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Report From Panama A Canal Runs Through It Will The U.s. Give It Back?

Report From Panama A Canal Runs Through It Will The U.s. Give It Back? image
Parent Issue
Month
April
Year
1995
Copyright
Creative Commons (Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-alike)
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Agenda Publications
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I find it a bit ironic that the GOP is trying to sell this bill of goods to Panamanians. But economic dependency which is considered unhealthy at home is freely exported. Kind of like chlorodane and DDT.

People have expected something like this for a long time. But it was still unsettling when Oliver Garza, the U.S. embassy's charge d'affaires in Panama City, said that the U.S. has a "strategic necessity" for military bases here after the end of 1999, when a 1977 treaty says they must go.

Of course, Jesse Helms, George Bush, Ronald Reagan, et al have been saying this for a long time. But this is the first time that the Clinton administration has said anything of this sort in public. Surely it was no more than a footnote in U.S. mainstream news, but it was, and is, a big deal down here. It set the stage for all sorts of political posturing.

Guillermo Endara, the ex-president whose nomination was arranged by the U.S. embassy and whose disastrous term began when he was sworn in by U.S. troops at Fort Clayton during the 1989 invasion, now says that Garza's statement proves that his successor is an American puppet. Roberto Eisenmann, who came back from Miami to a U.S.- staged imitation her's reception right after the invasion and re-opened his La Prensa newspaper with the Miami Herald's support, now says he's against a bases treaty.

But President Ernesto "Toro" Perez Balladares isn't saying much. His foreign minister says that the government is always ready to talk to the gringos about anything. but there has been no official U.S. request for negotiations over a bases treaty, so Panama's government insists.

But at the bases, they are making maintenance and financial plans that go beyond the year 2000. They're allowing military personnel to come down here with dependents, something quite unusual for a base that's schedules to close so soon. They're investing a lot of money in improvements to bases that are supposed to be abandones within less than five years. But for the record, the United States Armed Forces Southern Command is committed to leaving on schedule. And it might not be a lie. Military planners are always preparing for the remotest possibilities.

A lot of panamanians want the bases to stay. They don't have confidence that the government can make good use of the assets that are supposed to be turned over. They think that the country can't get along without the 3,000 or so Panamanian jobs on the bases and the high rents that troops pay to Panama City landlords. They want a piece of any rent that the gringos may pay for the bases in the next millennium.

But if Toro is to agree to any such deal, his party will be destroyed. His fellow Democratic Revolutionary Party member Balbina Herrera, president of the nation's legislature, was repeatedly arrested and harassed by U.S troops after the invasion, and she'd lead party revolt in the legislature if the president. tried to pass a bases treaty. But maybe there could be enough votes to put the question on the ballot, where U.S. campaign slush funds would come into play.

Such an eventuality would finally make a Panamanian voter out of me. Soy pañameno, también. I know all too well what a disaster it has always been when Panama has look to the north for salvation. What I've seen with my own eyes was horrible enough, but Chase, the messenger who fetched the ink cartridge for the computer on which I'm writing at this moment, is from El Chorrillo. He tells me about how so many of his neighbors were incinerated, how their bones and ashes were scraped up and dumped in the bay. These are the true wages of the dependent mentality, what you get when you count on foreign invaders to rid your country of an obnoxious dictator.

I find it a bit ironic that the GOP is trying to sell this bill of goods to Panamanians. There is a large Panamanian community in New York City, and I'm sure that Helms and Gingrich see those of its members who look to the U.S. government for money as the most despicable of welfare bums. But economic dependency which is considered unhealthy at home is freely exported. Kind of like chlorodane and DDT.

But maybe it won't come to that. Does Clinton really prefer to keep Panamanian civilians on the Defense Department payroll when people who can vote for him are getting laid off?? When his underling throws the "s-word" around, can Clinton coherently say what the strategy is, for what purpose? After victorious military actions against Panama and the old Medellin Cartel failed to affect the cocaine flow, can he credibly say that the U.S. needs military bases in order to win the War on Drugs?

I think that Clinton will move to prolong Panama's occupation if the Republicans press him to do so and people like you say nothing about it. So speaking as Panamanian citizen number 3-721-1318 more than as an old gringo hippie, I'm asking for your help. Call the White House and demand an end to this slide toward infamy. And I'll tell Toro the same thing, just in case Clinton won't listen to you.

Support indigenous land claims

On separate but spiritually related subject, I must mention my recent journalistic venture to the Ngobe-Bugle General Congress. It was sort of a big town meeting of Panama's most populous indigenous nation.

It's a hungry nation, divided into three little Western Panama enclaves by people who stole and are continuing to steal their land, water and mineral resources. In the district where the congress was held, more than three quarters of all elementary school kids drop out of school. Malnutrition is the norm. And a multinational copper mining consortium wants to strip mine land which the Ngobe claim as their own.

The congress elected some talented new leaders, including a president names Marcelino Montezuma, to lead them in the struggle to win a unified Comarca (commonwealth) out of large parts of three Panamanian provinces. Down here every progressive person, every environmentalist, anyone with knowledge and a decent heart, is plugging for these people.

The congress has this sophisticated journalist, Mitzity Tugri, who used to work for a Mexican press agency, as its press secretary. But the equipment that she and her nation own consist of two manual typewriters. Not that they don't have several people who can use a Macintosh, but their knowledge and determination are greater than their resources.

Got an old Mac that you're about to trade up? Got a fax machine to spare? Got some spare change?  You can put these resources to good use by donating them to the Ngobe-Bugle General Congress. They're up against a powerful corporate propaganda machine which is buying full-page multicolor newspaper ads telling people how their strip mine will make Panama rich without affecting the environment. They're up against a computerized oligarchy used to taking the best indigenous land for their ranches and coffee plantations and mountain retreats. They're fighting for what's rightfully theirs with little more than their malnourished bodies. There aren't too many better causes that you could support.

If you can speak Spanish (or Ngobe), call Mitzity Tugri at 011-507-74-3664 to arrange the details of your donation. You can reach her by mail at Apartado 1051, David, Chiriqui, Panama. If you can only communicated in English, contact me at work phone 001-507-69-1456, or by mail at Apartado 815 Balboa, Ancon, Panama, and I'll make the connection with Ms. Tugri for you. Thanks for whatever help you can offer.

Eric Jackson, an Associate Editor of Agenda, filed this report from Panama, where he has been living since February, 1994.

 

 

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