Omar Torrijos Herrera unseated Arnulfo Arias as president of Panama, instituting a period of authoritarian rule granting himself absolute civil and military powers. Still, Torrijos was the first president of Panama to represent the mixed heritage of his country, and he introduced social and economic reforms aimed at helping the lower classes. He renegotiated the terms of the Panama Canal Treaty with the United States and retired from formal office in 1978.
On October 11, 1968, a group of Panamanian National Guard officers overthrew the democratically elected government of the country. The coup marked the first time in Panama’s history that the country had experienced a forcible military takeover, with the military itself retaining the reins of government. The seizure was not the action of a single strongman (or caudillo, as such a leader is described in Spanish). It was instead an institutional movement, projecting the political interests of a group of the National Guard’s top military leaders.
Arnulfo Arias was elected president of Panama on October 1, 1968. Arias had taken the office on two previous occasions, in 1940 and 1949. For decades he had been involved in coups and countercoups for political power in Panama. Following his 1968 election, Arias moved to secure tighter control over the country’s National Guard. He sought to ensure that officers supporting his election would take command. He proposed to eliminate those members of the military whom he felt he could not control. Some of this latter group were dismissed or transferred to assignments outside the country.
Historically the military establishment had supported the civilian oligarchy that controlled the country’s politics and economy. This group was known as the rabiblancos,
The initial leader of the rebellion was Major Boris Martínez, military commander of the province of Chiriquí. On October 11, Martínez seized the city of David and incarcerated Arias loyalists there. His action forced the other conspirators in the National Guard to declare themselves as well. A provisional military junta was named, and a number of civilians were called in to help establish the new government. The military quickly dispelled the thought that it would be democratic. In November, the National Guard quickly put down a demonstration of students, beating and arresting a number of them. For more than two decades, military rule would prevail. In March of 1969, Lieutenant Colonel Omar Torrijos Herrera, the junta’s chief of staff, seized control of the government and sent Major Martínez into exile. Torrijos, a graduate of neighboring El Salvador’s national military academy, was a mestizo with middle-class antecedents. He had long expressed doubt that the oligarchy should govern the country.
Torrijos quickly instituted land-reform measures, opening to the country’s peasantry much of what had been oligarchically controlled territory. Although this move was popular, only a small minority of the poor benefited from these measures. Of more material importance was his liberalization of the country’s banking laws, which resulted in a huge influx of deposits, leading to widespread money laundering by outside corporations.
Torrijos’s major accomplishment during the ten years that he dominated Panama’s government was the successful acquisition of the American-controlled Canal Zone.
In 1978, facing increased criticism internally and externally of his authoritarian regime, Torrijos agreed to a resumption of democratic government in Panama. He formed a political party, the Partido Revolucionario Democratico
Omar Torrijos Herrera (right) and U.S. president Jimmy Carter wave to photographers at the signing of the Panama Canal Treaty in 1978.
A return to the democratic process was not to be, however. In 1981, Torrijos was killed in a crash of his private airplane. In the political uncertainty following the death of the National Guard’s leader, Manuel Noriega, Torrijos’s intelligence chief, seized power and established a military dictatorship once more. Noriega, a graduate of the Republic of Peru’s national military academy, had proven to be invaluable to his chief’s maintenance of tight internal control throughout the country during the latter’s dictatorial reign. Initially the American government thought that it could work with the new leader. He had been an informant for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency
Moreover, under Noriega’s leadership, the National Guard expanded its role in both the arms-
Finally, in 1987, the U.S. government indicted Noriega in a U.S. court for drug smuggling. Still the dictator resisted any domestic attempts to remove him from power, announcing that a state of war existed between his country and the United States. Finally, on December 20, 1989, the United States launched a full-scale invasion of Panama, captured Noriega and removing the dictator to the United States for trial on the drug charges and, ultimately, imprisonment.
The revolt by Panama’s National Guard against the democratically elected government of Arnulfo Arias in 1968 initiated a twenty-one-year span of military dictatorship in Panama, first by Omar Torrijos and then by Manuel Noriega. However, it took an invasion of the country by U.S. military forces in 1989 to restore the democratic process, including free elections, to the Central American country.
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Dinges, John. Our Man in Panama: The Shrewd Rise and Brutal Fall of Manuel Noriega. New York: Times Books, 1990. A detailed biography of the Panamanian dictator from the time of his youth in the barrios of Panama City to his incarceration in the United States following his conviction in a Miami court on a variety of criminal charges. -
Greene, Graham. Getting to Know the General: The Story of Involvement. London: Bodley Head, 1984. A brief biographical sketch of Omar Torrijos by a renowned British novelist who considered himself a personal friend of the Panamanian leader. -
Harding, Robert C. The History of Panama. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006. A brief, informative study of Panama’s development from its discovery by Europeans in 1501 to the popular election of Martín Torrijos, son of Omar Torrijos, in 2004. -
_______. Military Foundations of Panamanian Politics. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 2001. A detailed technical description of the dominance of the country’s political and economic life by its military institutions during the twentieth century. -
Perez, Orlando J., ed. Post-Invasion Panama: The Challenges of Democratization in the New World Order. Boston: Lexington Books, 2000. A review of the events that led to the American invasion of Panama and a restoration of its democratic institutions.
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