Military Government And Popular Participation In Panama

The Torrijos Regime, 1968-1975

George Priestley

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429711541
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines the first seven years of Omar Torrijos's military government, with particular attention to its efforts to build political institutions appropriate to the dynamics of class relations within Panama and the country's evolving dependency on the United States.

1
Introduction

In October 1968 the Panamanian military executed a coup d’etat against the civilian government. Under the leadership of General Omar Torrijos, who quickly emerged as the dominant figure of the regime, the military government introduced radical and significant changes in the country’s political and economic life.

These innovations set Panama’s National Guard apart from its interventionist counterparts in other Central and South American countries. Politically, Torrijos went beyond abolishing traditional, liberal institutions like the National Assembly and political parties and enacted a constitution that concentrated legislative and executive powers in the hands of the military. He created various mechanisms for popular participation by the previously excluded working classes.

Economically, Torrijos retained the private sector’s primary role in production and distribution. In addition, however, the state became a significant actor in the economy, through the creation of a variety of public enterprises, particularly in banking and finance, and through the promulgation of a labor code that favored the interests of workers.

The military regime’s boldest initiatives came in foreign policy, specifically with respect to the United States, which held Panama in a semicolonial status. Torrijos rejected U.S. proposals to resolve the conflict over the Panama Canal. He demanded that the United States evacuate the military base at Rio Hato in Cocle province, and, in 1973, went so far as to convene the United Nations Security Council in Panama to put pressure on the Nixon administration to reopen negotiations on a canal treaty.

The structure and policies of the Torrijos regime were intriguing in several respects. In the first place, they went against the conservative grain of previous Panamanian governments with respect to social reform and canal negotiations. Second, they differed dramatically from the style of rule of other military regimes in Central America. Whereas Anastasio Somoza, for example, chose to close off channels of mass participation, Torrijos dared to open them up. Third, Panama’s October Revolution calls into question the prevailing explanations of why the nilitary intervenes in politics.

This study examines the first seven years of Torrijos’s military government, with particular attention to its efforts to build political institutions appropriate to the dynamics of class relations within Panama and the country’s evolving dependency on the United States. This first chapter sets the scene, in a theoretical, sociological, and historical sense. Chapter 2 describes the conditions that prompted the October Revolution, Torrijos’s emergence as the dominant figure in the military government, and its central policies. Chapter 3 examines how the military government sought to implement its political program in a selected urban area, the squatter district of San Miguelito. Chapter 4 analyzes the condition of the rural sector, primarily the landless peasantry and its relationship to their self-styled defender, the Bonapartist Torrijos. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 offer a detailed review of how Torrijos attempted to restructure the systems of representation and legitimization.

Theoretical Frameworks

Of the recent discussions of praetorianism in modern Latin America, Amos Perlmutter’s is probably the most influential. He attributes military interventionism to the corporate interests of the armed forces and not to their status as experts or bureaucrats.¹ As the disciplinarian/ruler and the state’s major defender, Perlmutter argues, the military acts to correct perceived or actual inefficiencies, corruption, instability, and radicalism in civil society.² The military rulers, argues Perlmutter, lack experience and motivation to secure popular support. Even in the event that they do so, legitimacy does not follow.³

There are several weaknesses in Perlmutter’s approach that dilute its utility for understanding the Panamanian case. In the first place, he equivocates on the relationship between corporatism and professionalism in the military in Third World countries. He argues that “military corporatism is both a bulwark against intervention, and, in different times and regimes, a stimulant for it.”⁴ Moreover, he constructs a model wherein the military is torn between the two tendencies of disciplinarian/ruler and expert/bureaucrat. That begs the question of whether corporatism can lead to professionalism, which in turn serves as a bulwark against military intervention.

Second, Perlmutter dismisses out of hand the possibility that a military regime can garner support and legitimacy for itself. As we will demonstrate in later chapters, the Torrijos regime enjoyed substantial popular support during the 1968-75 period, which assured its legitimacy.

Finally, we disagree with Perlmutter’s conclusion that Latin America is faced with a choice between a praetorian army acting as a military dictatorship or a revolutionary regime acting through the army.⁵ This either/or formulation suggests that Latin America is irretrievably caught up in the East-West conflict. But it discounts the quest of all of Latin America for social and political democracy and its struggle for national liberation. And it does not explain the exceptional case of Panama under Torrijos.

More useful than looking within the military at its values, norms, and institutional interests is to focus on the dynamics of the society with which it is interacting. In this regard, the approach of Mario Esteban Carranza is particularly insightful.⁶ He finds the seeds of military intervention in the ideological, political, and economic crises that can affect states under the circumstances of the imperialist stage of capitalism.

Key to Carranza’s approach is the concept of political hegemony in civil society. As stated by Robert Jessop, political hegemony exists when:

--the dominant social classes take into account systematically the popular interest and organize popular support for the attainment of national goals that simultaneously serve the fundamental, long-term interests of the dominant group.

--the dominant classes exercise intellectual and moral leadership, which is necessary in forming and reproducing a collective will--a “national-popular” outlook adequate to the needs of social and economic reproduction.⁷

When the dominant classes fail to meet these conditions, there exists a “crisis of hegemony.” This fosters the emergence of what Carranza calls the “state of exception,” in which the military penetrates civil society to reconstitute political hegemony. In effect, the military assumes the role of political parties, by trying to provide political and ideological coherence to the dominant classes. For example, the military regime may introduce educational, political, and social reforms, and propagate a nationalistic or populist ideology in order to construct a new legitimacy.

As elucidated by Carranza, the “state of exception” can take one of three possible forms--pure military government, Bonapartism, and fascism--depending on external and internal circumstances. Thus, Bonapartist regimes emerged in Peru and Panama, whereas the fascist variant was the rule in Chile.

Bonapartism as a Leadership Style. The central element of Bonapartism is the ability of the leader to “rise above” all classes and establish some autonomy for the state. The seminal discussion was, of course, that of Karl Marx in his Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. The phenomenon was later elaborated by Leon Trotsky in his Russian Revolution.⁸ As Trotsky analyzed the impasse in the “July government” of Kerensky:

The design had been a common consent to establish above the democracy and the bourgeoisie, who were paralyzing each other, a “real” sovereign power. This idea of a master of destiny rising above all classes is nothing but Bonapartism.⁹

According to Trotsky, Kerensky failed in his Bonapartist role because he was confronted by a “great revolution which had not yet solved its problems or exhausted its force.”¹⁰ Bismarck, on the other hand, had succeeded in standing “above classes” because his rule offered a solution, or a half solution, to such1i mighty national problem as the unification of Germany.¹¹

Hal Draper, in his Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution, elaborates the principal elements of Bonapartism:

1. The historical role of the Bonapartist state is the modernization of society.

2. In the Bonapartist state, the bourgeoisie trades its political rights and power in exchange for the assurance of economic expansion.

3. The Bonapartist state has to enforce the interests of a class even against the opposition of the class itself or against its unenlightened sections.

4. Bonapartism as a state form does not depend on the personal qualities of the dictator in charge.

5. The crux of Bonapartism is the autonomization of state power with respect to all classes, including the ruling class.

6. The objective historical result of a Bonapartist state is a social transformation, a “revolution from above.”¹²

One implication of this description of the Bonapartist state is that, because it is not the captive of the ruling class, it may well act in ways that benefit the heterogeneous middle class, from which many military officers come. Bernardo Sorj’s analysis of military reformism in Peru after 1968 is particularly relevant. He stresses that “every political regime enjoys an appreciable field of relatively autonomous action,” even though the regime in question may be made up of organizations that were originally rooted in particular social classes. Thus in the wake of a coup, it is necessary to identify the specific responses of the officer corps to the class struggles and ideological conflicts to see which classes the military’s political projects benefit. It may well be secondary (i.e., middle) classes,¹³ in which case the military can in effect alter the mode of accumulation, distribution, and power relations in a specific social formation.

Panama under Torrijos

In light of this theoretical discussion, let us describe in summary fashion our interpretation of Panama under Torrijos. The Panamanian military came to power in 1968 as a result of a crisis in hegemony. The civilian oligarchy was morally and intellectually bankrupt. It was incapable of containing the social conflict that stemmed from the specific class structure of Panamanian society. And it was impotent in securing the end of the U.S. colonial presence in the Panama Canal Zone.

Once in power, Torrijos enjoyed a significant autonomous political action. Displaying a Bonapartist leadership style, he engineered significant innovations in the country’s political life. His regime was corporatist in the sense that it created institutions designed to incorporate urban workers, peasants, and the student movement into politics without losing control over the process. This revolution from above was made possible by the populist political discourse--simultaneously anti-oligarchy and anti-American--and in turn altered class relations within Panama and Panama’s relationship with the United States.

Furthermore, the regime sought to institutionalize its rule by promulgating a new constitution that centralized power in the hands of the executive while creating structures for political participation at the local level.

The Social Setting

In 1974, toward the end of the period covered in this study, Panama was a nation of 1.7 million people. The population grew rapidly (3 percent per year in 1970), and was relatively young--40 percent under the age of fifteen.¹⁴ It was also a predominantly urban society: 48 percent of the population lived in urban areas, mostly in the province of Panama and Panama City. As the primary city, Panama City contained the greatest concentration of the nation’s wealth and infrastructure.¹⁵

Key to an understanding of Panama’s contemporary politics is an understanding of the historical relationship between color and etbnicity on the one hand, and social class on the other. Colonial society was composed of a minority of Spaniards, known as penisulares and criollos, Indians, and blacks. The indigenous population worked lands owned by Spaniards in the interior provinces. Black slaves provided the labor power for the mines and for transportation along transit routes, and, along with mulattoes, constituted the majority o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The 1960s Crisis of Hegemony and the Emergence of the Torrijos Regime
• 3 Demobilization and Incorporation of a Shanty Community: The Case of San Miguelito
• 4 The Politics of Agricultural Reform
• 5 Institutionalization of the Revolution: A New National Constitutional Structure
• 6 Local Participatory Structures: The Community Boards
• 7 Conclusion
• Acronyms
• Appendixes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index