There was something oddly casual about the Dec. 15
ceremony in which the United States symbolically surrendered
the Panama Canal and former U.S. military bases to the
government of Panama. Organizers of the activity had moved
it up two weeks from the date the Canal's ownership legally
passes into Panamanian hands, so the act wouldn't conflict
with New Year's Eve partying.
It was a great historical moment. The last of the U.S.
troops who have occupied this country for most of its
history were departing. The national territory was unified
for the first time and Panama was at long last achieving
independence and sovereignty. Yet the ceremony seemed
sterile and somehow embarrassed.
"It's yours," was all former U.S. President Jimmy Carter
said, as he handed a document to Panamanian President MireyaMoscoso.
It is not hard to understand why it happened this way. For
one thing, the ceremony took place in the shadow of the 10th
anniversary of the murderous U.S. invasion of Panama,
launched on the night of Dec. 19, 1989. Since then, neither
the Pentagon nor the U.S. right wing has ever stopped
repeating that it reserves the "right" to intervene wheneverit chooses.
On June 22, for example, in testimony before the U.S.
Senate, Gen. Charles Wilhelm, Commander in Chief of the U.S.
Southern Command, repeated the Pentagon's readiness to
invade Panama once again. He made this statement in
reference to the supposed threat to the canal's security.
Even as U.S. troops were leaving the territory--previously
off-limits to Panamanians in the heart of their country--
Panamanians faced residual violence in the form of live
explosives and other weapons the United States is leaving
behind. Washington refuses to clean up.
Panama was a staging area for U.S. military actions
against other Latin American nations and the former home of
the terror institute, the School of the Americas. Also, like
Vieques in Puerto Rico, Panama was used for target practice
and weapons experimentation.
U.S. LEGACY OF MURDER
Thousands of rounds of live bombs and other explosives lie
buried, waiting to be accidentally detonated by farmer orchild.
In March, Cleotilde C rdenas, a justice of the peace from
a small town adjacent to one of the firing ranges, told John
Lindsay-Poland of the Fellowship of Reconciliation about
four Panamanians killed during the last eight years.
Two of these were children aged 9 and 6. They had found an
explosive device, which they accidentally set off. The
children were blown to bits.
Lindsay-Poland has uncovered in U.S. military documents
evidence of the extensive testing in Panama of chemical and
biological weapons such as VX land mines and mustard gas.
Even though obligated by treaties to clear all hazards from
the area, the Pentagon has refused, saying it was"impractical."
Also missing from the ceremony were the people who
struggled to make this transfer possible. These include
generations of Panamanian patriots, students, workers--women
and men who fought the continued presence of U.S. soldiers
who lived on a 10-mile-wide strip of land flanking the canal
and cutting Panama in two.
PANAMA'S NATURAL RESOURCES
It is not the canal, however, but Panama's geographical
position and its shape that are its most precious natural
resources. These resources can be used as a nation with oil
or mineral resources might hope to use its natural wealth to
bring prosperity to its native inhabitants.
Before the canal was built, the United States exploited
Panama's geographical resource by building a railroad across
the isthmus in the 1840s, greatly accelerating its "manifest destiny."
This was during a period in which U.S. politicians were
promoting westward expansion, in part to defend the system
of slavery. The U.S. government was also in the process of
stealing millions of square miles of the North American
continent from its native inhabitants and from Mexico.
At the end of Panama's War of 1,000 Days to free itself
from Colombia, the United States seized the opportunity to
rush in as Panama's unwanted "savior." This was only a few
years after the United States had declared war on Spain,
seizing Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines after patriots
there had fought bitter wars for their independence.
Construction of the canal began almost immediately. But
who really built the canal? Thousands of workers, many of
whose descendents continue to live in crushing poverty in
the most oppressed neighborhoods of Panama City and Colon.
After the canal was built and was being used at great
profit by U.S. companies to ship goods from the East Coast
to the West Coast of North and South America and Asia, the
United States intervened frequently in the internal affairs
of Panama. Once, in 1925, U.S. soldiers were called in to
help suppress a rent strike in Panama City.
After World War II, the hatred and resentment of the U.S.
military occupation and the apartheid-like system existing
between the U.S. "Zonians" and the native Panamanian workers
mounted. It reached a climax in 1964, when 28 students were
shot to death during a rebellion over the right to raise the
national flag of Panama. The mass struggle of the Panamanian people finally
forced the U.S. government to begin serious negotiations on the ownership of
the canal.
TORRIJOS AND THE TREATIES
In 1968 Omar Torrijos led a progressive nationalist
military government to power in Panama, displacing the
white-racist oligarchy. The Torrijos government brought
Panamanian Black and Indigenous people into the national
life of the country for the first time. His government also
supported the Sandinista insurgency, then growing in strength in Nicaragua.
The Torrijos-Carter treaties, under which Washington
ultimately conceded ownership of the canal and the zone
surrounding it, were signed in 1977. That was just two years
after the heroic people of Vietnam defeated U.S. imperialism
and two years before the Nicaraguan people toppled the U.S.-
backed Somoza dictatorship.
The masses in El Salvador and Guatemala were also fighting
wars of armed resistance to U.S.-supported tyrants. This was
the context in which the United States reluctantly signed
the treaties, and only after onerous conditions and
qualifications were added unilaterally by the U.S. Senate.
Freight traffic through the Panama Canal continues to
increase yearly. It has great importance in world commerce.
There can be no doubt of the importance the Pentagon
attaches to the canal. As mass movements weaken U.S.
imperialism's grip in Colombia and Venezuela--both oil-
producing nations and Panama's two biggest neighbors--Panama
will continue in the shadow of U.S. military calculations.
- END -
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