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Latin America Views the U.S. Post-Panama
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18013 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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5 / 1990 |
1,695 Words |
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Mark Holston
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The tracer bullets that raced from U.S. Army helicopters toward the Panama City headquarters of Manuel Noriega on December 20, 1989, signaled much more than just the beginning of the end for the Panamanian dictator.
They graphically illuminated the basic concern that many Latin Americans have harbored about the United States since U. S. Gunboats steamed around the Caribbean in the early days of this century, enforcing the will of the United States with battalions of Marines.
Operation Just Cause was the largest deployment of U.S. combat forces in a "police" action in Latin America since 25,000 American troops occupied the Dominican Republic in 1965. When Latin American leaders, intellectuals, and journalists awoke to find that the long-hinted U.S. action to topple Noriega had actually taken place, charges of "Yankee imperialism" exploded northward.
"Massacre at the Canal” screamed a massive headline in Rio de Janeiro's daily newspaper Tribuna de Imprensa. Bogotá's El Espectador decried "the most shameless of interventions" and criticized "the invincible blindness of the U.S. leaders, and Mexican author Carlos Fuentes, writing in the Mexico City daily Excelsior, asked, "Is Teddy Roosevelt still in Power? Are the Big Stick, dollar diplomacy, and Manifest Destiny still viable policies?"
The Big Stick, whether wielded by Teddy Roosevelt or George Bush, is the most-loathed symbol of U.S. supremacy in the Western Hemisphere. Yet, what was unique about the Panamanian situation was the open-and-shut case against Noriega. "I think Latin Americans understood quite clearly that Noriega was the embodiment of about as evil a man as one can be," the Brookings Institution's Robert Kurz said. He added that while the immediate critical response was predictable, "the depth and strength of it was mitigated by Noriega's own tendency to torture and murder and do drugs."
"The presence of U. S. troops in an evil, but a necessary and wished-for evil that not only contributed to the overthrow of an opera bouffe dictator but also struck a hard blow against international drug trafficking" is how Guatemala City's daily El Grafico summed it up. That kind of guarded endorsement from conservative publications is about as close to a public blessing as the United States would receive in Latin America following the military intervention. Yet, within just a few weeks, no less an outspoken critic than Peru's leftist president, Alan Garcia, reversed his decision not to meet with George Bush at the Cartagena drug summit and was seen arm-in-arm with the architect of the Panama policy, all smiles and firm handshakes and ready to move on to more pressing business.
The OAS Defers
The Panamanian electorial crises of the spring of 1989 presented the Organization of American States (OAS) with a sterling opportunity to gain new hemispheric respectability. Most objective observers agreed that Noriega had stolen the presidential election and that his hand picked candidate had gained office through virtue of bullying tactics and massive fraud. If the OAS could persuade the dictator to accept any kind of arrangement that would pave the way for restoration of true representative democracy in Panama, everyone would gain.
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