Page 302 - The Rough Guide to Panama (Travel Guide)

300 CONTEXTS History
Canal’s neutrality was threatened. Under pressure from Washington to democratize,
Torrijos formed a political party, the Partido Revolucionario Democrático (PRD), and
began moving Panama towards free democratic elections. In 1981, however, he died in
a plane crash, which was rumoured to have been plotted by the CIA or Colonel Manuel
Noriega, Torrijos’ former military intelligence chief.

Manuel Noriega and the US invasion
After a period of political uncertainty, Noriega took over as head of the National
Guard, which he restructured as a personal power base and renamed the Fuerzas de
Defensa de Panamá (Panama Defence Forces or PDF), becoming the de facto military
ruler in 1983. Although the 1984 elections gave Panama its first directly elected leader
in nearly two decades, Nicolás Ardito Barletta, the real power lay in the hands of
Noriega, backed by the US government.
A career soldier, Panama’s new military strongman had been on the US Army’s payroll
as early as the 1950s and the CIA’s from the late 1960s, before becoming chief of
intelligence for the National Guard in 1970. In the early 1980s, Noriega assisted the
US by supporting its interests elsewhere in Central America, especially Nicaragua.
Whereas Torrijos had supported the leftist Sandinistas in Nicaragua’s civil war, Noriega
allegedly provided covert US military support for the Contras, helping to funnel
money and weapons to the guerrilla force – a charge he denies. At the same time,
Noriega was busy building relations with the Colombian cocaine cartels in Medellín.
Although this extracurricular activity was ignored by the US for years, in 1986 the
Iran-Contra Affair – in which the US government sold weapons illicitly to Iran and used
the proceeds to fund the Contras – brought an unwelcome glare of publicity on the
cosy arrangement between Noriega and the CIA. Deciding it was politically expedient
to drive Noriega from power, the US government began economic sanctions in 1987,
followed by Noriega’s indictment on drug charges in the US in February 1988.
On December 20, 1989, US president George H.W. Bush launched the ironically
named “Operation Just Cause”, and 27,000 US troops invaded Panama. They quickly
overcame the minimal organized resistance offered by the PDF. Bombers, helicopter
gunships and even untested stealth aircraft were used against an enemy with no air
defences, and hundreds of explosions were recorded in the first twelve hours. The poor
Panama City barrio of El Chorrillo was heavily bombed and burned to the ground,
leaving some fifteen thousand people homeless; a Human Rights Watch report noted
that civilian deaths were more than four times higher than military casualties among
the PDF. Noriega himself evaded capture and took refuge in the papal nunciature,
before being forced to surrender on January 5 after a round-the-clock diet of
ear-splitting heavy metal and rock music blasted from the car park. He was taken
to the US, convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to forty years in a Miami jail.
Estimates of the number of Panamanians killed during the invasion vary from several
hundred to as many as ten thousand. That the invasion was illegal, however, was clear: it was
condemned as a violation of international law by the United Nations and the Organization
of American States, both of which demanded the immediate withdrawal of US forces.
Despite most Panamanians being relieved to see the back of Noriega, they were outraged at
the excessive use of force and America’s blatant disregard for Panamanian sovereignty.

1989 1992 1999
US troops invade Panama and oust US court finds Noriega guilty Mireya Moscoso, widow of Arnulfo
Noriega, but also kill and leave of drug charges, sentencing Arias, becomes the country’s first female
homeless thousands of civilians. him to forty years in prison. president, and presides over the handover
of the Canal to Panama in December.

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