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Fernando Manfredo remembers

Looking back on a two-year “trial by fire”

by Eric Jackson

On January 18 former Panama Canal deputy administrator Fernando Manfredo spoke at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute about the things that he and Panama went through in the two-year transition between the signing of the 1977 Torrijos-Carter Treaties and the Canal Zone’s formal end on October 1, 1979. The subject is covered in a book of memoirs he has written, and given that he was in charge of much of Panama’s end of this transition, it is sure to be received as one of the important primary references by Panamanian historians present and future.

“In Panama the treaties were taken by the great majority with joy,” Manfredo noted, “but translating that in to concrete terms wasn’t easy.” Sorting out all the issues by the October 1, 1979 deadline was “a monumental task,” in effect a “trial by fire" for the Republic of Panama.

Omar Torrijos scoured many social sectors for the talent that would be needed to carry out the task, and ended up with a team of some 400 people. The sorts of expertise needed were many and varied. On one set day, Panama would get control of 58 percent of what was the Canal Zone, and take charge of the ports, the railroad, the drainage system, public health and police protection. Electrical, telephone and water utilities would be transferred, as would garbage collection, street maintenance, postal services, customs and the admiralty courts. Responsibility for the Canal Zone Penitentiary and its inmates, the Corozal mental hospital and its patients and the Palo Seco sanitarium and its leprosy-affected residents would shift on that day. All sorts of licenses and permits, from drivers’ licenses and the registration of marriages to credentials to handle explosives and permits to sell fresh vegetables would become Panama’s business.

Questions related to the properties held by 90 churches and many lodges, clubs and civic organizations had to be sorted out. The schools for the Americans would pass from the old Panama Canal Company’s Schools Division to the Department of Defense Schools, but the segregated school system that the Canal Zone ran for the children of its West Indian employees would become Panama’s responsibility. And then there were knotty economic issues about contractual relationships that the Canal Zone had maintained, the pension system for Panamanians, different wage scales for American and Panamanian employees that were inherited and so on.

The great majority of the people in the Canal Zone had opposed the treaties, and were very suspicious of Panamanian intentions, Manfredo noted. (Although he didn’t get into it in his talk, surely it was a stroke of luck for Panama, and in the long run best for all concerned, that most of the most suspicious Zonians left the isthmus as soon after the treaties’ adoption as they could.)

One of the most sensitive jobs was that of the subcommittee on police. Panama decided to station bilingual officers in the former Canal Zone, and to Manfredo’s surprise they turned out to be popular with the Americans who stayed on. However, there were a few cultural differences about what good policing meant, and so the Panamanian authorities began to get many complaints about stray dogs, something they had never expected.

The treaties were ratified by the US Senate by only a one-vote margin, and were unpopular in the halls of the US Congress thereafter. This in turned caused a number of problems here.

For its part, Panama decided to pass legislation to continue a number of Canal Zone laws. But there were certain transitional laws that Panama wanted the US government to pass and there was generally no cooperation on this point.

Some of the facilities and equipment that Panama would be receiving was obsolete, and that was mostly no surprise. But a lot of things, whether old or new, were in good working order but only Americans know how to operate and maintain them. Manfredo pleaded to get Panamanians working in the ports of Balboa and Cristobal alongside the Americans so that they’d know how to run the cranes, but Governor Parfitt forbade it, so come the transition day Panama took possession of ports it couldn’t run. And if the ports’ transition was a problem, the transfer of the Panama Railroad became a big disaster, entailing great losses for Panama.

Maybe worst of all, in Manfredo’s opinion, was the US government’s decision to change over from the Panama Canal Company to the Panama Canal Commission during the transition. It wasn’t just a minor change in legal status, but a move that required the complete revision of all accounting systems.

Many of the Zonians were deeply suspicious of Manfredo, he recounted. “They said I had come to contaminate the canal with the Panamanian government’s corrupt practices.” But then to the extent that Americans retained certain privileges, Panamanian employees complained of discrimination. Manfredo said that his intention was to gradually gain the American employees’ confidence, and to resolve the problems he faced so that his successor wouldn’t have to do so.

He concluded that he was partly successful in these endeavors. “It’s a miracle, everything that was prepared for October 1, 1979,” he opined.

But then, less than two years after that date, General Torrijos died in a plane crash in Coclesito, and a series of power struggles within the Panama Defense Forces ensued and brought on the Noriega era. That effectively destroyed such confidence as had been built up over the previous few years, with a disastrous end coming a few years later.