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Panama The Government of Torrijos and the National Guard
The overthrow of Arias provoked student demonstrations and
rioting in some of the slum areas of Panama City. The peasants in
Chiriquí Province battled guardsmen sporadically for several
months, but the Guard retained control. Urrutia was initially
arrested but was later persuaded to join in the two-man provisional
junta headed by Pinilla. Vallarino remained in retirement. The
original cabinet appointed by the junta was rather broad based and
included several Samudio supporters and one Arias supporter. After
the first three months, however, five civilian cabinet members
resigned, accusing the new government of dictatorial practices.
The provisional junta moved swiftly to consolidate government
control. Several hundred actual or potential political leaders were
arrested on charges of corruption or subversion. Others went into
voluntary or imposed exile, and property owners were threatened
with expropriation. The National Assembly and all political parties
were disbanded, and the University of Panama was closed for several
months while its faculty and student body were purged. The
communications media were brought under control through censorship,
intervention in management, or expropriation.
Pinilla, who assumed the title of president, had declared that
his government was provisional and that free elections were to be
scheduled. In January 1969, however, power actually rested in the
hands of Omar Torrijos and Boris Martínez, commander and chief of
staff, respectively, of the Guard. In early March, a speech by
Martinez promising agrarian reform and other measures radical
enough to alarm landowners and entrepreneurs provoked a coup within
the coup. Torrijos assumed full control, and Martinez and three of
his supporters in the military government were exiled.
Torrijos stated that "there would be less impulsiveness" in
government without Martinez. Torrijos did not denounce the proposed
reforms, but he assured Panamanian and United States investors that
their interests were not threatened.
Torrijos, now a brigadier general, became even more firmly
entrenched in power after thwarting a coup attempted by Colonels
Amado Sanjur, Luis Q. Nentzen Franco, and Ramiro Silvera in
December 1969. While Torrijos was in Mexico, the three colonels
declared him deposed. Torrijos rushed back to Panama, gathered
supporters at the garrison in David, and marched triumphantly into
the capital. The colonels followed earlier competitors of Torrijos
into exile. Because the governing junta (Colonel Pinilla and his
deputy, Colonel Urrutia) had not opposed the abortive coup,
Torrijos replaced them with two civilians, Demetrio B. Lakas, an
engineer well liked among businessmen, and Arturo Sucre, a lawyer
and former director of the national lottery. Lakas was designated
"provisional president," and Sucre was appointed his deputy.
In late 1969 a close associate of Torrijos announced the
formation of the New Panama Movement. This movement was originally
intended to organize peasants, workers, and other social groups and
was patterned after that of Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary
Party. No organizational structure was established, however, and by
1971 the idea had been abandoned. The government party was revived
under a different name, the Democratic Revolutionary Party (Partido
Revolucionario Democrático--PRD) in the late 1970s.
A sweeping cabinet reorganization and comments of high-ranking
officials in 1971 portended a shift in domestic policy. Torrijos
expressed admiration for the socialist trends in the military
governments of Peru and Bolivia. He also established a mutually
supportive relationship with Cuba's Fidel Castro. Torrijos
carefully distanced himself from the Panamanian Marxist left. The
political label he appeared to wear most comfortably was
"populist." In 1970 he declared, "Having finished with the
oligarchy, the Panamanian has his own worth with no importance to
his origin, his cradle, or where he was born."
Torrijos worked on building a popular base for his government,
forming an alliance among the National Guard and the various
sectors of society that had been the objects of social injustice at
the hands of the oligarchy, particularly the long-neglected
campesinos. He regularly traveled by helicopter to villages
throughout the interior to hear their problems and to explain his
new programs.
In addition to the National Guard and the campesinos, the
populist alliance that Torrijos formed as a power base included
students, the People's Party (Partido del Pueblo--PdP), and
portions of the working classes. Support for Torrijos varied among
interest groups and over time. The alliance contained groups, most
notably the Guard and students, that were traditionally
antagonistic toward one another and groups that traditionally had
little concern with national politics, e.g., the rural sector.
Nationalism, in the form of support of the efforts of the Torrijos
regime to obtain control over the canal through a new treaty with
the United States, provided the glue for maintaining political
consensus.
In the early 1970s, the strength of the alliance was
impressive. Disloyal or potentially disloyal elements within the
National Guard and student groups were purged; increased salaries,
perquisites, and positions of political power were offered to the
loyal majority. The adherence of the middle classes was procured
partly through more jobs. In return for its support, the PdP was
allowed to operate openly when all other political parties were
outlawed.
The Torrijos effort to secure political support in the rural
sector was an innovation in Panamanian politics. With the exception
of militant banana workers in the western provinces of Chiriquí and
Bocas del Toro, the campesinos traditionally have had little
concern with national political issues. Unlike much of Latin
America, in Panama the elite is almost totally urban based, rather
than being a landed aristocracy
(see Urban Society
, ch. 2).
No elections were held under the military government until
April 1970, when the town of San Miguelito, incorporated as the
country's sixty-fourth municipal district, was allowed to elect a
mayor, treasurer, and municipal council. Candidates nominated by
trade groups and other nonpartisan bodies were elected indirectly
by a council that had been elected by neighborhood councils.
Subsequently, the new system was extended throughout the country,
and in 1972 the 505-member National Assembly of Municipal
Representatives met in Panama City to confirm Torrijos's role as
head of government and to approve a new constitution. The new
document greatly expanded governmental powers at the expense of
civil liberties. The state also was empowered to "oversee the
rational distribution of land" and, in general, to regulate or
initiate economic activities. In an obvious reference to the Canal
Zone, the Constitution also declared the ceding of national
territory to any foreign country to be illegal.
The governmental initiatives in the economy, legitimated by the
new Constitution, were already underway. The government had
announced in early 1969 its intention to implement 1962 legislation
by distributing 700,000 hectares of land within 3 years to 61,300
families. Acquisition and distribution progressed much more slowly
than anticipated, however
(see Land Tenure and Agrarian Reform
, ch.
3).
Nevertheless, major programs were undertaken. Primary attention
and government assistance went to farmers grouped in organizations
that were initially described as cooperatives but were in fact
commercial farming operations by state-owned firms. The government
also established companies to operate banana plantations--partly
because a substantial amount of the land obtained under the land-
reform laws was most suited to banana cultivation and had belonged
to international fruit companies.
Educational reforms instituted by Torrijos emphasized
vocational and technical training at the expense of law, liberal
arts, and the humanities. The programs introduced on an
experimental basis in some elementary and secondary schools
resembled the Cuban system of "basic schools in the countryside."
New schools were established in rural areas in which half the
student's time was devoted to instruction in farming. Agricultural
methods and other practical skills were taught to urban students as
well, and ultimately the new curriculum was to become obligatory
even in private schools. Although the changes were being instituted
gradually, they met strong resistance from the upper-middle classes
and particularly from teachers.
Far-reaching reforms were also undertaken in health care. A
program of integrated medical care became available to the extended
family of anyone who had been employed for the minimal period
required to qualify for social security. A wide range of services
was available not only to the worker's spouse and children, but to
parents, aunts, uncles, cousins--to any dependent relative. Whereas
in the past medical facilities had been limited almost entirely to
Panama City, under Torrijos hospitals were built in several
provincial cities. Clinics were established throughout the
countryside. Medical-school graduates were required to spend at
least two years in a rural internship servicing the scattered
clinics.
Torrijos also undertook an ambitious program of public works.
The construction of new roads and bridges contributed particularly
to greater prosperity in the rural areas. Although Torrijos showed
greater interest in rural development than in urban problems, he
also promoted urban housing and office construction in Panama City.
These projects were funded, in part, by both increased personal and
corporate taxes and increased efficiency in tax collection. The
1972 enactment of a new labor code attempted to fuse the urban
working class into the populist alliance. Among other things the
code provided obligatory collective agreements, obligatory payroll
deduction of union fees, the establishment of a superior labor
tribunal, and the incorporation of some 15,000 additional workers,
including street vendors and peddlers, into labor unions. At the
same time, the government attempted unsuccessfully to unite the
nation's three major labor confederations into a single,
government-sponsored organization.
Meanwhile, Torrijos lured foreign investment by offering tax
incentives and provisions for the unlimited repatriation of
capital. In particular, international banking was encouraged to
locate in Panama, to make the country a regional financial center.
A law adopted in 1970 facilitated
offshore banking (see Glossary).
Numerous banks, largely foreign owned, were licensed to operate in
Panama; some were authorized solely for external transactions.
Funds borrowed abroad could be loaned to foreign borrowers without
being taxed by Panama
(see Finance
, ch. 3).
Most of the reforms benefiting workers and peasants were
undertaken between 1971 and 1973. Economic problems beginning in
1973 led to some backtracking on social programs. A new labor law
passed in 1976, for example, withdrew much of the protection
provided by the 1972 labor code, including compulsory collective
bargaining. The causes of these economic difficulties included such
external factors as the decline in world trade, and thus canal
traffic. Domestic problems included a decline in agricultural
production that many analysts attributed to the failure of the
economic measures of the Torrijos government. The combination of a
steady decline in per capita gross national product
(GNP--see Glossary),
inflation, unemployment, and massive foreign debts
adversely affected all sectors of society and contributed heavily
to the gradual erosion of the populist alliance that had firmly
supported Torrijos in the early 1970s.
Increasingly, corruption in governing circles and within the
National Guard also had become an issue in both national and
international arenas. Torrijos's opponents were quick to note that
his relatives appeared in large numbers on the public payroll.
Data as of December 1987
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