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A sad day to remember photos by Eric Jackson December 20 marked the 16th anniversary of the 1989 US invasion in which hundreds of people, the great majority of them non-combatant Panamanian civilians, lost their lives. It was officially a day of mourning, but not a day off of work. The invasion, which some Panamanians supported and a lot more considered a sad thing for the country but nevertheless a natural end to more than two decades of dictatorship, is still a sensitive subject here. Two very distinct groups of people who considered the invasion a brutal outrage held their different commemorations, both of which attracted small crowds. The ruling PRD is the political organization created by General Omar Torrijos, whose military intelligence chief and successor Manuel Antonio was ousted from power in the invasion. The late general's son, President Martín Torrijos, tries to maintain good relations with George W. Bush, whose father George H.W. Bush ordered the invasion, but nevertheless neither the PRD nor the administration it heads are disposed to forget what happened 16 years ago. Thus the National Institute of Culture (INAC) and members and allies of the PRD held a cultural event at the Teatro Anayansi in Casco Viejo to mark the occasion. Featured were the Coro Musica Viva, musicians Rómulo Castro, Luis Arteaga and Juan Andrés Castillo, poets Héctor Collado and Consuelo Tomás, a multimedia presentation by the University of Panama's GECU film group, works by artists Brooke Alfaro, Julio Zachrison and Ricardo de Freitas, and several student dance and theatrical groups. At the time of the invasion the Panamanian left was not saddened to see the dictatorship that killed dozens of its members and jailed, exiled or otherwise oppressed many others fall. However, as a matter of principle leftists don't like US interference in Panama's affairs and as a more practical consideration these folks aspire to represent working class neighborhoods like El Chorrillo, which suffered the most from the American attack. Moreover, some of the US military's operations and some of the post-invasion destruction by mobs acting with American soldiers standing passively by were directed at labor unions in which the left plays an important role. Thus FRENADESO and other radical groups, whose members are hostile to the PRD and therefore wouldn't attend the event at the Teatro Anayansi, held their own march through Panama City to mark the anniversary. The current US administration is not particularly popular in Panama, but anti-Americanism is not especially strong here at the moment. There were a few Americans in the leftist march, and others at the theater. They, and other US citizens and US-based companies along the way, were no more threatened or harassed than Britons tend to be in the United States on the Fourth of July. It was, rather, an occasion for parts of the Panamanian political spectrum to remember and to demonstrate their patriotism. Many of the students who participated in the leftist march are too young to remember the invasion, let alone the great historic source of anti-American feeling on the isthmus, the old Canal Zone that was formally abolished in October of 1979. Interestingly, the leaflets distributed by the student group PAT (Thought and Transformative Action, by its Spanish initials) depicted not Americans doing violence to Panama, but George W. Bush as a vampire biting the Statue of Liberty. Other Panamanians who consider December 20, 1989 to be the day of liberation from a cruel dictatorship maintained their respectful silence. Too many innocent lives were lost, and there was too much destruction in the uncontrolled looting that followed the military assault, for it to be socially acceptable for Panamanians to celebrate the anniversary of that day.
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