Panama HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Brigadier General Omar Torrijos Herrera
On November 18, 1903, Secretary of State John Hay, representing
the United States, and Special Envoy Philippe Bunau-Varilla,
representing the Republic of Panama, signed an agreement that
became known as the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty. According to Article
I of that treaty, the United States guaranteed Panamanian
independence
(see The 1903 Treaty and Qualified Independence
, ch.
1). With that kind of insurance, the rulers of the new republic did
not need to be concerned about developing armed forces.
When the country gained its independence, an oversized
battalion of former Colombian troops under the command of General
Estéban Huertas became the Panamanian army. Huertas and his
soldiers had favored the independence movement and had switched
their allegiance from Colombia to Panama. The general was named
commander in chief of the small army and became one of Panama's
most prominent citizens; however, when he tried to give orders to
the new republic's first president, Manuel Amador Guerrero, the
general was forced into retirement, and the army was demobilized.
Although Huertas failed in his attempt to use the armed force as a
political instrument, he established a precedent for such attempts.
To replace the disbanded army, the Corps of National Police was
formed in December 1904 and for the next forty-nine years
functioned as the country's only armed force. The government decree
establishing the National Police authorized a force of 700, and the
tiny provincial (formerly Colombian) police force that had been
operating since independence was incorporated into the new
organization. The corps was deployed territorially, and by 1908 its
overall strength had risen to 1,000. The heaviest concentration of
forces was (and has continued to be) in the Panama City area. For
many years strength fluctuated, but generally remained close to
1,000 depending on budgetary allowances. There were, however,
massive turnovers of personnel as new political regimes came to
power and used positions in the police corps as patronage plums. By
the 1940s some stability had been achieved, but it was not until
the presidency of José Antonio Remón in the early 1950s that
institutionalization of the corps took place, and the National
Police was designated the National Guard.
The emergence of the National Guard and its successor
institution, the FDP, as powerful actors in domestic politics is
inextricably intertwined with the professional military career of
Colonel Remón. Born in 1908 to a middle-class family, he studied at
the then prestigious National Institute, which served as the
training ground for sons of wealthy families. Upon graduation, he
received a scholarship to attend the Mexican Military Academy, and
he graduated from there in 1931. Because few Panamanian police
officers at that time had academy training of any sort, he entered
the National Police as a captain. By 1947 he had become commandant
of police.
Remón's ability to convert the police into an important
political force resulted not only from his personal and
professional skills but also from the nature of Panamanian politics
during the late 1940s and early 1950s
(see The National Guard in Ascendance
, ch. 1). As a military academy graduate, Remón realized
the limitations of a police force both as an organization
commanding national respect and as an instrument for wielding
political power. In 1953, therefore, he created the National Guard.
During the 1950s and 1960s, the National Guard was militarized
and professionalized, largely with United States aid under the
Mutual Security Act. This trend away from the police roots and
toward increased military status accelerated during the 1960s, as
a result of the perceived threat from Fidel Castro's Cuba. More
Panamanian officers and enlisted personnel were trained at United
States facilities in the Canal Zone, and military assistance
increased dramatically during the 1960s.
Remón was assassinated in 1955, but the legacy of
militarization that he passed on to his successor, General Bolívar
Vallarino, had culminated by the late 1960s in the formation of a
National Guard that was increasingly sure of its professional
identity and no longer averse to becoming involved in politics.
Total force strength reached 5,000 with an officer corps of 465; an
increasing number of officers had received academy training.
Although police work still predominated and many officers were
promoted from the ranks of "street cops," middle-ranking officers
such as Torrijos were increasingly drawn from the small but growing
band of academy graduates. Within the National Guard, there were
more positions requiring officers with formal military training.
For instance, a special public-order force was created in 1959, in
response to an amphibious invasion launched from Cuba by a small
group of armed Panamanians. New rifle companies were formed during
this same period, the prototypes of the contemporary FDP combat
battalions formed in the 1980s.
In spite of all these changes in Panama's military institution,
it was not until the coup of 1968 and the political ascendancy of
Torrijos that the National Guard began to make a lasting imprint on
the socioeconomic structure of the country. With the death of Remón
in 1955, the role of the armed forces in mobilizing the lower
classes against the urban commercial elite had been curtailed, and
politics were once again controlled by the oligarchy. Torrijos
changed that, introducing a populist brand of politics as well as
further expanding and professionalizing the National Guard
(see The Government of Torrijos and the National Guard
, ch. 1).
During the Torrijos years (1968-81), rank structure within the
National Guard allowed control by a single military leader in the
tradition of Remón and Vallarino. This phenomenon of a single
institutional leader may have resulted because the police and
National Guard had traditionally been institutions with low esteem
and few links to the national political system. Regardless of the
reason, Torrijos was the only general, the positions on the general
staff being occupied by lieutenant colonels. Torrijos controlled
the National Guard through a highly centralized administrative
structure. Although there were by now a number of light infantry
companies and other units with some combat potential, Torrijos
managed to exercise independent control over all of the infantry
companies and all officer assignments. During the Torrijos years,
the National Guard was still small enough for Torrijos to maintain
a close and personal working relationship not only with members of
the officer corps but also with enlisted personnel.
From 1968 until Torrijos's death in 1981, the National Guard
continued the expansion, militarization, and professionalization
that had begun under Remón in the late 1940s. Furthermore, dramatic
changes took place in officer recruitment and training. During the
1950s and 1960s, most academy-trained officers entering the
National Guard were members of the lower-middle class, who had
received their military training in Mexico and other countries in
Central America; Torrijos himself was schooled in El Salvador.
During the 1970s, more junior officers attended South American
academies, such as those in Brazil, Peru, Chile, Venezuela, and
Argentina.
Since World War II, Panama had maintained close security ties
to the United States, and that country had assisted in the
development of Panama's military institutions. Panama had been one
of the twenty original signatories to the 1945 Act of Chapultepec,
binding the countries of Latin America and the United States to a
mutual defense agreement by which all were to respond to an
external attack against any one. Two years later most of the same
countries (including Panama) signed the Inter-American Treaty of
Reciprocal Assistance (Rio Treaty), which also provided for mutual
defense against external attack, but further bound the signers to
peaceful arbitration of disputes arising among member states. In
1948 the charter of the Organization of American States (OAS)
incorporated the provisions of the Rio Treaty. Panama also signed
the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin American
(Tlatelolco Treaty) in 1967, an agreement that prohibited the
deployment of nuclear weapons in Latin America. A bilateral
military assistance pact existed between the United States and
Panama and, under the Panama Canal treaties, the two countries
pledged themselves to the joint defense of the Panama Canal.
Data as of December 1987
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