(The following article appeared in the March 4 issue of Inprecor, a fortnightly news bulletin published by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. We have rectified some errors that slipped into Inprecor's English translation of the original Spanish text.]
Established in 1903 as the result of armed intervention by the United States, the Republic of Panama is more dependent on imperialism than any other country in Latin America, if not in the entire world.
Historically, the fate of Panama has always been tied to the existence of the canal, since the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty. This treaty, which authorized the United States to construct the canal and control the Canal Zone, was signed fifteen days after Panama's secession from Colombia.
Today, the entire economic activity of the country is bound up with the canal. In fact, of the nearly two million people who inhabit the country's 75,650 square kilometers, half live in the vicinity of the canal. Eighty percent of the country's trade and 70 percent of its industry are also located in that area.
Per capita, U.S. investment in Latin America is highest in Panama—$93, while the average for the continent is $50. This figure does not include investment in the Canal Zone, which, if added in, would bring per capita investment to $5,680.
Although Panama has experienced the greatest economic growth of any Latin American country during the past ten years-8 percent per year-this growth actually conceals increasing dependence, as shown by, among other things, the fact that the public debt has reached $1 billion. Taking into account private debt, the national debt approaches $1.5 billion. For a country whose gross national product is $1 billion, this situation is extremely grave.
Imperialist Military Presence
Since its establishment, Panama has played a decisive role in imperialist strategy throughout the Latin American continent. In the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty, signed December 18, 1903, Panama ceded to the United States "in perpetuity" a tenmile-wide strip for the maintenance, functioning, preservation, and protection of the canal. The United States rapidly moved to use the Canal Zone for other purposes, and to control not only the canal but also the country itself. There have been many North American interventions into the political life of the country, particularly armed interventions-1921, 1925, 1958, 1959, and 1964. But the American presence in the Canal Zone not only allows the United States to control the country economically and militarily. It also allows Washington to exercise close surveillance over the entire Latin American continent.
The troops that collaborated in the overthrow of various governments in Central America left from Panama. The "special forces" who collaborated with the Bolivian army in destroying Che Guevara's guerrillas in 1967 and who fomented the coup in Chile in 1973 left from Panama.
For all these activities, the United States has stationed more than 15,000 soldiers (and 30,000 "civilians") in the territory it controls. They are spread among the fourteen military bases that surround the canal.
In fact, 70 percent of the territory controlled by Americans is taken up with military bases. Since they established themselves in the Canal Zone, the Yankees have invested more than $5 billion for military purposes.
It is in the Canal Zone that we find, among other things, the United States Army School of the Americas (USARSA), better known as the School of the Americas. As of 1973, this "school" at Fort Gulick had trained a total of 29,328 soldiers for Latin American armies.
In 1973 more than 170 graduates of the School of the Americas were heads of state, ministers, generals, or chiefs of the secret services in their respective countries.
The school is divided into four departments: Command Department (which trains military commanders and chiefs of staff), Operations Department (civic action, counterinsurgency, jungle warfare), Logistics Department (intelligence, military police, medical aid, and supplies), and Technical Department. Pinochet, Leigh, and company, among others, were trained at this school.!
Fort Gulick is also headquarters for more than 1,000 members of the Eighth Special Action Forces, better known as the Green Berets.
Also located in the Canal Zone, at Quarry Heights, is the headquarters of the United States Southern Command (Southcom), which is charged with coordinating all military and secret service activity in Latin America, as well as with supervising all North American military aid programs in the area. The Inter-American Air Force Academy, established in 1943, is located at Albrook Air Base; the U.S. Army Jungle Warfare School, at Fort Sherman; and the Cartographic School of the Inter-American Geodetic Survey (LAGS), which trains specialists in cartography, who are useful in counterinsurgency, at Fort Clayton.
These are only a few examples of what the American presence on Panamanian territory means for the United States, from the military standpoint.
Renegotiation of Dependence
The problem of the canal has been decisive throughout the history of relations between the United States and Panama. The various bourgeois governments that have successively held power in Panama since 1903 have always utilized the struggle for Panamanian sovereignty over the Canal Zone as a means of maintaining their leadership of the country. Thus, the revisions of the 1903 treaty made by the Arias-Roosevelt Treaty (1936) and the Remon-Eisenhower Treaty (1955) represented nothing but means by which the Panamanian ruling classes diverted attention from the exploitation suffered by the working classes of the country and obtained from imperialism a greater share in the exploitation of the canal. The only beneficiaries were the ruling classes of both countries.
The events of January 9-12, 1964, during which twenty-two Panamanians were killed by American bullets and more than 500 were wounded, were the product of the rise of mass struggles that had been brewing over so many years of waiting and disappointment in the fight to recover the canal.
The only immediate result of these events was the opening of new negotiations with the United States over the issue. The outcome of these negotiations was the draft treaty of 1967. This was rejected by the Panamanian government under pressure from the masses, who opposed it because it maintained the presence of the United States and its total control over the canal in other forms.
'he failure of the negotiations and th eterioration of the political situatio forces of Santiago (see the New York Times, October 23, 1973). In addition, the four leaders of the junta received military training both in the United States and in the Canal Zone (see Newsweek, November 24, 1973).
PANAMA, November 1959: U.S.
within the Panamanian bourgeoisie led to a military government in 1968. This government took up where the previous bourgeois governments had left off on the subject of the recovery of the canal.
In fact, the military government has made the problem of the canal its Trojan horse, in order to stay in power and win support from the popular masses on the basis of the anti-Yankee sentiment always felt by these layers. This is •how the Torrijos regime has given new life to the foreign poliey of the Panamanian state, using the problem of the canal as a spearhead in international bodies and organizations. The aim is to make the United States concede greater Panamanian participation in all matters concerning the canal.
This nationalist position, typical of the military reformist regimes, allowed the Torrijos government to pass itself off internationally as progressive, going so far as to call itself "revolutionary." Is there any need to show that it is nothing of the kind, despite the endorsement given it even by Cuba?
Military 'Reformism'
Brought to power in 1968 through a coup that overthrew the government of Arnulfo Arias (representative of the interests of the traditional oligarchy), which had been sworn in only eleven days before (October 1, 1968), the military took advantage of the crisis of hegemony among the local bourgeoisie and took power.
Repression against the progressive popular groups was not long in coming: The troops prevent demonstrators from placing Panamanian flag in Canal Zone.
student movement, the trade unions, and in particular the working class as a whole became targets of persecution.
During the first year of the military government, arrests, deportations, and disappearances of leaders of left organizatiohs were a regular ocurrence.
Then, during the period 1970-71, adopting the strategy of the military reformist regimes, the National Guard (the armed forces of the country) tried to become an instrument of social and political reorganization. To do this the National Guard was compelled to alter its relations with the different political sectors of the country and telt the need to incorporate some of them into the government.
At the end of 1970 the military junta established relatively close relations with the Partido del Pueblo Panameño (PPP- Party of the Panamanian People, the pro- Moscow Communist party) within the framework of a policy of neutralizing one organized and disciplined sector of the masses of people. And, in fact, the pact between the mititary and the PPP had the anticipated demobilizing effect. For all practical purposes it temporarily put an end to the popular resistance to the military regime that had been provoked by the government's policy during the first year after the coup. The "guerrilla" movements were, eliminated and the major cadres of the MLN-29-XI were forced into exile.
Thus the National Guard. tried to put and political into practice an economic program corresponding to Panama's desig. nated role in the international division of labor-as a transit zone and as an economy whose development historically has been stunted by its function of providing services and serving as a channel for exchange.
The ground was cleared for making Panama an international financial center, for "modernizing" the structures of national production within the framework of "development." The most. aggressive capitalist sector was favored to the detri-
: This situation ment of traditional sectors.
strengthened the most stable sectors of the work force while those sectors involved in seasonal work were weakened.
Capital investments were oriented toward the most dynamic sectors, át the same time that the new labor code permitted an increase in the membership of the trade unions over which the state exercised a more direct control. A relationshíp of forces favorable to this operation was maintained by the influx of capital into the country.
The nationalist policy of the military the fusion of several groups that had left the PPP in 1962. It fought the military regime for two years, using both urban and tural guerrilla warfare.
3. It should be pointed out that the currency of Panama is the American dollar. In addition, let us note that there are eighty-two foreign banks in Panama today.
regime headed by General Omar Torrijos corresponded to the new relationship of forces structured around the ruling class's crisis of hegemony.
To carry out the reformist plan required a mass base. The government was to build its base of support on two pillars. The first of these was a broad mass of dispersed peasants, lacking in political organization and a class program. In 1972 the government organized them through the creation of the "Assembly of Corregimientos Representatives."* The second was a welldefined party organization-the PPP- controlling the leading worker cadres located in work-places of relatively low productivity. The petty-bourgeois origin of the PPP leaders facilitated the party's relations with sectors of the state bureaucracy, the intellectuals, and the student milieu.
Role of the Student Movement
The student movement is one of the most active sectors on the political scene.
There has been a tradition of student struggle in Panama for many years. This classic manifestation of the petty bourgeoisie is linked to the problems inherent in a society with an "underdeveloped" economy and a dependent political structure. At certain times, all the contradictions of society may be summed up in the mass of students.
Between 1972 and 1975 the student movement developed only slightly. This was because of both the repression it suffered during the early years of the regime and the profound divisions caused by the most modernist sectors of the dependent bourgeoisie.
The bourgeoisie's plan was implemented within the student movement by the government, which based itself on the sector around the Federación de Estudiantes de Panamá (FEP-Student Federation of Panama). The FEP, which was controlled by the PPP, was charged with mobilizing support for the bourgeoisie's plan in accordance with the pact established at the end of 1970.
However, in September 1974 the leadership of the FEP left the PPP, its original structure. Since then, it has increasingly become an organization in the service of the military regime and hence in the service of the interests of the bourgeoisie.
Its unconditional support to the government led it to omit from its analyses the contradiction that defines class relations under capitalist society. Once it rejected this fundamental class contradiction, it
4. The Republic of Panama is divided into nine provinces and one national territory. Each province is divided into districts (there are sixtyfour of these in all) and these are divided into corregimientos (a sort of municipality). There are a total of 505 corregimentos in the country, and each has a representative in the Assembly.
sought to justify its new positions by identifying new enemies. These new enemies were not class enemies but rather enemies of the "revolutionary process directed by General Torrijos" —an abstraction that sought to establish a false relationship between the real and the concrete. The tactical alliance with one faction of the ruling class became an alliance with strategic objectives.
Repression Begins
With the first serious signs of political crisis—no treaty with the United States, 25 percent increase in the cost of living, international economic crisis-the reaction of the ruling sectors was directed against those elements that appeared most critical of the regime-the class enemies of the bourgeoisie.
Nevertheless, the most coherently manifested expressions of critical sectors did not come from the organizations of the working class itself. The organization of the proletariat is a continual process and its contradictions are not resolved as long as class society is not liquidated. In the context of this process, what the groups with fascist tendencies (such as the leadership of the FEP) proposed was the destruction of groupings critical of the regime and capable of giving an
• impetus to class organization that would counterpose a proletarian revolution to the violence of the reactionaries.
The leadership of the FEP and certain currents of the CP leadership attacked the organizations that despite many difficulties were working with the exploited classes in their battle to organize themselves politically.
Hence their repeated attacks on the organizations active at the university (especially in the law school) and certain high schools (Instituto Nacional, for example) during the struggle for a critical, combative, independent student movement. Hence also their attacks on the communications media identified with the people's struggles and against all those o stet ta of the way or ahother who were acting in defense of the working class's interests in one way or another.
The interests of the working class were not modified by such rightist deviations. The relative weakness of the working class in the final analysis will not prevent it from being the motor force of the new society that will overcome the contradictions of class society. It gains strength in its struggle against the enemies it conof its movement fronts in the course toward ultimate emancipation.
These enemies have been able to develop
5. These organizations are Circulo Camilo Torres (CCT--Camilo Torres Circle); Guaykucho;
Estudiantil Revolucionario (FER- Frente Revolutionary Student Front); Fraceión Socialista Revolucionaria (FSR-Revolutionary Socialist Faction).
thanks to the interests of other classes that obscure the working class's perspective and thanks to the absence of analyses of concrete situations, which leads to dogmatism and sectarianism and sometimes to the most aberrant opportunism.
The bourgeoisie's strategy has been bolstered by the military's reformist policy. Because of the regime's bonapartism, the class struggle is masked by a policy of anti-imperialist demagogy, while at the same time capitalism increasingly penetrates to the very vitals of Panamanian society.
The historic struggle of the Panamanian people for the recovery of the canal is diverted from its final goal by the proposal for "national recovery." Under the slogan of "national unity" the bonapartist regime, with the collaboration of the CP, is trying at all costs to control the rise of struggles that have beenoccurring recently. They are the result of an economic and social policy that increasingly strikes at the exploited classes and of the failure to reach an agreement with the United States on the question of the canal.
On this subject it must be pointed out that while the revolutionary organizations put forward the slogan of the total withdrawal of American military bases, the bonapartist regime and the CP agree to the maintenance of three of those bases!
Among the revolutionary organizations that have emerged with the rise of struggles, the Fracción Socialista Revolucionaria, a Trotskyist founded in May 1975, is fighting for the development of the revolutionary vanguard on an anticapitalist, anti-imperialist basis. It looks to the construction of the revolutionary party as an instrument in the struggle to overthrow the capitalist system. The FSR, which came out of the student movement, has since begun to carry out activity among the working class. This has led it to play an important role within the revolutionary vanguard in Panama. It held its first congress in February, at which time it adopted the name Liga Socialista Revolucionaria [LSR-Revolutionary Socialist League] and voted to affiliate to the Fourth International.
The analysis made by the comrades of the LSR during their congress singled out the rightist turn being made by the bonapartist regime under the guise of "left nationalism," and pointed to the repression that threatens Panamanian revolutionists during coming months.
We call upon revolutionary Marxists throughout the world to support the struggle of the Panamanian people for national and social liberation, and to respond with active solidarity to any attacks against the democratic rights of the workers and revolutionary organizations in Panama.
Notes
1. Six of the officers who carried out the September 1973 coup in Chile had graduated from the School of the Americas with the highest ranks. These were the director of intelligence services; and the commanders of the second infantry division, the logistical support division of Santiago, the third infantry division of Concepción, the engineering school of Tejas Verdes, and the school of troops and special
2. Movimiento de Liberación Nacional-29 de Noviembre* (National Liberation Movement- November 29), an organization that came out of