Closing out well-received Nuevos Horizontes maneuvers

Consider the military side of US foreign policy at the moment.

Counting regular military combat units, official military advisors for foreign combat units, and mercenaries in combat, support or advisory roles contracted by the Department of State or the Department of Defense, the United States is currently immersed in wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Colombia and parts of the former Soviet Union. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, having not found the weapons of mass destruction that were given as the reason for war against Iraq, now says they were moved to Syria, so American forces may end up at war with that country. US Representative Henry Hyde, one of the senior Republicans in the House, says that the president of Brazil is a terrorist in search of weapons of mass destruction and that’s war talk if there ever was. Although the US Embassy in Caracas denies it, the government of Venezuela alleges that US military forces played a role in last year’s thwarted coup attempt. Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia undergo regular political convulsions prompted by public protests against economic and drug policies upon which the US government has insisted. There are US military facilities at Soto Cano (Honduras), Manta (Ecuador) and Iquitos (Peru), which are not universally popular with the people of those countries.

Thus the possibility of war, including the chance of conflict in a tropical country with conditions similar to Panama’s, is an ever present reality for US military forces.

To be prepared for such possibilities, American guard and reserve units need to practice. The engineering teams need to know how to set up and maintain bases with all the necessary facilities out in middle of tropical nowhere, and to build roads and bridges out to the front lines, or replace those that an enemy has destroyed. The medical corps needs some experience with tropical diseases. The aviators need hone their skills at maintaining and flying helicopters under tropical field conditions.

Thus Nuevos Horizontes, the program in which US National Guard and Army Reserve units come down to countries in this region to get the practice they need, and the host countries get bridges, roads, schools, clinics and rural health care services in return.

This year, the American military came back to Panama in significant numbers for the first time since the bases closed at the end of 1999. They came to do Nuevos Horizontes maneuvers in the Ngobe-Bugle Comarca, in the desperately poor San Felix district.

I flew from Howard with several other reporters and a military crew in a Chinook helicopter to catch the Nuevos Horizontes closing ceremonies at the elementary school in Quebrada Guabo, a few miles uphill from the town of San Felix. We touched down south of town in what had been a barren cow pasture but for the time being was a little town with electricity, clean running water, proper sanitation, living quarters, dining facilities, maintenance shops, a motor pool, military communications, cable TV, the Internet, a well guarded perimeter as well as the helicopter landing and takeoff area. In itself, this was an impressive display of American military engineering capabilities. The camp had been set up by the first of several waves of guard and reserve units that took part in the exercises. In this final phase the people running the helicopter operation were from the New Jersey National Guard, a few people came from US Army South in Puerto Rico or the US Southern Command base in Honduras, but most of the troops were from the Ohio National Guard.

From the Nuevos Horizontes camp we rode through San Felix past the pavement and onto the dirt road to the school. Along the way, lots of people waved and cheered. Nobody manifested negative feelings about the Americans.

We pulled up next to the school as many local kids and their parents, various Panamanian and American functionaries and dozens of National Guard members, many of them sporting cameras, were filing in. The soldier with a touch of gray and a professional-quality camera was a National Guard journalist who had been stationed in Panama before and was thinking about ways that he might come back to live. The young lady standing by the gate with the little automatic camera was a South Carolina native and Columbus resident who said she had really enjoyed this, her first exposure to Panama and to Latin America.

The physical proof of the National Guard's work was a building that houses two spacious classrooms, adding to about a dozen other rooms in a school that has seen repeated expansions. As I checked things out, I talked to some of the soldiers pulling guard duty --- they were going to get a day off in Panama City before heading back home --- took a few photos and kept my head down.

A colleague mentioned the cute kids with the smiles on their faces, and though I did notice that my eyes were lowered, counting and sorting feet. About one of every five kids attending school this day went barefoot. Most of the rest were wearing cheap flip- flops, and some rubber boots. Hardly anybody wore the sort of footwear that would be considered appropriate in most other Panamanian public schools. Moreover, I noticed that as mothers came to the school with their kids, in a number of cases the women went barefoot so that their kids could have cheap plastic sandals on their feet.

This is Ngobe country, where virtually all children are malnourished and most kids drop out of elementary school to do farm labor.

Soon the dignitaries were arriving by helicopter. US Ambassador Linda Watt was decked out in a dark green Ngobe dress. US Army South commanding General Alfred Valenzuela was there, as was Vice- Minister of Government and Justice Alejandro Pérez, who stood in for his boss Arnulfo Escalona.

But first the local dignitaries, Comarca Governor Jorge Ellington and Víctor Guerra, president of the Comarca Council, had a few words to say. Said Ellington, "I want to take this opportunity to give thanks before God and the country --- the indigenous nation has generation after generation lacked these sorts of benefits, so I thank you."
added Guerra, "We need more projects like this, because in this way we will get out of poverty."

(Nuevos Horizontes won't be back next year, but there are tentative plans for the project to return to Panama in 2005, most likely to work in rural Colon province.)

Then Ambassador Watt spoke, mostly in Spanish (which she speaks quite well) but also a few sentences in Ngobe. It was the first time that anyone present could recall an American ambassador speaking in one of Panama's indigenous tongues.

She noted the hard work and skilled planning that the mere logistics of the program required, and praised the Nuevos Horizontes program for "crystallizing the already strong ties between Panama and the United States." She noted the medical aspect of the mission, and said that many of the doctors, nurses and technicians had told her that the Panama experience was a unique and invaluable part of their professional training. She recounted the tale of "The Scorpion King," a guardsman who received the sting of his life and a new nom-de-guerre from his comrades-in-arms during the course of these exercises.

Then General Valenzuela spoke, first to the crowd in Spanish. "We all gained in this exercise, especially the soldiers who got to practice in their specialties but above all the kids, who got a new school." Addressing the troops in English, he extended his warm thanks: "God will reward you --- you are the unsung heroes."

Picking up on the theme, Vice-Minister Pérez noted that "an army's heroism isn't just expressed in combat. The US Armed Forces are giving a great demonstration of how to be heroes."

Then it was time for singing, dancing, picture taking and refreshments, with long lines for the food and beverages and Linda Watt working the crowd like a seasoned politician.

Then, back to the camp to board the Chinook back to Howard. But on the return flight we overshot the old US Air Force Base to do a sightseeing loop over the Bridge of the Americas and just north of the Miraflores Locks. It was the first time that some of the Panamanian journalists had seen the canal from the air, but the first good look of any sort that most of the Americans had of the canal. They were suitably impressed.

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Nuevos Horizontes 2003 closes out to community’s cheers