Liberating the Isthmus, 1971–1978
MIRIAM ELIZABETH VILLANUEVA
When Panama became an independent state in 1903, the United States obtained rights to build a canal with the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty, which included a perpetuity clause. After its completion in 1914, the “in perpetuity” wording allowed the United States to maintain control of a 650-square-mile area, known as the Panama Canal Zone, that ran down the center of the nation, fifty miles long and five miles wide on either side of the completed waterway. The Canal Zone constituted a state within a state and impeded Panama’s efforts at nation-building and exercising full sovereignty over its territory. Rising Panamanian nationalist sentiment over the U.S. presence erupted in protests in the 1950s, culminating on 9 January 1964, with anti-U.S. demonstrations and riots, which were followed by a series of failed treaty discussions in 1967. By 1968, a coup introduced an era of military dictatorship in Panama. At the time, not everyone believed that the Panamanian National Guard’s leader, General Omar Torrijos Herrera, possessed the tenacity to pry loose Washington’s grip on the canal, partly because the Guard itself was in many ways a creature of U.S. Southern Command Training. Since day one, the military’s power rested on fulfilling the vision of a canal administered by and for Panamanians, and the general was running out of time. Despite U.S. obstacles and delays, the Panamanian military signed the Torrijos-Carter Treaties and staged a plebiscite for Panamanians to engage in the negotiations in 1977. The treaties guaranteed the transfer of the canal to Panamanian control by the end of the twentieth century. It was a landmark in Panamanian history, though the victory was muted by the twenty-two year period required before the final transfer.
In reconstructing Panama’s military era and the canal negotiations, scholars have focused until recently on U.S. actors while ignoring Panamanians.1 To remedy this oversight, Tom Long wrote a diplomatic history from the Panamanian perspective with attention to the country’s leading diplomats.2 In Panama, Omar Jaén Suárez has written on the Panamanian negotiators and their efforts to close the Canal Zone.3 To contribute to the recent literature, this study moves beyond the key negotiators to illuminate how the Panamanian government gained approval for the treaties using a combination of Third Worldist and anti-imperialist rhetoric.
The process of ratifying the treaties was much more complex than what happened in Washington and Panamanian negotiation rooms. Using sources from repositories, Panama’s Ministry of Foreign Relations, and private collections, this work explains how the government created broad popular support for the Torrijos-Carter Treaties, even in authoritarian circumstances, by channeling an anti-imperialist movement that was spreading across the Global South. Torrijos and his negotiators seized on Third Worldism to defend Panama’s sovereignty before the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the Organization of American States (OAS), and regional summits with Venezuela and Colombia. To help disseminate the military’s rhetoric across the country, shift public opinion in favor of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties, and dismantle the Canal Zone, artists created theatrical performances and documentaries. For instance, the Universidad de Panamá’s students in the Departamento de Expresiones Artίstica (DEXA, Department of Artistic Expression) and the Grupo Experimental Cine Universitario (GECU, Experimental University Film Group) drew on the military’s nationalist dogma and Third World theory on cinema and performative art to assist the regime with its plebiscite. With the collaboration of the intellectual Left, the government presented the treaties as progress for Panamanian sovereignty and for all countries considered part of the Third World.
Panama participated in the second generation of countries that professed Third Worldism, defined as a theory that saw liberation struggles of countries in the Global South as the beginning of a widespread revolution not inspired by advanced capitalist or socialist world powers.4 Alliances with neighboring countries and fellow dictators cemented Torrijos’s place as a liberator and strongman against Washington. As early as 1971, Torrijos and his foreign minister channeled Panama’s homespun ideology and adopted Third Worldism in speeches to global organizations and dignitaries. While abroad, the military regime adopted a position that strayed neither too far to the Left nor the Right so as not to appear ideologically compromised. Torrijos’s unwavering decision to remain ambiguous was strategic, since it allowed him to experiment with Third Worldism and Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s anti-imperialist rhetoric without ascribing to Communism. Throughout the 1970s, Torrijos’s posturing and the international political climate helped him negotiate a treaty to dissolve the Canal Zone and hand over control of the canal to Panamanians.
Following Torrijos’s lead, artistic groups at the national university embraced Third Worldist theory on the arts to produce theatrical performances and documentaries to support the canal negotiations. The artistic mechanisms employed allowed average Panamanians to imagine themselves as part of a patriotic movement to resist colonialism. The performative tactics of DEXA and GECU fomented a nationwide desire to fight as Torrijistas for the canal and for the closure of the Canal Zone. Artists embraced non-Western theories on theater and cinema in ways that were similar to Torrijos’s employment of Third Worldism to promote Panama’s cause and gain legitimacy for the state. DEXA’s theater troupe, the Trashumantes (Nomads), staged nationalist plays written by Panamanian playwrights. GECU’s filmmakers created a local cinema that drew on the historical and contemporary problems of the country—especially the fight for the canal—and ventured into rural and urban spaces to foster interaction with audiences. The groups’ performative activism influenced Panamanians and received international attention that bolstered the regime’s negotiating position.
The central argument of this chapter is that the regime capitalized on the change in international politics to safeguard its power and bring an end to U.S. control of the canal and Canal Zone. By the 1970s, the 1903 treaty was an anachronism that served to rally Panamanians and other Third World sentiment against the United States. Like Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina, Panama also embraced Third Worldism as a tool to enter global conversations on anticolonialism and Third World liberation.5 Likewise, artists delved into Third World cultural movements to generate a cultural policy geared toward the marginalized. As partners, Torrijos and Panamanian artists gained approval for a government threatened with illegitimacy. For everyday Panamanians, the mounting domestic and international fight for the canal included them in a transnational movement to combat imperialism.
Before Torrijos and President Carter signed the treaties in 1977, Panamanians had spent seventy-four years contesting the U.S. presence in the country because of the canal. The canal crisis dates to when Panama gained its independence with the assistance of the United States in 1903. For years, Panamanian nationalists had planned to secede from Colombia but had endured setbacks that impeded their success. The United States intervened on the condition that Panama consider a treaty to start construction on a waterway. The agreement, known as the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty of 1903, signed by Frenchman Phillipe-Jean Bunau-Varilla and U.S. Secretary of State John Hay, was advantageous to the United States, but not to Panama. Articles 2 and 3 of the treaty signed away Panama’s sovereignty and designated it a protectorate of the United States.6 Article 3 further granted the United States rights to exercise authority in the Canal Zone and protect it without interference from the Panamanian government. In 1905, the United States acknowledged Panama’s titular sovereignty over the Canal Zone. However, the wording of the treaty set into motion more than sixty years of continual conflict between the nations.
Part of Panama’s dissatisfaction with the treaty had to do with the United States’ interpretation of Article 3 as permission to house troops, settle American families, and employ a police force in the Canal Zone, thereby effectively enforcing a U.S. system within the country. According to Michael Donoghue, Panamanians rejected the Canal Zone’s exclusivity, its discriminatory police, who routinely harassed locals living alongside the Canal Zone’s perimeter, and Zonians (persons living in the Canal Zone) who were granted immunity from Panamanian courts.7 Despite efforts to industrialize and modernize the isthmus, the U.S. operation of the canal and the privileges afforded to Zonians hindered progress outside the Canal Zone’s borders.
In response to mounting local dissent, the United States agreed to revise the treaty twice, but without offering an end date to its administration of the canal or the Canal Zone. In 1936, the Hull-Alfaro Treaty abolished the protectorate status, prevented the United States from seizing territory without Panamanian consent, and allowed domestic merchants more rights to compete against commissaries in the Canal Zone.8 In 1955, the Filós-Hines Treaty was signed to address Panama’s grievances. U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower agreed to an increase Panama’s annuity and to end Washington’s monopoly over railroad and highway construction. Even though the 1936 treaty had stopped Washington from interfering in local affairs, the issue of sovereignty remained. The intensification of Panama’s disdain over the Canal Zone led students from the university to mobilize demonstrations in front of the Canal Zone and U.S. embassy. In May 1958, Universidad de Panamá students and professors staged Operación Soberanía (Operation Sovereignty), during which protestors planted Panamanian flags in the Canal Zone. On 3 November 1959, students reenacted the protest from the previous year in violent demonstrations. The treaty’s modifications were insufficient at quelling unrest on the isthmus.9
As students and laborers expressed themselves on the street, a Panamanian delegate to the United Nations Ninth and Twelfth Assemblies (1956 and 1957, respectively), George W. Westerman, advocated on behalf of the country to an international audience. Westerman did not use the term “Third World” or “Third Worldism,” but the logic behind such theories was present in his thinking. For instance, he discussed Panama’s dilemma with the United States within the context of two sovereign countries disputing land claims.10 According to Westerman, Panama had never relinquished sovereignty over land within the Canal Zone, but instead had allowed the United States to operate on Panamanian soil. In contrast, the United States claimed that the Canal Zone, including the land and water inside its perimeter, fell under its jurisdiction. During his years as a UN representative, Westerman challenged U.S. attempts to categorize Panama and the Canal Zone as part of its territory as it did with Puerto Rico.11 Panama’s UN delegates had no interest in drawing comparisons between Panama and Puerto Rico. For instance, when the United States tried to designate the Canal Zone as a territory in the 1946 United Nations Committee on Information from Non-Self-Governing Territories, Westerman, along with Panamanian diplomat Ricardo J. Alfaro, asserted Panamanian sovereignty over the Canal Zone and distanced the isthmus from Puerto Rico.
Following Westerman’s time as a delegate, a confrontation between Panamanians and Zonians on 9 January 1964, known as the Nueve de Enero (1964 Panama Flag Riots) devastated the isthmus. Gathered en masse, students from the university and Instituto Nacional peacefully entered the Canal Zone to protest the absence of their national flag at Balboa High School, where Zonian students raised the U.S. flag instead. They were responding to the Zonians’ contempt for a U.S. order to fly the Panamanian flag at designated sites in the zone. When the Panamanian students walked into the Canal Zone, hostile Zonians greeted them in front of the school and reportedly tore the Panamanian flag, which encouraged Panamanian students to retaliate. Three days of rioting in Panama City and Colón ensued until the U.S. military silenced the demonstrations. Twenty-one Panamanians and four Americans died during these riots. These protests provoked President Roberto Chiari to break relations with the United States. The students pushed the country to act and seek new treaties that would end the U.S.-run Canal Zone and nationalize the canal. The event was a watershed moment in Panamanian history.12
The 1964 Panama Flag Riots spurred the Organization of American States (OAS) to become involved in the canal issue. To restore diplomatic relations between the nations, leaders of the Inter-American Peace Committee of the OAS mediated discussions on renegotiating the Panama Canal treaties.13 Formed in 1948 to promote peace and security in the Western Hemisphere, the OAS was tasked with resolving conflicts between member states. However, since Washington dominated the organization, the OAS was often used as an instrument of U.S. power. After the 1964 Panama Flag Riots, however, the OAS recommended that U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson renegotiate the treaty in late 1964. By 1967, three treaty drafts were presented to both governments. Under them, as Johnson requested, the United States would still have rights to protect the canal operations. In addition, the U.S. military would maintain its presence in the Canal Zone on sites currently occupied by the armed forces until 2004. Johnson tried to ease tensions between the two countries, but not to lose the waterway entirely to Panamanians. Washington wanted to maintain its strong presence in Latin America at the height of the Cold War. With neither side rushing to ratify the treaty, the negotiations failed to generate a suitable treaty for either nation.14
Since the construction of the canal, diverse working- and middle-class individuals attempted to assert Panama’s dominion over the Canal Zone. As the years passed, workers, students, and merchants channeled their frustrations against the United States in protests, riots, and peaceful demonstrations. The inability to enact a pact that offered an end date to the U.S. control of the waterway became one of the most troublesome issues in the elections before the military coup. When the National Guard seized power in 1968, it presented itself as an alternative to the oligarchic political style that Panamanians had grown accustomed to during the previous half century. With Torrijos as its leader, the regime proposed to enter new treaty negotiations.
On 11 October 1968, the Panamanian National Guard staged a coup and removed President Arnulfo Arias from office eleven days into his presidency. Arias faced retribution for threatening to replace and retire officers he saw as too powerful and a danger to his new government. A civilian-military junta, comprised of five citizens and a few officers, displaced the president and his supporters. The military’s decision to take control came as no surprise; the move was symptomatic of its growing political power.15 However, once in command, the officers lacked a clear agenda for the nation.16 In droves, politicized masses challenged the Guard’s unconstitutional coup, though not necessarily the displacement of the unpopular elite.
To unite the country, the government devised a populist ideology known as Torrijismo, named after its new ruler, General Torrijos. The ideology blended the general’s charismatic persona with the isthmus’s longstanding tradition of plebian republicanism. In December 1969, at the age of thirty-nine, Torrijos emerged as the nation’s strongman. Young, easy going, machista, and attractive, the general exuded a brand of Panamanian masculinity rooted in military training, which differed from Arias’s more compromised image as a career politician. The general exhibited a toughness instilled in him at the Academia Militar de San Salvador and the U.S. Army Training Center at Fort Gulick in the Canal Zone in the 1950s. Under President John F. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress, the U.S. Army Training Center changed its name to the U.S. Army School of the Americas in 1963. Torrijos’s military persona and penchant for alcohol, women, and street vernacular added to his charm. Donoghue argues that Torrijos used his persona in an effort to “inject … self-reliance into the national psyche” to combat the United States and the elite.17 Torrijos’s celebrity contributed to the formation of the ideology, but Torrijismo also relied on plebian notions of equality, nationalism, and class. For over a century, Panamanians had fostered an egalitarian identity that united popular sectors, resisted U.S. imperialism, and demanded national sovereignty.18
On 5 September 1969, the regime designated an advisory commission, attached to the Ministry of Foreign Relations, to evaluate the three treaties proposed in 1967. Over a few months, the advisors drafted points the treaties needed to resolve. The treaties could be approved only if they ended the perpetuity clause, abolished the Canal Zone government, and returned the Canal Zone’s land to Panama. Panamanians also wanted the United States to cease all construction projects unrelated to the maintenance, functioning, and protection of the waterway. Delegates especially wanted the removal of the U.S. armed forces.19 At the OAS offices on 26 June 1970, the Panamanian commission met with President Richard Nixon’s secretary of state, William Rogers, and Ambassador Daniel Hofgren, to share their points. After the meeting, Minister of Foreign Relations Juan Antonio Tack reported to Washington that Panama would no longer continue with the 1967 treaties and preferred to start new talks.20
By 1971 and 1972, the United States had agreed to six of the seven points the Panamanian advisors had devised in 1970. Under Nixon, Washington was willing to abandon the “in perpetuity” clause and agreed to set a date to transfer the administration of the canal to Panama. However, the conversations stalled when the United States insisted on controlling the canal for another fifty years until a sea-level waterway could replace the 1914 canal. Torrijos was in no position to accept any treaty that would extend foreign power on the isthmus beyond 2003, which marked the one-hundred-year anniversary of Panama’s independence. The general halted treaty negotiations and prepared for a new round of talks contingent on the state’s international diplomacy.21The possibility of failure weighed heavily on the military government, but the regime’s commitment to gaining sovereignty over the canal shed a new light on the formerly despised Guard in the 1970s.
The geopolitical climate presented Panama with an opportunity to challenge the North American giant with support from the Third World movement in the 1970s. During the canal negotiations under Torrijos, the country found solidarity with other nations interested in removing colonial vestiges to exercise full sovereignty. With the United States entangled in a Cold War with the Soviet Union, Panama fostered relations with the Global South, which wanted to shift the balance of power in its favor and demand the nationalization of natural resources. With Torrijos at the helm, the isthmus entered a new series of canal negotiations as Torrijistas and members of the Third World.
Starting in 1971, Panama inserted itself into discussions on the Global South’s development for fairer canal negotiations with the United States. During the 1970s, the United States was struggling with several factors that weakened its position but benefited Panama.22 The United States was in a vulnerable position as the Soviet Union achieved military parity, and the war in Vietnam weakened U.S. military forces. As Tack pointed out, the Vietnam War demonstrated to Panamanians how “power through force and military technology cannot defeat a small country fighting for its independence.”23 The U.S. attention to the Vietnam War and ongoing criticism of its involvement in other countries’ internal affairs placed Panama in a fortunate position. To find support for its cause, Panama joined the “third force” in politics (in support of neither the United States nor the Soviet Union), which began to emerge after 1945 and grew over time to wield considerable influence in the United Nations (UN) and Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).24 The third force included countries that shared a similar desire to control their policymaking, economic systems, and use of natural resources without foreign intervention. These emerging postcolonial states built a bloc with like-minded nations interested in working together to achieve the benefits of modernity without the United States’ or the Soviet Union’s assistance.25 As part of the movement, Panama found an international community with similar aspirations and a doctrine like Torrijismo. In missives and speeches, Panamanian diplomats and the general frequently described the isthmus as a Third World nation fending off imperialist control of its natural resources. The regime relied on this movement to pressure Washington in the largest international governing bodies of the world.
When Tack declared “a new image of Panama exists in the world” in 1971, he foreshadowed the isthmus’s progress in the UN and its path to join the UNSC.26 Before attending the Twenty-Sixth UN General Assembly meeting in New York City, the minister delivered a letter to UN General Secretary U Thant on Panama’s efforts to negotiate with the United States. The organization translated the letter into five languages and delivered it to every member. Once the meeting began, Panamanian representatives gave a presentation to convince the delegates to demand fairer negotiations and treaties between Panama and the United States. Tack’s speech stressed Panama’s geopolitical position and importance in past international forums. For example, he drew on the 1826 Congreso Anfictiónico de Panamá (Amphictyonic Congress of Panama), convened by Venezuelan liberator Simón Bolίvar, to claim the country had always exhibited the principles of the UN in terms of building alliances with other nations to promote peace.27 Tack pressed on, saying that Panama had always been a center for international commerce and cultural exchange, and that U.S. control over the canal impinged on the nation’s neutrality and sovereignty. In his presentation, Tack cited the Declaration on the Strengthening of International Security passed by the Third World meeting in Lusaka, Zambia, on 17 December 1971, which championed the idea of a collective and universal commitment from countries in the Global South to ensure a secure world without military alliances. Tack used the declaration to emphasize Panama’s commitment to the Third World.28 Despite objections from Washington, Panama won an overwhelming majority of votes to host the next UNSC meeting in 1973—a monumental achievement for Panama, which would have larger implications for negotiating the Canal Zone.
The meeting not only secured Panama the highest vote for any member to join the UNSC, but also fashioned Torrijos as a head of a generation interested in forging new partnerships outside of the East-West superpowers. At the UN General Assembly, Torrijos became more of a politician than a general. He had foregone his usual military regalia and wore a suit and tie, an outfit he would continue to wear during meetings with U.S. President Jimmy Carter.29 A year after the assembly, the newly drafted 1972 constitution contributed to legitimizing the general’s rule with international allies. In the new constitution, Article 277 designated Torrijos as “Maximum Leader,” but also the chief negotiator in all matters related to the canal.30 Panama’s induction into the UNSC in October 1971 and General Torrijos’s legal status with the 1972 constitution cleared the way for the UNSC to convene in Panama City in 1973.
For seven days in March 1973, Panama was “the capital of the world.”31 Unions, students, workers, and other groups greeted delegates in Panama City. Panamanians were asked to show support and unite under Torrijos’s message.32 At the UNSC meeting, the general directed his attention to the Global South. He insisted that Panama wanted to resemble African states with resilient and dignified peoples, who fought for their natural resources. Egypt’s nationalizing the Suez Canal impressed the isthmus.33 The rousing speech was followed by a resolution to vote on discussing the canal question as a council, but the United States vetoed the proposal. At the meeting, India, Kenya, Sudan, and Yugoslavia sided with Panama. These countries continued to urge their colleagues in other parts of the world to side with Panama as a stance against U.S. imperialism.34
At the same time that Torrijos was courting the UN, he built ties with delegates from the NAM by arranging personal visits or offering monetary aid to countries where he could not schedule a trip. The NAM was established in 1961 to prioritize the interests of former colonies amidst the global tension of the Cold War. Self-determination was the founding principle of the movement. As a united bloc, the members used their influence within the UN General Assembly. The NAM included leaders from a wide geographical base, but was especially influenced by Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Shri Jawaharlal Nehru of India, and Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia. By the 1970s, many of the founders had passed away or been deposed, but Tito remained and was a staunch supporter of Torrijos. As early as 1972, Torrijos conversed with Tito to share updates on Panama’s negotiations.35 The intimate meetings influenced the NAM’s decision to make Panama a priority in its convention in Guyana, held from 8 to 11 August 1972. At this conference, NAM adopted the “Georgetown Declaration,” Which addressed Latin American initiatives for the region’s absolute independence, specifically Puerto Rico’s.36 To prove its loyalty toward its new allies, Panama agreed to various missions in Africa and the Middle East, such as sending four hundred soldiers to observe and maintain peace after the Yom Kippur War between Egypt and Israel.37 The NAM accepted Panama unanimously as a member in 1975.38
One of the most important NAM meetings for Panama took place in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in August 1976. In front of the eighty-six countries attending, Torrijos expressed himself freely without criticism from Washington. The visit to Sri Lanka provided unprecedented international exposure for the isthmus.39 The goal was to present Panama’s case to the NAM and get its support for Tack and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s agreement at the UN’s next General Assembly. The agreement, drafted in 1973 and signed by Kissinger in 1974, listed the following eight points: abrogate the 1903 treaty, eliminate the perpetuity clause, have an end-date for the United States in Panama, terminate U.S. jurisdiction, revert the Canal Zone to Panama, give Panama equal rights to canal earnings, allow Panama to participate in administering the canal, and jointly work together to protect and renovate the existing waterway.40 Torrijos ordered the Panamanian press to cover every moment of his journey to Sri Lanka so Panamanians could connect with him and the Global South dimension of his trip. At the conference, the general argued that if Panamanians controlled the waterway, the canal would no longer serve as an instrument for U.S. hegemonic force. Rather, the canal would benefit countries also seeking modernity through interoceanic trade. His impassioned speech captivated the audience and ensured that eighty-one states voted in Panama’s favor in a resolution on the canal at the next UN General Assembly in October 1976.41
While Torrijos fostered ties outside the region, he also worked toward building Latin American allies in the OAS. After encouraging new negotiations between Panama and the United States following the 1964 Panama Flag Riots, the OAS had proven its usefulness to the isthmus, even if the talks failed to bring anything to fruition. With that in mind, Panamanian delegates attended every OAS meeting between 1970 and 1973 in order to question the United States’s control of the OAS and to encourage Latin American countries to side with the isthmus when discussing the Canal Zone and canal. In turn, Panama declared support for countries also resisting Washington. For instance, Panama requested Cuba’s reintegration into the OAS as a direct challenge to Washington during the OAS General Assembly on 9 April 1973.42 The isthmus also expressed solidarity with Puerto Rico’s aspirations for national liberation.43 Torrijos’s team of diplomats impressed observers from the Global South with their attention to Puerto Rican and Cuban affairs. While Cuba had broken its ties to the United States, both Panama and Puerto Rico were both regarded as U.S. neocolonies by many developing states.
Panama’s hard stance toward Washington received positive reactions from members of the OAS. For example, Argentina’s president, Juan Domingo Perón, requested Torrijos’s presence in Buenos Aires on 15 January 1974. At his home, Perón interviewed Torrijos and identified with Panama’s cause.44 The Colombian president, Alfonso López Michelson, and the Venezuelan president, Carlos Andrés Pérez, also defended Panama in the press, visited the general frequently, and championed Torrijos as a “flawless patriot.”45 These two countries had a lot to gain from new treaties. The general promised its neighbors (Venezuela, Costa Rica, and Colombia) that once they were passed, he would allow them to transport natural and industrial products for free though the waterway.46 The region sympathized with the isthmus and rallied together for Panama in the UN.
The mounting pressure on the United States from international bodies set in motion the negotiations that took place between 1975 and 1977. Ellsworth Bunker and Sol Linowitz headed the talks for the United States. Juan Antonio Tack, Rómulo Escobar Bethancourt, Adolfo Ahumada, Jaime Arias Calderón, and Nicolás Gonzaléz Revilla led the Panamanian delegation. Key issues, however, such as the closure of U.S. military bases, the dismantling of the Canal Zone government, and a final end-date for U.S. administration of the waterway, dragged out the talks.47 Nevertheless, the general continued to form relationships with states, and his negotiators stayed firm on drafting a treaty in Panama’s favor. Panama’s tactics and growing presence in the Third World were placing pressure on American negotiators. In the late 1970s, Bunker even admitted that Latin American endorsements on behalf of Panama had influenced the negotiations.48 Torrijos’s doctrine and progress with the negotiations motivated artists from the Universidad de Panamá to work alongside the military and to back the government’s treaty efforts.
As Torrijos and the Foreign Ministry strove to create unity between Panama’s cause and that of the Global South, artists at the university who identified with Torrijismo wanted to participate in convincing Panamanians to support the negotiations. To appease the students, the university rector approved the creation of fine arts programs for undergraduates to promote national culture. The Departamento de Expresiones Artisticas (DEXA)—which received government assistance to generate public support—and the Grupo Experimental Cine Universitario (GECU)—which students formed to express their approval of the canal treaties and regime’s social polices—emerged as two different types of cultural programs at the university. The fine arts students involved in these organizations worked in conjunction with other intellectuals to drive the United States from the isthmus. Even though the fine arts groups at the university originated from different intentions and expectations, both provided a form of propaganda for the regime.
In the first months following the coup, the university became a refuge of resistance for students who had devoted their lives to protesting government corruption and the U.S. administration of the canal. Distrustful of the regime, leftists, professors, artists, and multiple student organizations banded together to oppose the National Guard. The escalation of demonstrations motivated officers to imprison and exile protestors. Some students suffered severe torture and died from their wounds in prison. When a provisional government formed in December 1968, it shut down the university to deal with the crisis. Under a new administration and with close supervision from the Ministry of Education, the university reopened partially on 9 June 1969, to weary pupils.49
To make amends with students and professors, the state allowed exiled students to return to the country and to re-enroll in the university.50 The institution also underwent a series of reforms that reorganized departments with a populist agenda. Under a new rector, the institution adopted as templates The National Plan of Development and The Manifesto for University Reform, written in the 1960s, to reinvent the school as a “revolutionary people’s university.”51 The proposals altered the university’s role in Panamanian society to make it a space for everyone, regardless of class status. The Manifesto for University Reform specifically gave the university a new mission statement to unify the country with strong national values. The university’s involvement in a cultural movement fit within the acceptable parameters for change under Torrijismo. While the government never stopped surveilling university students, the military’s commitment to reforming the university was sufficient for students who returned.
DEXA was the first fine arts program to open on campus with the regime’s support. Created on 19 November 1969, DEXA fell under the direction of Torrijos’s younger sister, Aurea “Baby” Torrijos Herrera. Multiple artistic groups, such as a university choir, a ballet company, a folkloric ensemble, and a theatrical troupe, formed under DEXA. Artists acknowledged that DEXA’s purpose was to direct public attention toward the government’s canal policy.52 The university also funded DEXA’s performance of Lucho Bejarano’s “Colonia Americana No!” in Argentina, which spurred Argentineans and Panamanians to sing and march to the anti-imperialist tune.53 Torrijos’s sister further ensured that DEXA’s performances complied with the military’s agenda.
An overview of the Trashumantes (Nomads) theatrical troupe highlights the multiple ways DEXA used Torrijos’ nationalist and Third World doctrine to educate the populace on Panama’s canal negotiations. In 1970, the student-led troupe started outside of DEXA, but after its first performance in El Chorrillo (an impoverished neighborhood near the Canal Zone and the site of the 1964 popular uprising against the U.S. enclave), Torrijos’s sister hired Trashumantes.54 As employees of DEXA, the group met and worked from 9 A.M. to 2 P.M. to compose plays and practice scenes. Performances were free of charge for everyone in attendance.
The Trashumantes appealed to the lower class by staging sociodramas—plays that addressed social ills and propounded nationalistic rhetoric in ways that were inspired by Polish director Jerzy Grotowski and the Argentine activist theater of Once al Sur. The troupe followed theories set forth by Grotowski’s Towards a Poor Theatre, which suggested performers work in nontraditional spaces (buildings, rooms, parks, and streets), rather than mainstream theater houses, in order to achieve a greater impact. His experimental theater sought an elimination of excesses, such as elaborate costuming, lighting, and makeup, in order to build a relationship between actors and audiences for “poor theater.”55 The performative activism appealed to Trashumantes actors, who embraced Grotowski and adopted Once al Sur’s uniform—jeans, sweaters, and shoes, which required no alterations.56 The group’s sociodramas capitalized on these influences and ruptured the traditional conventions of theater in Panama.
The Trashumantes’ sociodramas borrowed from historical moments when Panamanians resisted the presence of U.S. servicemen and Zonians. The troupe performed plays by local playwrights José de Jesús Martínez, the general’s closest confidant, and Rogelio Sinán. Their first self-composed play, Alto a la Patria Boba (An End to the Foolish Fatherland) presented three tragic conflicts between the United States and Panama: the 1856 Tajada de Sandía (Watermelon Slice Incident), the 1925 Movimiento Inquilinario (Renters’ Strike), and the 1964 Nueve de Enero (Panama Flag Riots). The play ended with the Panamanian country’s awakening from a stupefied slumber and embracing a decision to protect its sovereignty with Torrijos at the helm as a kind of deus ex machina. According to the play, the country, under military control, was no longer a patria boba, but a nation ready to fight for its resources. The term patria boba originated in the early twentieth century to describe “innocent developing states manipulated by powerful world powers.”57 Unlike in traditional theater, after each performance, the Trashumantes arranged a moment of dialogue with the audience to interpret the plays and explain the regime’s canal negotiation strategies. The workshops and theater style of the Trashumantes worked well in regions without access to the government.58
The Trashumantes bare-bones activist performances on national liberation gained the group awards at international festivals held in Panama and Colombia in the early 1970s. The festivals, in turn, offered the regime an international platform on which to show that the state had no intention to suppress art, so long as the artists complied with the directives set forth by DEXA and the regime. If not, the regime quickly suppressed opposition movements and artwork. The troupe gained admirers such as Jorge Alí Triana, a Colombian theater director who served as a judge at the 1972 festival in Panama.59At the Theater Festival of Manizales, Colombia, the Trashumantes won another prize.60 These festivals allowed Panama to engage with other Global South countries taking an interest in Panama’s plight after having interacted with Torrijos.
In addition to DEXA, another university program, the GECU, aimed to stimulate an anti-imperialist consciousness among the masses. After the university hosted a weeklong festival on Cuban film, Panamanian students were inspired to learn more about guerrilla artistry. Cuban films such as Lucίa, Los Dίas del Agua, Memorias del Subdesarollo, and Las Aventuras de Juan Quin were screened at the festival to major fanfare.61 Leftist students embraced Cuba’s cinematic approach, as well as various manifestos on creating a revolutionary cinema, such as Brazilian Glauber Rocha’s “The Aesthetics of Hunger,” Cuban Julio Garcίa Espinosa’s “An Imperfect Cinema,” and Argentineans Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino’s popular “Towards a Third Cinema.”62 Using these latest theories on creating documentaries, on 5 September 1972, Pedro Rivera started a student-led cinematography organization. Inspired by the Cuban Revolution, the majority identified as leftists and used the socialist state as an example of what Panama could achieve without the presence of the United States. Rather than an organ for explicit propaganda, the GECU was an independent group that participated in the Torrijista effort.63 A decade later, Rivera and others claimed they never received government bribes.64 Instead, the group was a willing collaborator in advocating for the treaties, so long as the negotiations strengthened the nation’s independence.
Like their counterparts in the Global South, GECU started with little equipment but grew over time. At the GECU’s founding, the university provided a Bolex 16-mm camera and sound equipment. As neorealists, the group’s members preferred outside settings and nonprofessional actors for their documentaries. In their work, these Panamanians ventured outside their comfort zones and captured the daily lives of the poor to reveal that the isthmus drew few benefits from the U.S.-controlled canal. GECU’s documentary mode fits Julianne Burton’s description of a “realist, national, and popular” cinema that spurred viewers into political action in the Third World.65 Every film served as a tool to enrage Panamanians and force them to question living in a semicolonized environment.
The crew produced thirty short pictures between 1972 and 1977, with Torrijismo and canal negotiations as the focus. One of their first five-minute shorts, “Ode to the New Nation” (“Canto a la Patria que ahora nace”), alludes to the contradictory presence of the United States as a peacekeeper for the canal and an imperialist in Panama. The film, with GECU cofounder Enoch Castillero’s expertise as a writer and documentary poet, included images from the 1964 Panama Flag Riots. In 1973, Rivera and Castillero filmed Ahora Ya No Estamos Solos, a fifty-five-minute film that recorded the UNSC meeting held in Panama. The film captivated audiences and provided a positive image for the regime. Shown on national television, it offered Panamanians coverage of Torrijos’s speech and the UN’s favorable response. The crew filmed their most influential documentaries between 1975 and 1976. As the table indicates, in 1976, 60,274 people in 435 screenings across the country watched GECU’s documentaries, and the numbers almost doubled in 1977.66 These films and the discussions that followed the screenings strove to manufacture consent for the regime’s proposed treaties.
The advances the GECU made at home to spread Torrijos’s message paralleled its gains with international cinematographers. In 1977, members of the GECU attended two important festivals for filmmakers in the Global South. At the Fifth Committee of Latin American Filmmakers (Comité de Cineastas de América Latina) meeting in Mérida, Venezuela, Rivera was selected out of eighty delegates to serve on the roundtable. For his presentation, Rivera gave a presentation that covered the tense political climate in Panama and the immediate goal of producing shorts related to the anti-imperialist fight. GECU’s presence at the festival impacted other delegates. In an interview, Rivera claims that, after watching “Man against the Wind” (“Hombre de cara al viento”), audiences were shocked by the footage of U.S. aggression toward Panama.67
Even though the GECU’s mission reflected the Torrijista agenda, its young activists were not peons of the military. The musicians, writers, painters, and dancers who congregated in the studio and then GECU’s new headquarters denounced policies that ran counter to their leftist ideals. On occasion, members of the organization would report to Torrijos any misgivings related to the administration of the university.68 The relationship had to be mutual and serve the interests of the artists and the military. Since the National Guard worked toward continuing the generational struggle for sovereignty, the GECU’s members were willing to act as Torrijistas. The cultural movement at home, with Torrijista and Third World influences, pacified and rallied people in favor of Torrijos’s regime.
The university groups engineered a cultural movement that awakened the working-class consciousness of Panamanians in major cities and in the interior. Through cinema and theater, the artists reached out to individuals previously marginalized from politics and discussions on the canal, including many Panamanians of color whom the Torrijos regime embraced but the elites had long ignored. To maintain the dialogue on anticolonialism and Panamanian sovereignty in disparate communities, artists formed film clubs and impromptu theater groups after each screening and performance. The university students’ ongoing cultural initiatives attracted many Panamanians and encouraged them to consider themselves as Torrijistas. Artists cemented popular support for the regime’s nationalist program and cult of personality. In doing so, they readied Panamanians for the key 1977 plebiscite.
On 7 September 1977, Torrijos and President Carter signed the Panama Canal treaties at the OAS headquarters in Washington. The Torrijos-Carter Treaties were two separate accords that concerned the canal’s operation and neutrality. The treaties guaranteed Panama control of the canal on 31 December 1999 and required the United States to train Panamanians to administer the waterway under a Panama Canal Commission. Rather than the all-American board of the Panama Canal Company, the new commission would start with five U.S. members and four Panamanians and continue to reduce the number of Americans, eventually replacing all of them with locals in 1999, after already appointing a Panamanian as the head commissioner in 1990. As for the Canal Zone, the United States reverted nearly 60 percent of the 648-square-mile area to Panama on 1 October 1979. The treaty eliminated the hated U.S. Canal Zone Police in 1982. Subsequently, the Canal Zone would shut down completely and revert to Panamanian hands. While one treaty dealt with nationalizing the canal, the other treaty focused on the canal’s neutrality. It did, however, grant the United States unlimited access to transport warships through the waterway and to defend the canal with the continued use of military bases on Panamanian soil.69
Three days after the signing ceremony, the general announced a plebiscite for 23 October 1977, to a jubilant crowd in Panama.70 The public that day danced on the streets, cried, and watched the Club Gallistico’s “sovereignty” cock fights with the best roosters from around the country.71 The crowd cheered Torrijos’s adherence to the 1972 constitution’s Article 274, which ordered a plebiscite for all treaties and laws related to the waterway. The Electoral Tribunal had forty-four days to plan, organize, and coordinate voting booths for approximately 787,251 Panamanians.72 During the month of October, roundtables and lectures in favor of the treaties were scheduled throughout the country. This is not to claim that everyone in Panama supported the treaties. Fistfights often occurred with left-wing students in the Revolutionary Student Front (Frente Estudiantil Revolucionario, FER-29), who opposed the treaties. Leftist students in FER-29 were not afraid to paint its slogan, “Bases No!,” all over public property and set fire to U.S. Ambassador William Jordan’s car.73 However, the government overpowered the opposition. Claiming he had nothing to hide, Torrijos invited the UN and the OAS to supervise the plebiscite.74
As the plebiscite went into effect, Torrijos continued to court heads of state, but paradoxically in Western countries allied with the United States. The trips Torrijos made between September and October of 1977 served two purposes: to appease U.S. allies weary of military states and to transmit messages at home of Torrijos’s ability to function as a world leader. He began his trips in Israel and in Western Europe. The meeting with the Israel prime minister displeased the general’s NAM allies, but pleased the U.S. Senate. As with his previous excursions, the general wrote reports on his interviews and urged citizens to mirror his campaign by convincing neighbors to vote yes.75 Torrijos generated the largest electectoral turnout in Panama.
On the day of the plebiscite, mechanisms to influence the vote were minimal but present. UN observers noted minor irregularities, such as plainclothes National Guardsmen manning voting booths (the president of the Electoral Tribunal had emphasized that guards would not attend in uniform), Electoral Tribunal vehicles covered with pro-treaty stickers, and even officials at stations using megaphones to encourage the population to vote yes. Still, the referees considered these blatant displays of propaganda negligible in manipulating the vote.76 With UN and OAS observers in attendance, the tallied votes were as follows: votes submitted, 766,232; yes votes, 506,805; no votes, 245,117; and null votes, 14,310.77 Despite losses in certain districts, the regime’s efforts ensured the treaties passed with a Panamanian majority. Following the results, UN representative Erik Suy commended Panama’s plebiscite as an example of democracy.78
The plebiscite was a vote of confidence for the regime and the chief negotiators of the treaties. The cultural revolution that took place in the 1970s demonstrates the political impact of performative tactics to strengthen the legitimacy of the regime. The artistic mechanisms allowed everyday Panamanians to imagine themselves as part of a patriotic movement to resist colonialism. The performative tactics of DEXA and GECU fomented a nationwide desire to fight as Torrijistas for the canal and for the closure of the Canal Zone. When it came down to voting in the plebiscite, Panamanians already understood the severity of the conflict and voted as activists. In 1977, the county had made its decision clear with the plebiscite, and, after a grueling year of debates, the U.S. Senate ratified the treaties in April 1978. The cultural revolution and plebiscite afforded the military the legitimacy needed to maintain power without resorting heavily to violence.
Cultural mechanisms were essential in fomenting a movement to nationalize the canal and cement Torrijos’s legacy as Panama’s heroic leader, a legacy that to a considerable extent exists to this day. Artists and their commitment to the military regime impacted the way Panamanians conceived the rule of an authoritarian government. For lower-class Panamanians, the military, under Torrijos, liberated the nation and instilled an independent spirit in the people.79 This chapter’s reinterpretation of the negotiations shows that the regime relied on Third-World commonalities to foster international solidarity. In turn, artists transmitted blended messages of Torrijismo and Third Worldism with films and theatrical performances for Panamanians. During Panama’s military era, its regime emerged as a leader for anti-imperialists and contributed in the 1970s Third World movement—albeit by manipulating Third Worldist discourse to sustain the populace’s satisfaction with authoritarian rule.
1. George Priestly, Military Government and Popular Participation in Panama: The Torrijos’Torrijos’ Regime, 1968–1975 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986); Robert Harding, Military Foundations of Panamanian Politics (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2001); Carlos Guevara Mann, Panamanian Militarism: A Historical Interpretation (Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1996); Steve Ropp, Panamanian Politics: From Guarded Nation to National Guard (New York: Praeger, 1982); and Walter LaFeber, The Panama Canal: The Crisis in Historical Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979).
2. Tom Long, “Putting the Canal on the Map: Panamanian Agenda-Setting and the 1973 Security Council Meetings,” Diplomatic History 38, no. 2 (2014): 431–55.
3. Omar Jaén Suárez, Las negociaciones de los Tratados Torrijos-Carter 1970–1979 (Panamá: Autoridad del Canal de Panamá, 2005); Omar Jaén Suárez, “Historia de las negociaciones de los tratados Torrijos-Carter,” Revista Lotería 57, nos. 473–74 (2007): 9–44.
4. Abdul Karim Bangara, “Toward a Pan–Third Worldism: A Challenge to the Association of Third World Studies,” Journal of Third World Studies 20, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 95.
5. Germán Esteban Alburquerque Fuschini, “Third Worldism: Sensibility and Ideology in Uruguay—From the Third Position to the Thought of Carlos Real de Azúa,” Third World Quarterly 36, no. 2 (2015): 306–32; Alburquerque Fuschini, “The Third-Worldism in the Argentinean Intellectual Field: A Hegemonic Sensibility (1961–1987),” Tempo 19, no. 35 (2013): 221–28; Alburquerque Fuschini, “Third World and Third Worldism in Brazil: Towards Its Constitution as Hegemonic Sensibility in the Brazilian Cultural Field, 1958–1990,” Estudios Ibero-Americanos (Impresso) 37, no. 2 (2011): 176–95.
6. Walter LaFeber, The Panama Canal: The Crisis in Historical Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 30.
7. Michael Donoghue wrote the definitive work on the U.S. Canal Zone and the relationship between Zonians and Panamanians. Michael Donoghue, Borderland on the Isthmus: Race, Culture, and the Struggle for the Canal Zone (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014).
8. Sheila Hamilton, “Panamanian Politics and Panama’s Relationship with the United States Leading up to the Hull-Alfaro Treaty,” MA thesis, University of Victoria, 2003, 26–77.
9. John Major, Prize Possession: The United States and the Panama Canal 1903–1979 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 329–57.
10. George Westerman, “Los Territorios no Autonomos y las Naciones Unidas—1958,” Lotería 8, no. 31 (1958): 2.
11. Westerman, “Los Territorios,” 10.
12. Alan McPherson observes that the National Guard refused to pacify Panamanians and assist U.S. forces on 9 January 1964. The Guard’s decision and the government’s later diplomatic break with the United States signaled a shift in U.S.-Panamanian relations. Alan McPherson, “Rioting for Dignity: Masculinity, National Identity and Anti-U.S. Resistance in Panama,” Gender & History 19, no. 2 (2007): 234.
13. Michael Hogan, Panama Canal in American Politics: Domestic Advocacy and the Evolution of Policy (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986), 77.
14. Major, Prize Possession, 329–57.
15. As Alan McPherson observes, the National Guard refused to pacify Panamanians and react to U.S. forces presence on the isthmus on 9 January 1964. The Guard’s decision to stay in the barracks signaled a shift in military-Panamanian relations. For the first time, the military sided with civilian protestors and defied the government. McPherson, “Rioting for Dignity,” 234.
16. Guevara Mann, Panamanian Militarism, 144.
17. Michael E. Donoghue, “Roberto Durán, Omar Torrijos and the Rise of Isthmian Machismo,” in Sports Culture in Latin American History, ed. David M. K. Sheinin (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), 21.
18. “The Hay-Bunau-Varilla 1903 Treaty,” reprinted in LeFeber, The Panama Canal, 256.
19. Ministro Juan Antonio Tack, Memoria del ministerio de relaciones exteriores (Panama: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, 1970), 16–17.
20. Tack, Memoria (1970), 20.
21. LeFeber, The Panama Canal, 180.
22. LaFeber, The Panama Canal, 180
23. Ministro Juan Antonio Tack, Memoria del ministerio de relaciones exteriores (Panama: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, 1971), 18.
24. Mark T. Berger and Heloise Weber, Rethinking the Third World: International Development and World Politics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Jeffrey J. Byrne, “Algiers between Bandung and Belgrade: Guerilla Diplomacy and the Evolution of the Third World Movement, 1954–1962,” in The Middle East and the Cold War, ed. Massimiliano Trentin (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012).
25. Robert B. Rakove, Kennedy, Johnson, and the Nonaligned World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), xvii; Robert Vitalis, “The Midnight Ride of Kwame Nkrumah and Other Fables of Bandung (Ban-doong),” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 4, no. 2 (2013): 277; Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (New York: New Press, 2007); Mark Atwood Lawrence, “The Rise and Fall of Nonalignment,” in The Cold War in the Third World, ed. Robert J. McMahon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 139–55.
26. Tack, Memoria (1971), 8.
27. Tack, Memoria (1971), 28.
28. Juan Antonio Tack’s speech in Omar Torrijos, Esta Victoria Pertenece al Pueblo (Panama: Centro de Impresión Educativa del Ministerio de Educación, 1978).
29. Karen DeYoung, “Torrijos Restless in Statesman Role,” Washington Post Foreign Service, 2 November 1977.
30. “The 1972 Constitution,” quoted in Organization of American States, Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Panama (Washington DC: General Secretariat of the OAS, 1985), 11.
31. “Exposición en Honor del Consejo de Seguridad,” Crítica, 15 March 1973.
32. “En apoyo al Consejo de Ceguridad se reunirán,” Crítica, 15 March 1973.
33. Omar Torrijos “Discurso del General de Brigada Omar Torrijos Herrera ante el consejo de seguridad de la O.N.U. Reunido en la Ciudad de Panamá el 15 de marzo de 1973” in Torrijos: Figura, tiempo, faena, ed. Justo Arroyo (Panama: Revista Lotería,1981): 419–23.
34. Tack, “Annex 4,” in Memoria (Panamá: N.A., 1973), 3.
35. Omar Torrijos, La Quinta Frontera: Partes de la batalla diplomática sobre el Canal de Panamá (Costa Rica: Ciudad Universitaria Rodrigo Facio, 1978), 26.
36. “Georgetown Declaration,” in A New International Economic Order: Selected Documents, 1945–1975, ed. Alfred George Moss and Harry N. M. Winton (New York: United Nations Institute for Training and Research, 1976), 2:379–80.
37. “Egipto,” La Estrella, November 16, 1973.
38. Ricaurte Soler, La Invasión de Estados Unidos (México: Siglo Veintiuno, 1991), 42; “Panamá observa cuarta conferencia de jefes de estado” La Estrella, 11 September 1973.
39. “Panamá observa cuarta conferencia de jefes de estado.”
40. Ministro Juan Antonio Tack, Memoria del ministerio de relaciones exteriores (Panamá: Ministero De Relaciones Exteriores., 1974), 45–46.
41. Tack, Memoria (1974), 45–46.
42. Juan Antonio Tack, “Texto del discurso que pronunciara el sr. ministro de relaciones exteriores en la sesión del 9 de abril de 1973 de la asamblea general de la Organización de Estados Americanos,” in Memoria del ministerio de relaciones exteriores (Panamá: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores., 1973), 102.
43. Jorge Aparicio, “Informe de la oficina de relaciones con países del tercer mundo y no alineados,” in Memoria del señor ministro de relaciones exteriores (Panama: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, 1977), 16.
44. Juan Antonio Tack, Memoria del ministerio de relaciones exteriores (Panamá: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, 1973).
45. Alfonso López Michelson, “Mi amigo Torrijos,” in Comandante de los pobres (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Torrijistas, 1984), 127.
46. “Declaración de Panamá,” La Estrella, March 22–24, 1975.
47. Major, Prize Possession, 343–46.
48. Ellsworth Bunker quoted in Hogan, Panama Canal, 77.
49. Jorge Conte-Porras, La rebelión de las esfinges: Historia del movimiento estudiantil panameño (Panama: Litho Impresora Panamá, 1977).
50. Conte-Porras, La rebelión de las esfinges.
51. “Universidad de Panamá: Orígenes y evolución,” Universidad de Panamá online, http://
52. Manuel De la Rosa, interview by author, Panama City, Panama, 20 October 2015.
53. Rubén Darίo Murgas, interview by author, Panama City, Panama, 20 October 2015.
54. De la Rosa, interview.
55. Jerzy Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre (New York: Routledge, 2002).
56. De la Rosa, interview.
57. Francisco Herrera, interview by author, Panama City, Panama, 20 March 2016.
58. De La Rosa, interview.
59. “I Took Panama,” El Panamá América, 4 November 2003.
60. Manuel De la Rosa, “Research Notes,” Personal Collection of Manuel De la Rosa.
61. Pedro Rivera, Cine Cine?: La memoria vencida (Panamá: Ediciones Fotograma, 2009), 216.
62. In 1965, Glauber Rocha wrote “A estética de fome,” in the Brazilian journal Revista Civilização Brasileira. For a translated version, see Glauber Rocha, “The Aesthetics of Hunger,” trans. Burnes Hollyman and Randal Johnson, in Twenty-Five Years of Latin American Cinema, ed. Michael Chanan (London: British Film Institute Books, 1983), 13–14. In 1969, Julio García Espinosa’s “Por un cine imperfecto” appeared in the Cuban journal Cine Cubano; for a translated version, see Julio García Espinosa, “For an Imperfect Cinema,” trans. Julianne Burton, Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media 5, no. 20 (1979): 24–26. Octavio Getino and Fernando Solanas, “Hacia un tercer cine,” Tricontinental 2, no. 13 (October 1969): 107–32.
63. Rivera, Cine Cine?, 130.
64. Pedro Rivera, “Testimonio: Omar Torrijos y el cine panameño,” Formato 16 5, no. 10 (October 1981): 3.
65. Julianne Burton, Cinema and Social Change (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 10.
66. Pedro Rivera, “Informe de panamá: V. encuentro del comité de cineastas de América Latina,” Formato 16 1, no. 2 (1976): 3.
67. Stella Calloni, “GECU internacional el grupo experimental de cine universitario: una cinematografía nacional que comienza a proyectarse hacia el mundo,” Formato 16 1, no. 2 (1976): 85–88.
68. Fernando Martínez, interview by author, Panama City, Panama, 29 January 2015.
69. Instituto Nacional de Telecomunicaciones, Documento histórico: tratado y anexos, Torrijos-Carter (Panama: Instituto Nacional de Telecomunicaciones, 1977).
70. Carlos J. Núñez, “Más de doscientos cincuenta mil panameños vitorearon al líder,” Crítica, 10 September 1977.
71. “En el gallίstico desafíoίo de Gallos soberanía,” Crítica, 6 September 1977.
72. República de Panamá Tribunal Electoral, Memoria del Plebiscito 23 de octubre de 1977 (Panamá: Contraloría General, 1978), 1.
73. Franklin Barrett, interview by author, Panama City, Panama, 16 February 2015; “Discurso del Dr. Rómulo Escobar Bethancourt en inauguración del Encuentro nacional de Abogados,” La Estrella, 20 October 1977; “Panamá pide disculpas a EEUU,” La Estrella, 6 October 1977.
74. “Testigo de la ONU y la OEA invita Torrijos al plebiscite,” La Estrella, 15 September 1977.
75. “Reporte no. 2 del general Omar Torrijos,” La Estrella, 27 September 1977; “Conmovido por la emoción el general,” Crítica, 24 October 1977.
76. United Nations General Assembly, “Report of the Mission by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General to witness the plebiscite on the Panama Canal Treaties held in Panama on 23 October 1977,” Implementation of the Declaration on the Strengthening of International Security, Official Records, 32nd sess., agenda item 50. A/32/424 (New York: UN, 1977), 3.
77. República de Panamá Tribunal Electoral, Memoria, 37.
78. United Nations General Assembly, “Report,” 3.
79. United Nations General Assembly, “Report,” 3.