As we try to figure out an exit strategy for Afghanistan and Iraq, we could use what we learned in suffocating Panama with our domestic geopolitical hang-ups. No country wants to have a foreign-run enclave within its borders; that's just human nature, not the march of communism. So when Panamanians wanted to run the canal, U.S. conservatives felt it was a communist conspiracy. In the same way, anti-communist fervor brought Ronald Reagan to power, opposing giving the canal back to the Panamanians became his cause celebre.
John Freivalds writes: As we try to figure out an exit strategy for Afghanistan and Iraq, we could use what we learned in suffocating Panama with our domestic geopolitical hang-ups
Panama: Gonna get along without ya now
Recollections of Manuel Noriega and me.
BY JOHN FREIVALDS FOR THE TH
I recently returned from one of my many trips to Panama, where I served in the Peace Corps 40-some years ago. The Panamanians are metaphorically singing the lyrics of the oldies song: "I got along without ya before I met ya, gonna get along without ya now."
America invented Panama by cutting it off from Colombia, finished building a canal that the French started, ran it and the Canal Zone as a colony for half a century, signed the canal off to Panama, helped finance a corrupt dictatorship for 20 years in the hopes it would do its bidding and overthrew the dictatorship, killing thousands of innocent civilians (collateral damage) when it felt it wasn't. Panama now is charting its own future without U.S. interference.
It didn't help in those days that the Americans who went to work in the Canal Zone (zonis) were actually proud they didn't learn Spanish or care what was going on in the country. The New York Times referred to the Canal Zone as "nightmare vision of America itself." As Peace Corps volunteers, we were forbidden to go into the Zone.
As we try to figure out an exit strategy for Afghanistan and Iraq, we could use what we learned in suffocating Panama
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with our domestic geopolitical hang-ups. No country wants to have a foreign-run enclave within its borders; that's just human nature, not the march of communism. So when Panamanians wanted to run the canal, U.S. conservatives felt it was a communist conspiracy. In the same way, anti-communist fervor brought Ronald Reagan to power, opposing giving the canal back to the Panamanians became his cause celebre.
But what presidents Ford and Carter, who signed the treaties, understood was that the canal had outlived its strategic value. The canal only carries 4 percent of world trade and could not be defended. Sabotage was indefensible. Graffiti on walls say, Haga Patria Mate a un Gringo, meaning, "Be a patriot, kill an American." And the issue worldwide became how the U.S. as a superpower would treat a small and relatively defenseless nation.
Worse than the debate over canal treaties was the incoherent policy we had toward Manuel Noriega and the military junta that overthrew the democratically elected president. Noriega, who eventually ended up running the country, was paid by the CIA through three presidencies (Carter, Reagan and Bush) because he was perceived to be anti-communist. That was the driving force of U.S. foreign policy then -- like being anti-terrorist is now.
I developed a "personal relationship" with Noriega, as he had me arrested as an "insurgent" in 1968. He was sent into the mountains where my wife and I were working to root out insurgents against the military coup. He found two Americans working in the middle of nowhere, so we just had to be training guerrillas. We were led away. I then realized you don't argue with a man wearing four hand grenades on his chest. The junta-run newspaper headline said, "Peace Corps conspires against the junta."
We spent some time in jail but eventually got released -- with the help of the CIA and eventually with an apology from Noriega.
The Panamanians have shown they can manage the canal and are expanding it to be able to handle larger ships. And the Canal Zone? The zonis are gone and the land is being used for high-tech industrial parks. The Peace Corps headquarters in Panama today is smack dab in the middle of the former Canal Zone in a tech park Ciudad del Saber -- City of Knowledge.
Freivalds, of Dubuque, is managing director of JFA Marketing, an international communications firm. His e-mail address is john@jfamarketing.com.
