Omar Torrijos

Dictator of Panama (1968-1981)

• Born: February 13, 1929
• Birthplace: Santiago de Veragua, Panama
• Died: July 31, 1981
• Place of death: near Penonomé, Coclé, Panama

Torrijos, who became the de facto leader of Panama in 1968, gained public support for his programs promising to raise living standards for the poor. The political stability pleased the United States, which was concerned over the security of the U.S.-controlled Panama Canal and Canal Zone. Torrijos, however, soon demanded control of the zone and negotiated its transfer to Panama, effective in 2000.

Early Life

Omar Torrijos (OH-mahr tohr-REE-yohs), the son of rural school teachers, was the seventh of twelve children. His birthplace, Santiago de Veragua, is a small town located about one hundred miles southwest of Panama City, the country’s capital. Torrijos was a racial mix of Caucasian, black, and American Indian. The ruling elite of Panama at the time were the rabiblancos (white tails) because they were predominantly Caucasian rather than mestizo (mixed race).

Torrijos attended a local school for his early education. During that period he joined the Federación de Estudiantes de Panama (federation of students of Panama). Torrijos was a marginal student at best, but he secured a scholarship to the Gerardo Barrios Military Academy, El Salvador’s prestigious military school. He graduated in 1952 and became a second lieutenant with Panama’s national police. (In 1952, Panama’s national assembly renamed the national police the national guard.) Later, in 1962, Torrijos attended the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas, where he studied techniques in counterinsurgency.

Life’s Work

The counterinsurgency course awakened Torrijos to the possibility of pursuing politics with his military career, knowing that the peasantry of Panama could be rallied to support a political movement. At this point, Torrijos had risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel. Torrijos’s brother, Moisés, had already commenced a political career.

In 1968, the country’s president, Arnulfo Árias, showed growing concern over the political activities of members of the national guard. Torrijos had been one of the officers that Árias transferred to the post of military attaché outside the country. The affected officers launched a coup d’état and took over the government. Torrijos was named chief of staff and then the guard commandant, or head, of the national guard. In effect, he had become the country’s dictator. He began to institute a populist movement in support of the lower classes to consolidate his power.

In 1969, New York State governor Nelson A. Rockefeller visited Panama and returned to the United States full of praise for Torrijos and for Panama’s military government. Rockefeller was impressed with the dictator’s programs for the poorer classes. Soon, the U.S. government adopted Rockefeller’s recommendations, deciding that the new institutional military dictatorship promised stability for the Isthmus of Panama.

Torrijos traveled the countryside often, encouraging peasants to increase their productivity. He made available plots of land for their ownership and use. He instituted changes in the law that were designed to better the working conditions of rural and urban workers alike. He secured the support of the middle class by providing a broad program of public employment, housing projects, and a wide range of health, education, and welfare facilities.

At the same time, Torrijos cracked down hard on any evidence of opposition to his policies. He banned political parties, dissolved the parliament, and replaced the parliament with a new type of national assembly, which he controlled. He crushed an incipient guerrilla movement in western Panama as well. Many political opponents were exiled or killed. Some died because of the harsh treatment meted out to them in the dictator’s penal colonies.

Torrijos had a much greater goal than simply domestic control of the Republic of Panama. He sought to recover for his country the territory of the Panama Canal Zone ceded to the United States for the construction of the Panama Canal in 1903. Although negotiations between the countries had been continuing for two decades, progress on the resolution of the zone’s status had reached a stalemate by the end of the 1960’s.

Torrijos had his whole nation behind him in his demand for a return of the zone. In 1964, rioting broke out between Panamanian students and Americans attending the zone’s Balboa High School. The dispute arose over whether the Panamanian flag should be raised within the zone itself. In the course of the action, more than twenty-eight participants, including four U.S. soldiers, were killed, and hundreds of others were wounded.

Negotiations concerning the canal’s future had been continuous between the United States and a number of Panama’s leaders prior to Torrijos’s assumption of power. The Panamanians had never forced the issue, however, possibly because it was not to the best economic interests of the rabiblanco class. The new leader had no such ties to U.S. interests, and so he began pressing hard for a solution to the continuing standoff. Torrijos began a campaign, first in Latin America, then worldwide, seeking support for Panama’s right to control all the territory in the Panamanian isthmus.

Jimmy Carter was elected president of the United States in 1976 and took office in January, 1977. Perhaps no predecessor in that office held as liberal views as did Carter. An avid supporter of democratic ideals, he believed that Panama’s claim to the Canal Zone was morally right. Torrijos complicated the negotiations with Carter’s State Department by initially making outrageous demands for compensation from the United States for its use of the canal facilities in decades past. Resistance to a new treaty quickly developed among conservatives in the U.S. Congress. Carter, however, managed to put a program together that satisfied both sides.

Panamanian politicians agreed to the terms of the treaty in October, 1977, and the U.S. Senate ratified the Treaty Concerning the Permanent Neutrality and Operation of the Panama Canal and the Panama Canal Treaty in the spring of 1978. The treaties provided for the orderly and complete transfer of jurisdiction over the canal and the Canal Zone from the United States to Panama by 2000. A major point in the treaties was the removal of U.S. military forces, leaving Panamanian military forces as the sole guardians of the canal.

Torrijos made another critical decision when he agreed, in a 1978 amendment to the Panamanian constitution, to the formation once more of political parties. Torrijos and his followers created the nonmilitary Partido Revolucionario Democratico (Democratic Revolutionary Party), or PRD. He then appointed a civilian, Arístides Royo, as president, pending open democratic presidential elections in 1984. Elections were held in 1980 for an initial one-third of the seats in the country’s legislature. The PRD won most of them. Torrijos was still in control of Panama, despite the constitutional changes.

On July 31, 1981, Torrijos and several of his aides were killed in a plane crash on a mountainside near Penonomé in rural western Panama. Several theories as to the cause of the crash have been proposed, including that he was assassinated by members of his own military hierarchy. Others believe that he was a victim of a plot by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. The weather during the flight was adverse, however, and the stormy conditions could have caused the crash.

Significance

Torrijos remains, undoubtedly, Panama’s most famous and respected leader. That he was able to sell himself as a populist leader, stir nationalism among the Panamanian people, and then reach an agreement with his powerful northern neighbor, the United States, to return the Canal Zone to Panama, made him a hero in he eyes of Panamanians. He was a popular figure despite his dictatorial style, which led to government repression, censorship, the restructuring of government, and the executions of political opponents.

Bibliography

Diaz Espino, Ovidio. How Wall Street Created a Nation: J. P. Morgan, Teddy Roosevelt, and the Panama Canal. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2001. Argues that a combination of American imperialist attitudes and the prospect of financial gain led to the building of the Panama Canal. Closes with an epilogue that addresses the end of U.S. control of the canal in 2000.

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 English writer who considers himself to have been a personal friend of the Panamanian leader.

Guevara Mann, Carlos. Panamanian Militarism: A Historical Interpretation. Athens: University of Ohio Press, 1996. The author contends that militarism, traditionally, has played a dominant role in Panamanian politics. This has created a sense of insecurity within the civilian population generally. Guevara Mann postulates that the United States has often supported the military because of its desire for continuous stability in the isthmus, especially because of the potential vulnerability of the canal itself to outside attack.

Harding, Robert C. The History of Panama. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006. A brief, informative study of Panama’s development from its European discovery in 1501 to the popular election of Martin Torrijos, the son of Omar Torrijos, in 2004.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Military Foundations of Panamanian Politics. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 2001. A detailed analysis of the Torrijos regime that also discusses the Noriega regime that followed, the invasion by the United States to depose Noriega, and Panama’s return to a fledgling democracy without the military playing a role in its government.

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 in 1989 to oust dictator Manuel Noriega and the subsequent restoration of the country’s democratic institutions.