Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

dismemberment of the Soviet Union and Islamic militants like Muammar Gadhafi of Libya.⁴

My first night in Panama, stopped at the traffic light, peering past the noisy windshield wipers, I was moved by this man smiling down at me from the billboard—handsome, charismatic, and courageous. I knew from my hours at the BPL that he stood behind his beliefs. For the first time in its history, Panama was not a puppet of Washington or of anyone else. Torrijos never succumbed to the temptations offered by Moscow or Beijing; he believed in social reform and in helping those born into poverty, but he did not advocate communism. Unlike Castro, Torrijos was determined to win freedom from the United States without forging alliances with the United States’ enemies.

I had stumbled across an article in some obscure journal in the BPL racks that praised Torrijos as a man who would alter the history of the Americas, reversing a long-term trend toward U.S. domination. The author cited as his starting point Manifest Destiny—the doctrine, popular with many Americans during the 1840s, that the conquest of North America was divinely ordained; that God, not men, had ordered the destruction of Indians, forests, and buffalo, the draining of swamps and the channeling of rivers, and the development of an economy that depends on the continuing exploitation of labor and natural resources.

The article got me to thinking about my country’s attitude toward the world. The Monroe Doctrine, originally enunciated by President James Monroe in 1823, was used to take Manifest Destiny a step further when, in the 1850s and 1860s, it was used to assert that the United States had special rights all over the hemisphere, including the right to invade any nation in Central or South America that refused to back U.S. policies. Teddy Roosevelt invoked the Monroe Doctrine to justify U.S. intervention in the Dominican Republic, in Venezuela, and during the “liberation” of Panama from Colombia. A string of subsequent U.S. presidents—most notably Taft, Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt—relied on it to expand Washington’s Pan-American activities through the end of World War II. Finally, during the latter half of the twentieth century, the United States used the Communist threat to justify expansion of this concept to countries around the globe, including Vietnam and Indonesia.⁵

Now, it seemed, one man was standing in Washington’s way. I knew that he was not the first—leaders like Castro and Allende had gone before him—but Torrijos alone was doing it outside the realm of Communist ideology and without claiming that his movement was a revolution. He was simply saying that Panama had its own rights—to sovereignty over its people, its lands, and a waterway that bisected it—and that these rights were as valid and as divinely bestowed as any enjoyed by the United States.

Torrijos also objected to the School of the Americas and to the U.S. Southern Command’s tropical warfare training center, both located in the Canal Zone. For years, the United States armed forces had invited Latin American dictators and presidents to send their sons and military leaders to these facilities—the largest and best equipped outside North America. There, they learned interrogation and covert operational skills as well as military tactics that they would use to fight communism and to protect their own assets and those of the oil companies and other private corporations. They also had opportunities to bond with the United States’ top brass.

These facilities were hated by Latin Americans—except for the few wealthy ones who benefited from them. They were known to provide schooling for right-wing death squads and the torturers who had turned so many nations into totalitarian regimes. Torrijos made it clear that he did not want training centers located in Panama— and that he considered the Canal Zone to be included within his borders.⁶

Seeing the handsome general on the billboard, and reading the caption beneath his face—“Omar’s ideal is freedom; the missile is not invented that can kill an ideal!”—I felt a shiver run down my spine. I had a premonition that the story of Panama in the twentieth century was far from over, and that Torrijos was in for a difficult and perhaps even tragic time.

The tropical storm battered against the windshield, the traffic light turned green, and the driver honked his horn at the car ahead of us. I thought about my own position. I had been sent to Panama to close the deal on what would become MAIN’s first truly comprehensive master development plan. This plan would create a justification for World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and USAID investment of billions of dollars in the energy, transportation, and agricultural sectors of this tiny and very crucial country. It was, of course, a subterfuge, a means of making Panama forever indebted and thereby returning it to its puppet status.

As the taxi started to move through the night, a paroxysm of guilt flashed through me, but I suppressed it. What did I care? I had taken the plunge in Java, sold my soul, and now I could create my opportunity of a lifetime. I could become rich, famous, and powerful in one blow.

CHAPTER 11. Pirates in the Canal Zone

The next day, the Panamanian government sent a man to show me around. His name was Fidel, and I was immediately drawn to him. He was tall and slim and took an obvious pride in his country. His great-great- grandfather had fought beside Bolivar to win independence from Spain. I told him I was related to Tom Paine, and was thrilled to learn that Fidel had read Common Sense in Spanish. He spoke English, but when he discovered I was fluent in the language of his country, he was overcome with emotion.

“Many of your people live here for years and never bother to learn it,” he said.

Fidel took me on a drive through an impressively prosperous sector of his city, which he called the New Panama. As we passed modern glass-and-steel skyscrapers, he explained that Panama had more international banks than any other country south of the Rio Grande.

“We’re often called the Switzerland of the Americas,” he said. “We ask very few questions of our clients.”

Late in the afternoon, with the sun sliding toward the Pacific, we headed out on an avenue that followed the contours of the bay. A long line of ships was anchored there. I asked Fidel whether there was a problem with the canal.

“It’s always like this,” he replied with a laugh. “Lines of them, waiting their turn. Half the traffic is coming from or going to Japan. More even than the United States.”

I confessed that this was news to me.

“I’m not surprised,” he said. “North Americans don’t know much about the rest of the world.”

We stopped at a beautiful park in which bougainvillea crept over ancient ruins. A sign proclaimed that this was a fort built to protect the city against marauding English pirates. A family was setting up for an evening picnic: a father, mother, son and daughter, and an elderly man who I assumed was the children’s grandfather. I felt a sudden longing for the tranquility that seemed to embrace these five people. As we passed them, the couple smiled, waved, and greeted us in English. I asked if they were tourists, and they laughed. The man came over to us.

“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.