Panama - History
Panama's history has been shaped by the evolution of the world economy and the ambitions of great powers. The earliest known inhabitants of Panama were the Cuevas and the Coclé tribes, but they were decimated by disease and fighting when the Spanish arrived in the 1500s.
Rodrigo de Bastidas, sailing westward from Venezuela in 1501 in search of gold, was the first European to explore the Isthmus of Panama. A year later, Christopher Columbus visited the Isthmus and established a short-lived settlement in the Darien.
Vasco Nunez de Balboa's tortuous trek from the Atlantic to the Pacific in 1513 demonstrated that the Isthmus was, indeed, the path between the seas, and Panama quickly became the crossroads and marketplace of Spain's empire in the New World. Gold and silver were brought by ship from South America, hauled across the Isthmus, and loaded aboard ships for Spain. The route became known as the Camino Real, or Royal Road, although it was more commonly known as Camino de Cruces (Road of the Crosses) because of the abundance of gravesites along the way.
Panama was part of the Spanish empire for 300 years (1538-1821). From the outset, Panamanian identity was based on a sense of "geographic destiny," and Panamanian fortunes fluctuated with the geopolitical importance of the Isthmus. The colonial experience also spawned Panamanian nationalism as well as a racially complex and highly stratified society, the source of internal conflicts that ran counter to the unifying force of nationalism.
Modern Panamanian history has been shaped by its trans-isthmian canal, which had been a dream since the beginning of Spanish colonization. From 1880 to 1890, a French company under Ferdinand de Lesseps attempted unsuccessfully to construct a sea-level canal on the site of the present Panama Canal. In November 1903, with US encouragement, Panama proclaimed its independence and concluded the Hay/Bunau-Varilla Treaty with the United States.
The treaty granted rights to the United States "as if it were sovereign" in a zone roughly 10 miles wide and 50 miles long. In that zone, the US would build a canal, then administer, fortify, and defend it "in perpetuity." In 1914, the United States completed the existing 83-kilometer (52 mile) canal, which is one of the world's greatest feats of engineering. The early 1960s saw the beginning of sustained pressure in Panama for the renegotiation of this treaty.
Panama's political system dates back to the year 1968 — a watershed in Panamanian history. In that year the National Guard staged a coup—not for the first time—and established an enduring pattern of direct and then indirect military control of the government.
From 1903 until 1968, Panama was a constitutional democracy dominated by a commercially oriented oligarchy. During the 1950s, the Panamanian military began to challenge the oligarchy's political hegemony. In October 1968, Dr. Arnulfo Arias Madrid, twice elected president and twice ousted by the Panamanian military, was ousted for a third time as president by the National Guard after only 10 days in office. A military government was established, and the commander of the National Guard, Brigadier General Omar Torrijos, soon emerged as the principal power in Panamanian political life.
Despite the subsequent construction of a democratic facade in the late 1970s, de facto control of the nation's politics in 1988 remained firmly in the hands of the commander of the National Guard's successor organization, the Panama Defense Forces (Fuerzas de Defensa de Panama—FDP).
Prior to the advent of Torrijos, Panamanian politics were dominated almost exclusively by a small number of aristocratic families. This oligarchy, largely urban, tended to be white or light-skinned and valued its purported racial purity; aristocrats intermarried and held tightly to their elite status. But Torrijos built a popular base from the ranks of the National Guard, which was composed mostly of provincial black and lower- or middle-class mestizos like Torrijos himself, as well as an assortment of campesinos and urban workers.
Torrijos' regime was harsh and corrupt, but his charisma, populist domestic programs, and nationalist (anti-US) foreign policy appealed to the rural and urban constituencies largely ignored by the oligarchy.
Torrijos' death in 1981 altered the tone but not the direction of Panama's political evolution. Despite the 1983 constitutional amendments, which appeared to proscribe a political role for the military, the Panama Defense Forces (PDF), as they were then known, continued to dominate Panamanian political life behind a facade of civilian government. By this time, General Manuel Noriega was firmly in control of both the PDF and the civilian government.
The United States froze economic and military assistance to Panama in the summer of 1987 in response to the domestic political crisis in Panama and an attack on the US Embassy. In April 1988, President Reagan invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, freezing Panamanian Government assets in all US organizations.
In May 1989 Panamanians voted overwhelmingly for the anti-Noriega candidates. The Noriega regime promptly annulled the election, and embarked on a new round of repression. Noriega orchestrated the disappearance of scores of opponents, some of whose bodies later turned up in exhumations at the former Tocumen military base, bound and showing signs of torture. By the fall of 1989 the regime was barely clinging to power, and the regime's paranoia made daily existence unsafe for American citizens.
On December 20, 1989, President George H.W. Bush ordered the US military into Panama to protect US lives and property, to fulfill US treaty responsibilities to operate and defend the Canal, to assist the Panamanian people in restoring democracy, and to bring Noriega to justice.
The US troops involved in Operation Just Cause achieved their primary objectives quickly, and Noriega eventually surrendered to US authorities. He completed his sentence for drug trafficking charges in September 2007. In August 2007, a US federal court in Miami found Noriega extraditable to France to serve a sentence imposed there after an in absentia conviction for money laundering. Noriega was extradited to France in 2010 after exhausting all his appeals in US courts, and was sentenced to a 10-year prison term.
Manuel Noriega ruled Panama from 1983 to 1989, spying for the Central Intelligence Agency before the United States invaded in 1989, toppling his brutal regime and ending a drug trafficking career that associated him with Colombian kingpin Pablo Escobar. Despite amassing great wealth,Noriega had worked hard to cultivate an image of a man of the people. He lived in a modest, two-story home in an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Panama City that stood in stark contrast with the opulent mansions customary among Latin American dictators.
Noriega, CIA spy and convicted cocaine trafficker, broke a long silence in June 2015 when he made a statement from prison on Panamanian television in which he asked forgiveness of those harmed by his regime. ”I feel like as Christians we all have to forgive,” he said, reading from a handwritten statement. “The Panamanian people have already overcome this period of dictatorship.”
Noriega, whose time in power was marked by corruption and violence, died 30 May 2017 at the age of 83. Noriega was ousted from power by a US invasion in 1989 and was imprisoned in the United States on drug offenses. He then was jailed in France for money laundering and was returned to Panama in 2011 for further imprisonment.
Panama's Electoral Tribunal moved quickly to rebuild the civilian constitutional government, reinstated the results of the May 1989 election on December 27, 1989, and confirmed the victory of President Guillermo Endara and Vice Presidents Guillermo Ford and Ricardo Arias Calderon.
During its 5-year term, the often-fractious Endara government struggled to meet the public's high expectations. Its new police force was a major improvement over its predecessor but was not fully able to deter crime. Ernesto Perez Balladares was sworn in as President on September 1, 1994, after an internationally monitored election campaign.
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