Vol. 71/No. 14      April 9, 2007

BY CINDY JAQUITH  
“General Thurman, with the way things are going, don’t you think it’s optimistic to say U.S. troops will be out of Panama in one month?”— Ted Koppel, ABC Nightline.

“Well, you’ll recall when we went into Detroit. We said it would be for ten days and then it took us a while… .”—Gen. Maxwell Thurman, Head of U.S. Southern Command, Panama, December 22, 1989.

Three days into the U.S. invasion of Panama—Washington’s biggest military operation since the Vietnam War—Gen. Maxwell Thurman could think only of Detroit, where 4,700 U.S. paratroopers and 8,000 National Guardsmen invaded in 1967 to crush a rebellion by Blacks against police brutality.

The U.S. Army’s occupation of Detroit left 43 Blacks dead, 2,000 wounded, 5,000 arrested, and 5,000 homeless.

The invasion of Panama by 26,000 U.S. troops has taken thousands of Panamanian lives and left thousands more homeless and wounded. Body bags of U.S. GIs have arrived in the United States, along with hundreds of wounded U.S. troops.

Washington says it has occupied this country of only 2.3 million people to “restore democracy.” But the bombing of working-class neighborhoods in Panama City, the refusal to permit Red Cross workers to evacuate the wounded, and the rounding up of thousands of Panamanian youth reveal the real target of this operation.

The invading troops have met resistance from the Dignity Battalions. These are armed civilian units of Panamanian workers and peasants, many of them Black. The battalions have been branded “terrorists,” “thugs,” and “looters” by the likes of General Thurman. Cuban President Fidel Castro has praised them as “heroes of Our America who are fighting for the dignity, honor, and sovereignty of our peoples.”

Who are the men and women of the Dignity Battalions and why are they standing up to the most powerful military force on earth?

The battle of the Panamanian people for freedom from U.S. tyranny stretches back to the beginning of this century. In 1903 the United States intervened in Panama to gain for itself rights to build the Panama Canal. A treaty was drawn up giving the U.S. government rights to the canal “in perpetuity,” including the right to administer the over-500-square-mile Canal Zone, to run the Panama Canal Co., and to use U.S. soldiers to maintain “order” in other parts of Panama. Washington didn’t even bother to ask the Panamanian government, which it had just installed, to sign the document.

Tens of thousands of workers from the Caribbean, most of them Black and English-speaking, migrated to Panama to work on the canal. Thousands died from the slavelike working conditions or from disease. Of those who survived, many stayed in the Canal Zone working for the U.S. Army or private U.S. companies once the canal was completed.

The decades following completion of the canal were marked by repeated struggles of Panamanians against U.S. domination of their economy and government and for an end to the occupation of the Canal Zone. Intertwined with the fight for Panamanian sovereignty was the struggle against the racist policies of the U.S. government. In the Canal Zone, which was subject to U.S. law, Washington had set up the same kind of Jim Crow system that existed at that time in the U.S. South… .

The struggle against this discriminatory system was waged partly through the trade unions that grew up among canal workers. Many of the labor leaders who fought to end segregation were expelled from the zone… .

The legal segregationist system in the zone began to fall apart, however, in the 1950s. With the first victories in the U.S. civil rights movement against “separate but equal” facilities, certain U.S. policies in the Canal Zone were no longer constitutional.  
 
 
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