José Remón

"I don't want millions, nor do I want alms. I want justice."

José Remón's legacy

When people talk of "Torrijismo" as a social reforming militarist tradition, Panamanians --- including the members of the Democratic Revolutionary Party that General Omar Torrijos founded --- are very divided over what it really means.

It's especially important to know that General Torrijos didn't just come out of nowhere. Really, the tradition identified with his name has many of its roots in the works of General José Remón, later President José Remón.

Remón, like the previous commanders of the Guardia Nacional police force / army, was from an aristocratic family. However, he opened the upper ranks to people from all social backgrounds, paving the way for such folks as Manuel Antonio Noriega and Daniel Delgado Diamante.

In the Cold War he was anti-communist and treated leftists as criminals, much as President Martín Torrijos is wont to do.

At the urging of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Remón staged the October 1941 coup that ousted Dr. Arnulfo Arias, a Nazi sympathizer and racist who stripped all Panamanians of Asian, Middle Eastern and Afro-Antillean descent of their citizenship. For the rest of his life he was Arnulfo's worst enemy.

Remón finally stepped down from the ranks and ran for president as a civilian. People expected a wave of repression and looting, but he turned out to be far more honest and moderate than those expectations. He negotiated with US President Eisenhower some tentative steps toward Panamanian sovereignty in the Canal Zone, including a formal end to the old discriminatory gold and silver roll pay and benefit system.

However, José Remón's presidency was cut short by assassins' bullets. His bodyguards were involved in the murder and others close to him were suspected and in some cases accused, but the intellectual authorship of Panama's crime of the 20th century remains unsolved.

Photo of the monument honoring Remón in the park adjacent to the legislative palace by Eric Jackson

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