“I’m third generation in the Canal Zone,” he explained proudly. “My granddad came three years after it was created. He drove one of the mules, the tractors that hauled ships through the locks.” He pointed at the elderly man, who was preoccupied helping the children set the picnic table. “My dad was an engineer and I’ve followed in his footsteps.”
The woman had returned to helping her father-in-law and children. Beyond them, the sun dipped into the blue water. It was a scene of idyllic beauty, reminiscent of a Monet painting. I asked the man if they were U.S. citizens.
He looked at me incredulously. “Of course. The Canal Zone is U.S. territory.” The boy ran up to tell his father that dinner was ready.
“Will your son be the fourth generation?”
The man brought his hands together in a sign of prayer and raised them toward the sky.
“I pray to the good Lord every day that he may have that opportunity. Living in the Zone is a wonderful life.” Then he lowered his hands and stared directly at Fidel. “I just hope we can hold on to her for another fifty years. That despot Torrijos is making a lot of waves. A dangerous man.”
A sudden urge gripped me, and I said to him, in Spanish, “Adios. I hope you and your family have a good time here, and learn lots about Panama’s culture.”
He gave me a disgusted look. “I don’t speak their language,” he said. Then he turned abruptly and headed toward his family and the picnic.
Fidel stepped close to me, placed an arm around my shoulders, and squeezed tightly. “Thank you,” he said.
Back in the city, Fidel drove us through an area he described as a slum.
“Not our worst,” he said. “But you’ll get the flavor.”
Wooden shacks and ditches filled with standing water lined the street, the frail homes suggesting dilapidated boats scuttled in a cesspool. The smell of rot and sewage filled our car as children with distended bellies ran alongside. When we slowed, they congregated at my side, calling me uncle and begging for money. It reminded me of Jakarta.
Graffiti covered many of the walls. There were a few of the usual hearts with couples’ names scrawled inside, but most of the graffiti were slogans expressing hatred of the United States: “Go home, gringo,” “Stop shitting in our canal,” “Uncle Sam, slave master,” and “Tell Nixon that Panama is not Vietnam.” The one that chilled my heart the most, however, read, “Death for freedom is the way to Christ.” Scattered among these were posters of Omar Torrijos.
“Now the other side,” Fidel said. “I’ve got official papers and you’re a U.S. citizen, so we can go.” Beneath a magenta sky, he drove us into the Canal Zone. As prepared as I thought I was, it was not enough. I could hardly believe the opulence of the place—huge white buildings, manicured lawns, plush homes, golf courses, stores, and theaters.
“The facts,” he said. “Everything in here is U.S. property. All the businesses—the supermarkets, barbershops, beauty salons, restaurants, all of them—are exempt from Panamanian laws and taxes. There are seven 18-hole golf courses, U.S. post offices scattered conveniently around, U.S. courts of law and schools. It truly is a country within a country.”
“What an affront!”
Fidel peered at me as though making a quick assessment. “Yes,” he agreed. “That’s a pretty good word for it. Over there,” he pointed back toward the city, “income per capita is less than one thousand dollars a year, and unemployment rates are 30 percent. Of course, in the little shantytown we just visited, no one makes close to one thousand dollars, and hardly anyone has a job.”
“What’s being done?”
He turned and gave me a look that seemed to change from anger to sadness.
“What can we do?” He shook his head. “I don’t know, but I’ll say this: Torrijos is trying. I think it may be the death of him, but he sure as hell is giving it all he’s got. He’s a man who’ll go down fighting for his people.”
As we headed out of the Canal Zone, Fidel smiled. “You like to dance?” Without waiting for me to reply, he said, “Let’s get some dinner, and then I’ll show you yet another side of Panama.”
CHAPTER 12
Soldiers and Prostitutes
After a juicy steak and a cold beer, we left the restaurant and drove down a dark street. Fidel advised me never to walk in this area. “When you come here, take a cab right to the front door.” He pointed. “Just there, beyond the fence, is the Canal Zone.”
He drove on until we arrived at a vacant lot filled with cars. He found an empty spot and parked. An old man hobbled up to us. Fidel got out and patted him on the back. Then he ran his hand lovingly across the fender of his car.
“Take good care of her. She’s my lady.” He handed the man a bill.
We took a short footpath out of the parking lot and suddenly found ourselves on a street flooded with flashing neon lights. Two boys raced past, pointing sticks at each other and making the sounds of men shooting guns. One slammed into Fidel’s legs, his head reaching barely as high as Fidel’s thigh. The little boy stopped and stood back.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he gasped in Spanish.
Fidel placed both his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “No harm done, my man,” he said. “But tell me, what were you and your friend shooting at?”
The other boy came up to us. He placed his arm protectively around the first. “My brother,” he explained. “We’re sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Fidel chuckled gently. “He didn’t hurt me. I just asked him what you guys were shooting at. I think I used to play the same game.”
The brothers glanced at each other. The older one smiled. “He’s the gringo general at the Canal Zone. He tried to rape our mother and I’m sending him packing, back to where he belongs.”
Fidel stole a look at me. “Where does he belong?”
“At home, in the United States.”
“Does your mother work here?”
“Over there.” Both boys pointed proudly at a neon light down the street. “Bartender.”
“Go on then.” Fidel handed them each a coin. “But be careful. Stay in the lights.”
“Oh yes, sir. Thank you.” They raced off.
As we walked on, Fidel explained that Panamanian women were prohibited by law from prostitution. “They can tend bar and dance, but cannot sell their bodies. That’s left to the imports.”
We stepped inside the bar and were blasted with a popular American song. My eyes and ears took a moment to adjust. A couple of burly U.S. soldiers stood near the door; bands around their uniformed arms identified them as MPs.
Fidel led me along a bar, and then I saw the stage. Three young women were dancing there, entirely naked except for their heads. One wore a sailor’s cap, another a green beret, and the third a cowboy hat. They had spectacular figures and were laughing. They seemed to be playing a game with one another, as though dancing in a competition. The music, the way they danced, the stage—it could have been a disco in Boston, except that they were naked.
We pushed our way through a group of young English-speaking men. Although they wore T-shirts and blue jeans, their crew cuts gave them away as soldiers from the Canal Zone’s military base. Fidel tapped a waitress on the shoulder. She turned, let out a scream of delight, and threw her arms around him. The group of young men watched this intently, glancing at one another with disapproval. I wondered if they thought Manifest Destiny included this Panamanian woman. The waitress led us to a corner. From somewhere, she produced a small table and two chairs.
As we settled in, Fidel exchanged greetings in Spanish with two men at a table beside ours. Unlike the soldiers, they wore printed short-sleeved shirts and creased slacks. The waitress returned with a couple of Balboa beers, and Fidel patted her on the rump as she turned to leave. She smiled and threw him a kiss. I glanced around and was relieved to discover that the young men at the bar were no longer watching us; they were focused on the dancers.
The majority of the patrons were English-speaking soldiers, but t
here were others, like the two beside us, who obviously were Panamanians. They stood out because their hair would not have passed inspection, and because they did not wear T-shirts and jeans. A few of them sat at tables, others leaned against the walls. They seemed to be highly alert, like border collies guarding flocks of sheep.
Women roamed the tables. They moved constantly, sitting on laps, shouting to the waitresses, dancing, swirling, singing, taking turns on the stage. They wore tight skirts, T-shirts, jeans, clinging dresses, high heels. One was dressed in a Victorian gown and veil. Another wore only a bikini. It was obvious that only the most beautiful could survive here. I marveled at the numbers who made their way to Panama and wondered at the desperation that had driven them to this.
“All from other countries?” I shouted to Fidel above the music.
He nodded. “Except…” He pointed at the waitresses. “They’re Panamanian.”
“What countries?”
“Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala.”
“Neighbors.”
“Not entirely. Costa Rica and Colombia are our closest neighbors.”
The waitress who had led us to this table came and sat on Fidel’s knee. He gently rubbed her back.
“Clarissa,” he said, “please tell my North American friend why they left their countries.” He nodded his head in the direction of the stage. Three new girls were accepting the hats from the others, who jumped down and started dressing. The music switched to salsa, and as the newcomers danced, they shed their clothes to the rhythm.
Clarissa held out her right hand. “I’m pleased to meet you,” she said. Then she stood up and reached for our empty bottles. “In answer to Fidel’s question, these girls come here to escape brutality. I’ll bring a couple more Balboas.”
After she left, I turned to Fidel. “Come on,” I said. “They’re here for U.S. dollars.”
“True. But why so many from the countries where fascist dictators rule?”
I glanced back at the stage. The three of them were giggling and throwing the sailor’s cap around like a ball. I looked Fidel in the eye. “You’re not kidding, are you?”
“No,” he said seriously, “I wish I were. Most of these girls have lost their families—fathers, brothers, husbands, boyfriends. They grew up with torture and death. Dancing and prostitution don’t seem all that bad to them. They can make a lot of money here, then start fresh somewhere, buy a little shop, open a café—”
He was interrupted by a commotion near the bar. I saw a waitress swing her fist at one of the soldiers, who caught her hand and began to twist her wrist. She screamed and fell to her knee. He laughed and shouted to his buddies. They all laughed. She tried to hit him with her free hand. He twisted harder. Her face contorted with pain.
The MPs remained by the door, watching calmly. Fidel jumped to his feet and started toward the bar. One of the men at the table next to ours held out a hand to stop him. “Tranquilo, hermano,” he said. “Be calm, brother. Enrique has control.”
A tall, slim Panamanian came out of the shadows near the stage. He moved like a cat and was upon the soldier in an instant. One hand encircled the man’s throat while the other doused him in the face with a glass of water. The waitress slipped away. Several of the Panamanians who had been lounging against the walls formed a protective semicircle around the tall bouncer. He lifted the soldier against the bar and said something I couldn’t hear. Then he raised his voice and spoke slowly in English, loudly enough for everyone in the still room to hear over the music.
“The waitresses are off-limits to you guys, and you don’t touch the others until after you pay them.”
The two MPs finally swung into action. They approached the cluster of Panamanians. “We’ll take it from here, Enrique,” they said.
The bouncer lowered the soldier to the floor and gave his neck a final squeeze, forcing the other’s head back and eliciting a cry of pain.
“Do you understand me?” There was a feeble groan. “Good.” He pushed the soldier at the two MPs. “Get him out of here.”
CHAPTER 13
Conversations with the General
The invitation was completely unexpected. One morning during that same 1972 visit, I was sitting in an office I had been given at the Instituto de Recursos Hidraulicos y Electrificación, Panama’s government-owned electric utility company. I was poring over a sheet of statistics when a man knocked gently on the frame of my open door. I invited him in, pleased with any excuse to take my attention off the numbers. He announced himself as the general’s chauffeur and said he had come to take me to one of the general’s bungalows.
An hour later, I was sitting across the table from General Omar Torrijos. He was dressed casually, in typical Panamanian style: khaki slacks and a short-sleeved shirt buttoned down the front, light blue with a delicate green pattern. He was tall, fit, and handsome. He seemed amazingly relaxed for a man with his responsibilities. A lock of dark hair fell over his prominent forehead.
He asked about my recent travels to Indonesia, Guatemala, and Iran. The three countries fascinated him, but he seemed especially intrigued with Iran’s king, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The shah had come to power in 1941, after the British and Soviets overthrew his father, whom they accused of collaborating with Hitler.1
“Can you imagine,” Torrijos asked, “being part of a plot to dethrone your own father?”
Panama’s head of state knew a good deal about the history of this far-off land. We talked about how the tables were turned on the shah in 1951, and how his own premier, Mohammad Mossadegh, forced him into exile. Torrijos knew, as did most of the world, that it had been the CIA that labeled the premier a Communist and that stepped in to restore the shah to power. However, he did not know—or at least did not mention—the parts Claudine had shared with me, about Kermit Roosevelt’s brilliant maneuvers and the fact that this had been the beginning of a new era in imperialism, the match that had ignited the global empire conflagration.
“After the shah was reinstated,” Torrijos continued, “he launched a series of revolutionary programs aimed at developing the industrial sector and bringing Iran into the modern era.”
I asked him how he happened to know so much about Iran.
“I make it my point,” he said. “I don’t think too highly of the shah’s politics—his willingness to overthrow his own father and become a CIA puppet—but it looks as though he’s doing good things for his country. Perhaps I can learn something from him. If he survives.”
“You think he won’t?”
“He has powerful enemies.”
“And some of the world’s best bodyguards.”
Torrijos gave me a sardonic look. “His secret police, SAVAK, have the reputation of being ruthless thugs. That doesn’t win many friends. He won’t last much longer.” He paused, then rolled his eyes. “Bodyguards? I have a few myself.” He waved at the door. “You think they’ll save my life if your country decides to get rid of me?”
I asked whether he truly saw that as a possibility.
He raised his eyebrows in a manner that made me feel foolish for asking such a question. “We have the Canal. That’s a lot bigger than Arbenz and United Fruit.”
I had researched Guatemala, and I understood Torrijos’s meaning. United Fruit Company had been that country’s political equivalent of Panama’s canal. Founded in the late 1800s, United Fruit soon grew into one of the most powerful forces in Central America. During the early 1950s, reform candidate Jacobo Arbenz was elected president of Guatemala in an election hailed all over the hemisphere as a model of the democratic process. At the time, less than 3 percent of Guatemalans owned 70 percent of the land. Arbenz promised to help the poor dig their way out of starvation, and after his election he implemented a comprehensive land reform program.
“The poor and middle classes throughout Latin America applauded Arbenz,” Torrijos said. “Personally, he was one of my heroes. But we also held our breath. We knew that United Fruit opposed
these measures, since they were one of the largest and most oppressive landholders in Guatemala. They also owned big plantations in Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Santo Domingo, and here in Panama. They couldn’t afford to let Arbenz give the rest of us ideas.”
I knew the rest: United Fruit had launched a major public relations campaign in the United States, aimed at convincing the American public and congress that Arbenz was part of a Russian plot and that Guatemala was a Soviet satellite. In 1954, the CIA orchestrated a coup. American pilots bombed Guatemala City and the democratically elected Arbenz was overthrown, replaced by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, a ruthless right-wing dictator.
The new government owed everything to United Fruit. By way of thanks, the government reversed the land reform process, abolished taxes on the interest and dividends paid to foreign investors, eliminated the secret ballot, and jailed thousands of its critics. Anyone who dared to speak out against Castillo was persecuted. Historians trace the violence and terrorism that plagued Guatemala for most of the rest of the century to the not-so-secret alliance between United Fruit, the CIA, and the Guatemalan army under its colonel dictator.2
“Arbenz was assassinated,” Torrijos continued. “Political and character assassination.” He paused and frowned. “How could your people swallow that CIA rubbish? I won’t go so easily. The military here are my people. Political assassination won’t do.” He smiled.
“The CIA itself will have to kill me!”
We sat in silence for a few moments, each lost in his own thoughts. Torrijos was the first to speak.
“Do you know who owns United Fruit?” he asked.
“Zapata Oil, George Bush’s company—our UN ambassador.” I said.
“A man with ambitions.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “And now I’m up against his cronies at Bechtel.”
This startled me. Bechtel was the world’s most powerful engineering firm and a frequent collaborator on projects with MAIN. In the case of Panama’s master plan, I had assumed that they were one of our major competitors.