The US Military Are Silently Recolonizing Panama
This is happening exactly twenty-five years after Panama recovered its sovereignty over the canal and negotiated the definitive departure of the US military bases.
By Ricardo Herrera Hazera (La Estrella de Panama)
HAVANA TIMES – While Panama faces urgent social and economic challenges, agreements are being woven in silence that threaten to compromise the most sacred principles of our Republic: our sovereignty, our self-determination and the neutrality of the Panama Canal.
Amid the resurgence of a US foreign policy marked by unilateralism and the “America First” doctrine pushed by Donald Trump, Panama finds itself once again trapped in the gears of strategic interests that have nothing to do with our national well-being. Our location on the world map, with an inter-oceanic canal that is vital for global trade, transforms us into a much-desired game piece on the world chessboard. And it’s precisely there, in that geographic importance, where both our potential and our vulnerability reside.
The 1903 Hay-Bunau Varilla Treaty – a story that repeats itself
In 1903, a treaty was signed by a Frenchman, who sold a country that didn’t belong to him, and a US Secretary of State. That treaty was the Hay-Bunau Varilla Treaty, which marked the beginning of a period of total subordination for our country. A period when Panama existed, but didn’t decide for itself. Where our chief natural resource, our geographic position, served the interests of United States security and not those of our country, which watched impotently while they gave us handouts in exchange for sullying our national dignity.
It took us over 70 years to recover our national dignity. And we did so without arms, but through the strength of the people, under the leadership of Omar Torrijos.
Now history appears ready to repeat itself. This time, in the form of accords disguised as cooperation, with complicit silences and a diplomatic discourse that appeals to “the national security of the United States,” to justify a foreign presence on our country’s soil. The question is: “Have we learned anything from the past century?”
The new leaders who hold the power in the Executive branch of Panama should exercise maximum caution in each one of the actions they’re carrying out. They should reflect deeply on how they want to be remembered by future generations. It’s possible that they are facing pressures, but their first duty is to the homeland. If they don’t have the courage to face up to this national challenge, they should resign.
Hidden agreements with unseen consequences
Agreements have recently been signed between the Panamanian government and the United States that – according to extra-official versions – will allow the presence of the US military in strategic zones of the country. The Darien gap, the ports, the airports: with the aim of militarizing the country, in violation of the neutrality treaty that forms an essential part of our nationality.
These agreements haven’t been publicly discussed; they haven’t been submitted to our legislature, much less have they been put before the citizens for consultation. They’re not part of a well-deliberated government policy, but instead they’re decisions that the cabinet has made behind the backs of the citizens. In matters of sovereignty, there’s no possible excuse: what’s being negotiated without the people, is being negotiated against the people.
Cooperation or subordination?
What’s being installed is a de facto subordination. A tacit ceding of the principle of national self-determination in the name of agreements with conditions and impositions that could affect the country’s future in a decisive form. That’s how serious this is: it may possibly be the most important political crossroad we’ve faced since the bloody invasion of Panama in 1989.
This isn’t cooperation. It’s strategic subordination.
Panama’s neutrality threatened
The Neutrality Treaty that was signed in 1977, together with the Torrijos-Carter Treaties, establishes that the Panama Canal must remain open and secure in times of peace or war, for all the countries of the world. However, as a corollary, that neutrality demands that Panama not become the military platform of any State.
When the security interests of the United States are allowed to override the interests of Panama, the spirit of this treaty is being violated. They’re weakening the only diplomatic armor that protects our geopolitical interests: neutrality.
We should recall that, even though only two countries signed [the Neutrality Treaty], it was backed by entire generations who dreamed of a Panama free of foreign military bases. In the full light of the twenty-first century, we can’t allow them to just hand over these gains through agreements made under cover of darkness; to give up the spaces and decisions that were earned with the blood of citizens and legions of youth hungered for dignity and self-determination.
The current government’s historic responsibility
The President, the Foreign Minister, and the Ministers of Security and of the Canal must understand that they’re playing with fire. They’re jeopardizing not only the present sovereignty, but the legacy of future independence. The peoples have a memory, and history doesn’t pardon those who betray their fundamental principles.
If they persist in signing agreements that jeopardize neutrality, with neither transparency nor a public consultation, they run the risk of being remembered as the new Hay-Bunau Varilla of the twenty-first century: the traitors who negotiated their rights, who gave over their cause, who put our sovereignty into outside hands, because they lacked the courage of those generations of Panamanians who were at the forefront of that long struggle to become a sovereign country, free of the United States military presence.
We Panamanians have a moral obligation to raise our voices before this regression. We can’t allow the security interests of a large power to prevail over the supreme interests of the Panamanian people.
Once again the fifth frontier?
The “fifth frontier*” is back, exactly 25 years after having recovered the Canal and achieved the definitive departure of the military bases. There we were on that glorious morning of January 1, 2000, and there too were several of those who today hold political power. And if the fifth frontier returns, the years of subordination to outside interests will be back as well.
Will we need a new generation to arise, willing to shed their blood for the homeland like the generation of January 9, 1964? And all of this due to the complicity of the current government?
Panamanians, this is a fight we cannot lose. We must go out on the street and demonstrate against this violation of our sovereignty, our Constitution, the Neutrality Treaty, and our dignity.
We cannot remain silent. We demand transparency in the agreements, respect for the Constitution and the Neutrality Treaty, and an immediate end to any accord that threatens our sovereignty and the legacy of generations of Panamanians.
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*Note: The United States historically referred to Panama as the “fifth frontier” due to its strategic importance to them.
First published in Spanish by La Estrella de Panamá and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.