognise the Noriega government and suspended its Canal treaties and the Combined Board, a US-Panama military arrangement for the defence of the Canal.13 The United States launched diplomatic, economic, commercial, and monetary blockades, and suspended payments of all foreign aid, including its annual payments for the Canal. The economic blockade prohibited money transfers from US individuals and companies to the Panamanian government, which faced increasing escalation of US military presence and aggression in Panama. Finally, after years of Panama's resistance to sanctions, punishments, and aggressions, the Bush administration launched the 1989 invasion.

The move destroyed Panamanian sovereignty and the PDF, dismantled security structures, reformed the political system, and returned power to the old oligarchy. This paved the way for new forms of foreign domination, and the Panamanian people continue to suffer its legacy.                                 

Julio Yao is President of the Peace and Justice Service in Panama (Serpaj-Panam ). He was a foreign policy adviser to Foreign Minister Juan Antonio Tack (1972-77) and general Omar Torrijos. He coordinates indigenous, campesino, and grassroots organisations in Panama.

     This article is reproduced from NACLA Report on the Americas (Spring 2012), which is published by the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA). It was translated for NACLA by Dennis Stinchcomb.

     NACLA Report on the Americas; Copyright 2012 by the North American Congress on Latin America, 38 Greene Street, New York, NY 10013, USA.

Endnotes

1.    Bruce Watson and Peter Tsouras, Operation Just Cause: The US Intervention in Panama (Westview Press, 1991).

2.    John Weeks and Phil Gunson, Panama: Made in the USA (Latin America Bureau, 1991), 6.

3.    Jill Smolowe, Ricardo Chavira, and John Moody, 'Panama's Would-Be President: Guillermo Endara', Time, 1 January 1990, available at time.com.

4.    World Bank, 'Panama Poverty Assessment: Priorities and Strategies for Poverty Reduction' (World Bank Publications, 2000), 21; Don Winner, 'Murder Rate in Panama Drops', Panama Guide, 5 January 2012.

5.    United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Conventions, World Drug Report 2000 (Oxford University Press, 2001); United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), World Drug Report 2011 (UNODC, 2011).

6.    Eric Jackson, 'PANAMAX 2011 War Games Set for August', The Panama News, available at thepanamanews.com.

7.    Kelyneth P‚rez, '225 pandillas operan en Panam ', TVN noticias, 5 March  2010, available at tvn-2.com.

8.    Activa (Ciudad Global), 'Panam  preocupado por el incremento de pandillas en el paˇs', available at ciudadglobal.cl.

9.    Juan Carlos Hidalgo, 'Panam : El alarmante autoritarismo de Ricardo Martinelli', La Naci˘n (San Jos‚), 8 February 2012.

10. Flor Mizrachi Angel, 'Panam , con sabor a Italia', prensa.com, 19 December 2011, available at prensa.com; John Hooper, 'Arms Company Finmeccanica Could Lose Two Executives Over Italy Bribery Claims', The Guardian (UK), 16 September 2011, available at guardian.co.uk.

11. Sistema de Informaci˘n para la gesti˘n comunitaria de Conflictos Socio-ambientales mineros en Latinoam‚rica, 'Conflictos mineros en Panam ' (webpage), available at olca.cl.

12. Clara Nieto, Masters of War: Latin American and US Aggression From the Cuban Revolution Through the Clinton Years (Seven Stories Press, 2003), 402.

13. US Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs, 'Panama Canal Treaty of 1977 and Neutrality Treaty' (webpage).

*Third World Resurgence No. 262, June 2012, pp 45-48