culture

Heliodoro Portugal: Justicia en la CIDH
a Spanish-language book by Rafael Peréz Jaramillo
Instituto de Estudios Políticos e Internacionales (Panama 2008)
284 pp in paperback
ISBN 978-9962-813-20-0

A probably decisive large minority of the Panamanian electorate is too young to have any direct memory of the dictatorship, and many of those who do remember Noriega's decline and fall from their childhood don't remember the dirty war at the outset of the 21 years of military rule. Many of the foreign retirees who have come to Panama in recent years know little or nothing of Panamanian history --- in fact the real estate hype that attracted many of them here was carefully designed to conceal that and many other aspects of this country's nature and any sense of why it is the way it is. And then there are a lot of Panamanians who for their various reasons are in a state of denial.

All of these people would benefit from reading Rafael Pérez Jaramillo's book about the case of one Heliodoro Portugal and his family. But maybe it would be more important for this book to be translated into English and read by every member of the US Congress and key people in the incoming Obama administration prior to dealing with any treaties with Panama. This work, you see, is about one case that came before the Inter-American Human Rights Court, but in a much larger sense is about the roots of much of the lawlessness that afflicts the present-day Panamanian government, about the thuggishness that served as the base upon which this country's current constitution was erected.

Portugal was a printer by vocation, the owner of a small coffee farm in Veraguas, a labor activist in Panama City and a leftist by conviction. Not a religious man, he was nevertheless a family man, and if his relationship with Graciela De León Rodríguez may not have been duly sanctioned by church and state, he was her supportive compañero and the responsible father of their children, daughter Patria and son Franklin.

On May 14, 1970, Mr. Portugal was in the Coca-Cola Cafe in Santa Ana when he was surrounded by men wearing civilian clothes, who forced him out of the still-popular restaurant and gathering place and into an unmarked car. They were agents of the G2, the feared torture, intelligence and psychological warfare unit headed by one Manuel Antonio Noriega. At the time Noriega was a key supporter of the de facto head of government, one Omar Torrijos Herrera, the late father of our President Martín Torrijos. The elder Torrijos was fond of referring to Noriega as "my gangster."

Except to the eyes of soldiers and cops and one or possibly more persons who were incarcerated with him and survived the ordeal, Heliodoro Portugal disappeared off the face of the Earth. That is, until one day in December of 1999, when his skeletal remains were unearthed from beneath the parking lot of what had been the Puma Infantry Barracks in Tocumen.

We don't know specifically how Portugal died. There were no bullet marks upon the bones. We can surmise from circumstantial evidence that he died in about November of 1971, and we know from witnesses and circumstances that he was tortured during his captivity. We also know from what little has leaked out of US records that the American government --- then under the criminal leadership of one Richard M. Nixon --- at the time knew very well that this sort of thing was going on in Panama and praised Noriega and Torrijos for it. Let it also be noted that a few years later the Democratic administration of one James Earl Carter made multiple official and public denials that any of this ever happened.

Author Rafael Pérez Jaramillo was an investigative reporter for El Panama America and columnist for La Prensa whose work in large part led to the unearthing of Heliodoro Portugal's remains and their subsequent identification. For a story he wrote about a PRD - Christian Democratic takeover of La Prensa, he lost those positions and was blacklisted from Panamanian mainstream journalism. He went to work for the Truth Commission during the Moscoso administration and continued his association with the Portugal case in that capacity. He now works for the Public Ministry. He was a prominent witness when the Portugal case came before the Inter-American Human Rights Court. This book is comprised of a preface by attorney Miguel Antonio Bernal, an introduction by the author, Pérez Jaramillo's answers to a questionnaire submitted to him by the court, and the decision of the court.

Let the record show a train of infamous acts across decades.

Read, and note how the nefarious and discredited former Attorney General José Antonio Sossa, an appointee of the PRD Pérez Balladares administration with a mandate to "end judicial terrorism" --- that is, ensure impunity for the crimes of the dictatorship --- attempted to deny the relationship between Heliodoro Portugal and his family by submitting contaminated DNA samples to a not-so-reputable laboratory in the United States. Read, and note how the younger Torrijos's lawyers made the Portugal family prove their family ties in court, and then argued that anything that the elder Torrijos's goons may have done to Heliodoro as a matter of law didn't affect his family. Read, and note how the Panamanian government's attorneys argued that international human rights law does not apply.

But notice how the international panel of jurists shot down Martín Torrijos's pseudo-legal sophistries. Notice how and why the court was unimpressed by arguments that the current administration's 2007 Penal Code brings Panamanian law in conformance with international human rights law.

The Torrijos administration has not admitted any duty to pay the damages the court ordered the Panamanian government to pay to Heliodoro Portugal's surviving family, and surely it won't. It's a relative pittance, but it's not in the 2009 national budget.

Read, and understand. This isn't a book about historical abstractions from the past. This is a book about the current state of Panamanian law, and about the nature of today's ruling political party.