As a small and relatively poor country without an army, Panama has a political culture in which, with a few exceptions, foreign policy takes a back seat in public discourse.
The generations-long struggle that resulted in Panamanian sovereignty over the former Canal Zone was one of the exception, as was the crisis that led up to the 1989 US invasion. Although it's nowhere near the top of most Panamanians' minds, the diplomatic struggle between China and Taiwan is also frequently played out in or about Panama. Colombia's civil conflict also extends into Panama, by way of gun running, money laundering, paramilitary and guerrilla invasions and US mercenary supply operations. The intrusion of US-based Cuban terrorists who had planned a deadly bombing at the University of Panama and ensuing legal developments also became a domestic political issue. And yes, the culmination of free trade talks with the United States will almost certainly be accompanied by angry protests and street blockades on the streets of our capital.
Also, we are an international transportation and commercial crossroads, a convenient place of exile for ousted heads of state and other political refugees, and the scene of the occasional international summit. Plus, our banking sector, our ship registry and many of our corporations owe much of their existence to other countries' tax laws and banking and business regulations, and in turn those aspects of our economy make us controversial in many foreign eyes.
Despite all of that, foreign policy did not play much of a role in our recent election campaign. To the extent that it did, there was either little disagreement (all candidates said it was important to get a good free trade deal with the United States and to have the Free Trade Area of the Americas headquartered here), or it was a matter of people in the opposition alleging that the Moscoso administration's actions --- usually in the domestic sphere --- had hurt our image abroad.
Do not think, however, that the low profile of debate over Panama's foreign policy means that our political elites are united on all the key points, or that our successive governments have placed low priority on the subject.
Take President Torrijos's appointment of First Vice-President Samuel Lewis Navarro as Minster of Foreign Relations as one example of the current government's estimate of the importance of our international policies.
At the time Torrijos won the PRD presidential primary, Lewis Navarro was a member of the Solidaridad party, which is headed by his uncle Samuel Lewis Galindo and backed Guillermo Endara in the 2004 presidential contest. Lewis Navarro quit Solidaridad to join the Torrijos ticket, but without formally joining the PRD.
Vice-President Lewis Navarro is one of Panama's richest men. One indication of this was his unsuccessful but serious attempt, a few years ago, to through a combination of stock purchases and a shareholder mobilization to take control of Chiquita Brands, the legendary multinational banana company whose headquarters is in Cincinnati. The man to whom Torrijos has entrusted crucial international trade talks is thus no stranger to the multinational world of big business.
Lewis Navarro has made a name for himself in a number of business enterprises, both national and international. He may be a son of the rabiblanco aristocracy, but he's not just a rich kid with an illustrious Panamanian surname and no substantial accomplishment to support his elevation to head the Foreign Ministry, and that's a key difference between the Torrijos and Moscoso administrations in itself. At the recent summit of the 19-nation Rio Group of Latin American and Caribbean nations, to which President Torrijos sent Vice-President Lewis Navarro in his stead, some of the other foreign policy differences between the current and former presidents' policies began to emerge.
Under President Moscoso, corruption became so bad that the US ambassador took the unusual step of speaking out against it. Nevertheless, Mireya's attitude toward the most controversial aspects of US foreign policy in the region was more servile than anything we have seen from a Panamanian government in decades. While professing neutrality, Mireya sided with Colombia's government and paramilitary death squads in that country's civil conflict and thus Panama collected a small portion of the US government's Plan Colombia funding. At the time of the April 2002 US-supported coup attempt in Venezuela, most Latin American governments issued protests against the attack on a sovereign democratic government, but all Mireya had to say was that she wouldn't allow Hugo Chávez to take refuge here. When the US government removed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from Haiti, there were protests from Latin American and Caribbean governments, but not from Mireya Moscoso's. As most of South America moved in a politically leftward direction and became increasingly estranged from the United States while Central America remained in the hands of right wing parties under US tutelage, Mireya sought closer ties with the Central American banana republics and, with the exception of Colombia, let Panamanian relations with the South American countries languish.
At the Rio Group summit, the issue of Haiti was broached. When the catastrophic Hurricane Jeanne devastated Haiti, the current US-installed Haitian dictatorship clearly demonstrated that it is neither willing nor able to respond to the needs of the people over whom it theoretically rules. Bush's nominees were instead preoccupied with pardoning right wing paramilitary leaders for their atrocities during the Cedras and Duvalier dictatorships and persecuting Aristide supporters. But meanwhile, US military forces are overextended due to the war in Iraq, and to a lesser extent due to military missions in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, the Philippines and Colombia, such that almost all US military personnel have been withdrawn from Haiti and the main group of foreign peacekeepers stationed there now is Brazilian, with lesser contingents of troops from Argentina, Uruguay and Chile.
Thus the Rio Group, with Panama taking its position within the alliance's mainstream, asserted its own plan to surmount Haiti's crisis, which varies considerably from the Bush administration's ideas. The summit's communiqué emphasized that for Haiti to get out of its current hole, it needs "efficient, solid and democratic institutions, together with an advance in economic development with social justice." Chilean President Ricardo Lagos emphasized that deposed President Aristide and his supporters must be part of the process. The Brazilian government announced that it was sending one envoy to South Africa for talks with Aristide and another emissary to consult with the government in Port-au-Prince. The summit called upon the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the Inter-American Development Bank to pitch in. It was announced that the size of the peacekeeping force would be more than doubled, and that its role would be to support "political reconciliation and economic reconstruction."
Neither George W. Bush nor the United States government was criticized by name at the summit, but the policy announced at Rio and supported by Panama stood in stark contrast to the one that Washington has been promoting. Possibly of more importance, the declaration in effect looked to the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean to resolve the problem in Haiti without reference to what the United States thinks.
Also during the summit, Panama formally joined the Group of Three, which included Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela, to make it the Group of Four (G-4). This is an organization the Latin American countries which, other than those of South America's southern cone, have the most advanced economies. It was set up in 1995 mainly to strengthen commercial ties within Latin America.
Within the G-4, Panama's aims are to lower or eliminate tariffs and other trade barriers with the member countries, develop a natural gas pipeline that extends from the gas fields of Venezuela and Colombia to Panama and link our power grid to Colombia's.
(Colombia is pressing hard for the construction of the 160 "missing" miles of the Pan-American Highway through the Darien Gap, which would complete the road from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. However, due to Panamanian political realities that's unlikely to happen anytime soon. The jungle barrier also marks the boundary between countries of the south whose cattle are affected by hoof-and-mouth disease and the rest of Latin America which is unaffected, so this country's cattle ranching interests oppose the idea. Then there are national security reasons that argue against Panama being connected by road with Colombia's war zone, environmental objections to a project that would break up and possibly destroy this country's biggest remaining forest and the fears of Embera, Wounaan and Kuna communities that a road would lead to invasions of their communally held lands. Also, consider the corollary of a road that would allow a company in San Diego to send its goods to Montevideo by truck --- it would be potential competition for the Panama Canal.)
More than anything, the Torrijos administration's decision to join the G-4 represents a policy aimed at strengthening economic ties with Latin America at the same time that Panama negotiates free trade with the United States. Another major aspect of this policy is Panama's application to join the MERCOSUR trade bloc, whose full members are Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, and in which Chile and Bolivia are associates. In the movement toward a Free Trade Area of the Americas, these affiliations distance Panama from the US approach of simply extending the NAFTA system to the entire hemisphere with the exceptions of Cuba and Venezuela.
Although the G-4 membership does not show it as clearly as the intention to join MERCOSUR, the foreign policy that Lewis Navarro is beginning to enunciate on behalf of the Torrijos administration represents the return to an orientation that has been the norm throughout Panamanian history, from even before we became an independent republic and indeed from before the Spanish Conquest: Panama as much more of a South American than a Central American country.
As the Rio Group summit was a diplomatic event, the tone of most of the pronouncements made by regional leaders there was fashionably subdued. However, in an interview with the Spanish EFE news agency given while he was in Brazil, Lewis Navarro said that the Torrijos administration had inherited a "clumsy and conflicting" foreign policy from its predecessor. It would be reasonable to infer from that characterization that, without necessarily making any bold statements, the Torrijos administration intends to make substantial changes in this country's foreign policy.
Also in this section:
Panama City's parades
Arosemena de Troitiño takes high court seat
Audits catch up to Mireyistas
Panama makes it the Group of Four
Panama News Briefs
