Kid-glove Imperialism in Panama Deals

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Omar Torrijos about the future legal status of the Panama Canal Zone now "legally" occupied by the United States.

The American seizure and occupation of the canal has reen a bitter symbol of the predatory role of US imperialism in Latin America.

It has been a constant target for any Latin American political leader aiming to present an anti-imperialist image.

General Torrijos has been more anxious than most to conceal the anti-working class character of his reactionary dictatorship with some anti-imperialist cover on the question of the canal.

Nixon had spurned him; Ford was cool. But Carter found the canal issue just what he needed for a bit of cover of his own.

It would be the "proof" of the Carter administration's benevolence towards Latin America and other backward and semi-colonial countries. It would be his sheep's clothing.

Formal change

Both leaders, therefore, cynically signed the treaties knowing full well that they were intended to make nothing more than a formal change in the sovereignty of the Canal Zone.

Even the formal ending of (S sovereignty is not to come until the year 2000. And after that the US government is to have the right to intervene militarily if it should regard its interests as being threatened.

Through his rigid control of the mass media, however, Torrijos was able to advertise this fraud as a great step forward against imperialism and he managed to engineer a large majority in a referendum in favour of the treaties.

Since then, however, the treaties have become a political rack on which both Torrijos and Carter have been stretched with increasing pain.

In Panama the real nature of the treaties has filtered through and the mass of Panamanian workers now undoubtedly reject them as a fraud.

If Torrijos is to get he thil be aben to do it only ne will De able to ao lt only through outright rigging of the ballot.

During the drawn-out "debate" (in reality a service of chauvinist, imperialist monologues) on the treaties in the US Senate it was revealed that Torrijos' brother was a big time heroin racketeer and that Torrijos himself at least knew about and possibly participated in the racket.

The ultra-right anti-Carter faction in the US Senate seized on this to argue that the US could not trust the word of such a criminal.

Such hypocrisy from a group who are all archcriminals themselves was typical of the discussion of the treaties.

Embarassing as the revelations about Torrijos have been, the treaties have become central to Carter's waning political position.

Vith virtually all his policies in ruins it looked like his only chance to score some kind of victory in the The administration, therefore, set out cynically to buy the votes of any Senators who were for sale.

Implicit

The prices paid were Federal spending programmes of special interest to voters in the states represented by the wavering Senators and two new more specific reservations to the treaties reserving for the US the right to send troops into the Canal Zone after 2000 if the canal were closed by strike action and to keep troops permanently in the area if the two governments thought it "necessary or appropriate". (i.e. to prop up reactionary pro-imperialist regimes).

Of course all this was implicit anyway in the treaties. But it is awkward, for both Carter and Torrijos, that to buy the interest of the Senators, Carter has had to take off the discrete plain wrapper to show the hardcore imperialism inside.

In this way he got a bare two-thirds majority for one of the treaties last week. But the more difficult vote on the second one is still to come.

Especially as the treaties are beginning to look dead as far as Panama is concerned.

There is no question any longer of Torrijos being able to conceal the real content of the treaties from the Panamanian workers and students.

The Panamanian masses want to throw out US imperialism once and for all. It is increasingly plain to them that Torrijos is an obstacle to that.

So the net result of Carter's kid-glove imperialism looks increasingly as if it will be to sharpen and not pacify the anti-imperialist struggle in Latin America. leader Berlinguer