Panama Canal Zone: Beginning of the End/part 2


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Part 2 of Eric Jackson's 
PANAMA CANAL ZONE: THE BEGINNING OF THE END

The official Southern Command account implicitly owned up to things that
the police, The Spillway and US News and World Report would not: "Except
for those Panamanian snipers who were shot at by US counter-snipers, all
persons killed or wounded by Canal Zone police or US military action
sustained their injuries while rioting within the Canal Zone." (22)  Yet
this, too, tended to unfairly whitewash the American responsibility for the
deaths of several Panamanians, some of whom were entirely innocent.

Among the martyred innocents was Rosa Elena Landecho, an 11-year-old girl
who was shot to death by a high-powered rifle while standing on the balcony
of her family's apartment. She was killed by the US Army, which had fired
on the apartment building in response to suspected sniper fire. It seems
that there actually was a sniper in another apartment, whose presence was
objected to by the residents of the rest of the building. Landecho, who,
unlike the sniper, was an easy target, paid the price.

Another innocent party who was shot to death with a high-powered rifle,
almost certainly fired by an American soldier, was 33-year-old Rodolfo
Sanchez. This bystander was shot while sitting in his car.

Others who were shot down were clearly demonstrators. It is a politically
loaded question whether to call some of them "rioters." For example, what
to call 18-year-old Estanislao Orobio? His crime was carrying a Panamanian
flag into the Canal Zone. He was mortally wounded by a .38 caliber pistol
shot in the throat, almost certainly fired by a Canal Zone police officer.

Alberto Oriol Tejada, a 36-year-old laborer, suffered birdshot wounds to
his face and chest. One tiny pellet severed his jugular vein, killing him.
A 14-year-old student, Gonzalo France, was killed by a .38 caliber bullet
wound to the abdomen. These two were shot at places and times when police
fired on Panamanian crowds. The fatal shots most likely were fired by Canal
Zone cops.

Victor Garibaldo, an unarmed 29-year-old taxi driver, was killed by a
high-powered rifle shot which felled him in Panama City near the
Legislative Palace. He was killed by American troops, who flushed
demonstrators (including both snipers and unarmed persons) out of the
building with tear gas and shot at those who fled from the choking clouds.

Other gunshot deaths remain mysterious. Evilio (or, by some accounts,
Rogelio) Lara, and elderly fruit vendor, was shot to death while resting at
his fruit stand on Panama City's Avenida Central, several blocks from the
nearest fighting. Lara was killed by a stray bullet of uncertain origin,
but apparently not by a high-velocity rifle round of the type that the US
Army was using.

Within an hour and a half of the first shots being fired, Panama City's
main hospital, Santo Tomas, announced that it was overloaded with
emergencies and asked that the wounded be taken to other hospitals.
Panamanian boy scouts lent their help at the emergency rooms of Santo Tomas
and other hospitals, giving first aid to the less severely wounded patients
who could not be quickly seen by hospital staff, helping to move patients
from ambulances to emergency rooms and operating suites, and running many
small errands which the overworked hospital workers would handle by
themselves in more normal situations.

The fighting ebbed and flowed along the Panama City-Canal Zone boundary for
several days. Small groups and individuals made forays into the Canal Zone
to raise the Panamanian flag, braving the US Army's rifle fire. Snipers
fought off and on battles, particularly by exchanging fire with the
soldiers holed up in the Tivoli. Students gathered rocks and bottles for
unequal combat with heavily armed adversaries. A lone archer shot flaming
arrows at the Tivoli. The Legislative Palace became an informal
headquarters for a ragtag Panamanian resistance, thus came under the heavy
tear gas and rifle fire that took Victor Garibaldo's life. One group made
its way to Shaler Triangle, where they cut down the flagpole where the
stars and stripes had flown. Another crowd battled American troops and
police on the Bridge of the Americas, which the US forces eventually
cleared and closed. The bridge closure isolated Panama City from that part
of the country which lies between the canal and Costa Rica.

When the fighting was over, DENI investigators found over 600 bullets
embedded in the Legislative Palace. Santo Tomas Hospital reported that it
had treated 324 injuries and recorded 18 deaths from the fighting. Panama
City's Social Security Hospital treated at least 16 others who were wounded
on the first night of the fighting. Most of those killed and wounded had
suffered gunshot wounds. Some of the more seriously injured were left with
severe permanent brain damage or paralyzing spinal injuries from their
bullet wounds.

After the fighting, American investigators found over 400 bullets embedded
in the Tivoli. The US Army reported 10 soldiers wounded by gunfire, with
none killed, in the fighting near Panama City. One American soldier, Spec/4
Michael W. Rowland, died when he fell into a ravine while pulling night
time guard duty not far from the scene of the fighting. Nineteen US Army
personnel, 8 members of the US Air Force, 3 US Navy sailors and a Peruvian
naval cadet who was training with the US Navy were hurt other than by
gunfire in Pacific side fighting. Suffering non-gunshot injuries in
violence in or near Panama City were 4 Canal Zone cops and 13 American
civilians.

Most of the injuries suffered by Americans resulted from thrown rocks or
bottles. One severe injury was suffered by a young Zonian who was caught in
his car in Panama City when the fighting broke out, picked the wrong route
back into the Canal Zone, and lost an eye to a brick thrown through his
windshield.

The confrontation was not contained in the Panama City area. Word of the
fighting quickly spread all over Panama by radio, television and private
telephone calls. One Homero Velasquez, a journalist for the leftist Radio
Tribuna (which was partly owned by Thelma King), set up a makeshift
broadcasting booth in a bar a few blocks from the Canal Zone boundary,
where runners kept him posted with reports from the various scenes of
fighting. These reports, retold in lurid "play by play" style over the
radio, led the Canal Zone authorities to lay much of the blame for
mobilizing anti-American crowds at Velasquez's feet. Thelma King and other
militant leaders broadcast appeals for action over Radio Tribuna and other
stations. (@#)

Attempting to counteract the inflammatory broadcasts was Minister of
Education Manuel Solis Palma. The minister, who had been a leader of the
1947 anti-bases protests, got on the radio to call for an end to the
violence. While condemning the Americans and praising the patriotism of the
demonstrators, Solis Palma assured the people that the government would act
on their behalf and questioned the wisdom of fighting the well-armed
American forces. His advice went mostly unheeded that day.

After a day and a half of fighting, the Panamanian government shut down
Radio Tribuna and all other independent broadcasters. For their part, the
Southern Command's English-language radio and television stations broadcast
emergency instructions but little news about the events. The suppression of
news on both sides may or may not have calmed the crisis compared to what
might have happened had freedom of broadcasting been maintained. In any
case, electronic communication was only partly cut off, as the telephone
system was still working.

The incomplete censorship had the side effect of contributing to wild
rumors on all sides. One popular but inaccurate Zonian rumor, fueled in
part by references to the "American Canal Zone" in US news media, that the
Panama Canal Zone had been renamed "United States Canal Zone" and would
henceforth be an outright possession of the United States.

News and rumor instantly traveled the 50 miles from Panama's south coast to
its north coast. The country's second city, Colon, which abuts the city of
Cristobal, then part of the Canal Zone, erupted within a few hours after
the start of hostilities on the Pacific side.

Colon, a mostly black city, is and was much poorer than Panama City. Its
economic dependence on the canal is and was far more pronounced than the
capital's. Prostitution and all sorts of vice are and were major industries
in Colon.  The town has and had a bad reputation for common street crime.
Colonenses, as the locals call themselves, often vote and hold opinions
which are contrary to trends in the capital and elsewhere in the country.
Colon's people often feel neglected and abused by the national government.
In January 1964, Colon distinguished itself in another way. The fighting
against the Americans there was conducted with a deadly fury that far
surpassed that on the other side.

The Colon protest started a little after 8 p.m. on January 9, when about a
dozen people, carrying the Panamanian flag and singing El Himno Istmeqo,
Panama's national anthem, marched up Bolivar Avenue, which separates
Cristobal from Colon. A crowd soon gathered. The protesters marched on
further into Cristobal, to the Atlantic side's Panama Canal Company
administrative offices. There they raised the Panamanian flag. After the
flag raising, Colon mayor Daniel Delgado Duarte and Captain D. V. Howerth,
Cristobal district commander of the Canal Zone police, urged the crowd to
disperse.

Delgado and Howerth were mostly ignored. Militant leaders, including
members of the Colon city council and local labor union officials, led some
1,500 Panamanians in continued protests within Cristobal, marching around
to Panama Canal Company offices and storage buildings, the Cristobal YMCA
and the Masonic Temple (an affiliate of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts).

A group of American teenagers was leaving a Rainbow Girls meeting at the
Masonic Temple as the crowd approached, prompting a retired US Army
sergeant who lived next door at the YMCA to brandish a shotgun "to protect
the girls." (24) The crowd let the girls go away, then let loose with a
hail of rocks and bottles. Windows were smashed at the Masonic Temple, the
YMCA and the Panama Canal Company buildings. Rioters broke into these
premises and proceeded to smash things, loot that which was valuable, and
set fires. The nearby railroad station and the telephone exchange were
stoned and firebombed. A portion of the Panama Railroad's tracks was
destroyed, thus disrupting rail access to the Cristobal dock area.

Captain Howerth led a group of police into the YMCA and found that there
had been serious property damage, with the steel grill gate to the gift
shop crushed and the store's contents looted, a water fountain ripped from
the wall and water flowing all over, broken light fixtures and furniture
and about 100 people inside the building engaged in destruction or looting.
The Canal Zone Police fired no shots in the YMCA, but made four arrests
before retreating from the Panamanians.

Shortly thereafter, about 700 troops of the US Army's 4th Battalion, 10th
Infantry, commanded by Colonel William Sachse, moved to the unmarked and
unfenced boundary between Cristobal and Colon. Armed, but under orders not
to fire their weapons, the soldiers ousted Panamanians from the
American-owned buildings, put out some of the smaller fires and strung
barbed wire along the streets which divide the twin cities.

Some Panamanians suffered bayonet wounds during these initial
confrontations with the American soldiers. Nobody was killed by a bayonet.
While some Panamanians alleged a bayonet charge with deadly intention,
SouthCom denied this. It seems that the injuries came from pushing, shoving
and grabbing among the massed Panamanian demonstrators and the line of
American soldiers who were trying to move them out of the Canal Zone by
moving slowly forward with bayonets fixed upon their rifles and pointed at
the Panamanians.

The Panamanians threw stones. The Americans threw tear gas grenades. The
Panamanians escalated the fight, first with molotov cocktails, then with
sniper fire. Colonel Sachse's troops fell back to a Panama Canal Company
storage building and the YMCA. They were ousted from these refuges with a
hail of molotov cocktails which burned down the former and completely
gutted the latter. The US Army retreated to the Masonic Temple, located at
a corner where Cristobal is bounded on two sides by Colon, which was the at
the time the tallest building in the twin cities. There they ousted a
number of Panamanians who were on the lower floors. The soldiers fortified
the building with sandbags.

Intense fighting continued for the next two days. The Cristobal office of
the Canal Zone Credit Union was damaged by fire. The Cristobal branch of
the US Navy Oceanographic Office was completely demolished. American-owned
business in Colon, including a Sears store, reservation offices for Braniff
and Pan American airlines and branches of the Chase Manhattan Bank and the
First National City Bank were heavily damaged.

Some 20 Panamanian-owned businesses were looted. A hastily organized
committee of local business owners and other Colon citizens took to the
streets to nonviolently and effectively persuade Panamanians to stop
violence and looting against fellow Panamanians.

A fair-skinned young woman of American parentage and long Colon residence
was chased by a crowd which identified her as a gringa. (The word means a
female US national-males of that ethnicity are gringos-and is commonly used
by Panamanians without the derogatory connotations that it carries in some
parts of Latin America.) The object of the chase turned on her tormentors
and let loose with a torrent of vulgar abuse in perfect Colon vernacular,
with all the right inflections. Convinced that she was a colonense who
should not be bothered, the crowd let her go on her way.

Meanwhile, the siege of Colonel Sachse's men continued. Panamanians hurled
firebombs and fired shots at the Masonic Temple from nearby rooftops. The
army was pinned down by sniper fire from several directions. Private David
Haupt was shot in the head and killed, becoming the first American to die
at the hands of Panamanians in the fighting of January 1964.

Still without orders to fire, the 4th Battalion continued to take
casualties. First Sergeant Gerald A. Aubin and Staff Sergeant Luis Jiminez
Cruz (a Puerto Rican) were shot to death. Twelve other American soldiers
were wounded by sniper fire along the boundary between Colon and Cristobal.
The order to use live ammunition was given on the afternoon of January 11.

Unlike in Panama City, Panamanian authorities in Colon had made early
attempts to separate the combatants. Soon after the fighting had started,
the guardia had rescued the American consul in Colon, who, clad only in his
underwear, had been chased from his house. A Panamanian soldier had been
hurt by a thrown rock when he tried to stop the initial violence at the
Cristobal/Colon boundary.

Canal Zone police were in constant contact with the Colon garrison's acting
commander, Major Bolivar Rodrmguez. (Heading the guardia's Northern
District, which included Colon, was one Major Omar Torrijos. He was
occupied elsewhere during most of the hostilities.) Also in close contact
with the Americans was Colonel Josi D. Bazan, Colon's fire chief and the
second vice president of Panama. The guardia and the firefighters (the
latter known to Zonians as well as Panamanians by their Spanish name, that
is, the bomberos) evacuated several hundred Americans from Colon, many by
sea.

Special protection was also given to Colon's British residents. These
people were (and are) for the most part employed in the shipping industry.
They gathered at the British consulate, which was protected by the guardia,
lest they be mistaken for Americans and attacked.

 A guardia jeep driving down the street near the Masonic Temple became
entangled in the barbed wire laid down by the US Army. It was fired upon
with birdshot from the upper floors of the Masonic Temple and rifle fire
from the Cristobal docks area. The Guardia Nacional's Sergeant Celestino
Villareta, a passenger in the jeep, was hit in the chest by a high-powered
rifle bullet. An ambulance sent to rescue Villareta and his wounded driver,
Victor G. Jiminez, was also fired upon. The 43-year-old Villareta died.

The US Army denied responsibility for Villareta's death. Panamanians point
to the fact that the Cristobal docks were held by American troops at the
time of the shooting. That area had been the first part of Cristobal which
Colonel Sachse's men secured on the evening of January 9. Witnesses claimed
that both Villareta's jeep and the ambulance had come under rifle fire from
the docks.

At a press conference which addressed this controversy, SouthCom's General
O'Meara and US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel L. J. Churchville claimed that
US troops had fired on Villareta's jeep with birdshot only from the Masonic
Temple, and only then in response to shots which Villareta and Jimenez had
fired at the American soldiers. The Americans emphatically denied that any
US soldier in Cristobal had orders to fire a rifle at the time.

Jiminez later said that he and the other Panamanian soldiers in the jeep
repeatedly called for the US Army to stop shooting, but that each such call
was met by increased fire. Jiminez bitterly summed up his opinion of the
incident: "As a Panamanian, I solemnly accuse the spoiled Zonians of taking
the life of Sergeant Villareta." (25)  Independent investigators raised the
possibility that the fatal rifle shot was fired against orders by an
American soldier. (26)

The most innocent life that was lost in the events of January 1964 was that
of a six-month-old girl, Maritza Avila Alabarca, who was overcome by the
tear gas which was liberally used in the neighborhood where her family
lived. The US denied that this infant's death was linked to the gassing of
her neighborhood, in keeping with its claim that CS tear gas is not a
lethal agent. (In the many years since 1964 in such diverse places as
Vietnam, Northern Ireland, South Africa and elsewhere, it has been rather
conclusively shown that CS gas can kill infants, old people, people with
respiratory problems and even healthy young adults who get massive doses
while in enclosed places.)

Colon's third martyr was Carlos Renato Lara, an 18-year-old student who was
shot to death by American soldiers. Lara may have been a sniper. In any
case he took an American bullet intended for a sniper.

Panamanian accounts have it that at least 13 persons were shot, two
fatally, by the US Army along the border at Cristobal and Colon. SouthCom
held that no more than 10 Panamanians were shot by Americans in the Colon
area. Panamanian hospital sources reported 167 Colon citizens injured in
the fighting, many of whom who suffered bayonet wounds or had been beaten.

The city of Colon, a former island which was connected to the isthmus by
landfill, was an enclave of Panamanian territory surrounded by the Canal
Zone. It was connected to the capital by a Panamanian-controlled corridor
which ran from the Panamanian village of Cativa through the Canal Zone
entering Colon near Rainbow City (or Arco Iris, the Spanish name for
rainbow, as it is now called). This corridor formed the northern part of
the Trans-Isthmian Highway.

The US Army set up defensive positions alongside the highway between Cativa
and Colon. The guardia had a checkpoint at Cativa. The Trans-Isthmian
Highway was closed for a time, which stranded many Panamanians who were
trying to get home from work. Worse yet, claimed the Panamanian government,
urgently needed blood plasma and medical personnel were prevented from
reaching Colon, where a number of seriously injured persons needed blood
transfusions and the hospitals were running short-handed.

Coco Solo Hospital, the American hospital on the Atlantic side, was along
the Trans-Isthmian Highway. It was kept well-supplied and well-staffed
during the fighting. The US Army set up firing positions near the hospital,
including some behind and beside the house where the author, then an
11-year-old boy, was living. A shotgun blast was fired from under a bedroom
window by an American soldier.

The shot led to rumors that a Panamanian had been killed, which in turn led
to an angry crowd of some 250 protesters marching on the highway from
Cativa toward the hospital. Soldiers from the US Army's 8th Special Forces
Group took up positions on the road, in Panamanian territory outside the
Canal Zone limits, to stop the crowd. The tension was defused by a guardia
lieutenant, who addressed the crowd and convinced it to disperse.
Eventually it was agreed that people who were stranded at Cativa would be
allowed passage to Colon after being searched at the guardia checkpoint for
weapons.

Another US roadblock restricting access to Colon was set up nearer the
city, where the Colon Corridor intersects Randolph Road. The latter linked
the towns of Coco Solo and France Field (and US military installations at
those towns as well as Fort Randolph and the Galeta Island navy base) to
the rest of the Canal Zone. At the time of these events the Colon Corridor
was closed for repairs, so that people driving to Colon from Panama City
had to detour through the Canal Zone towns of Rainbow City or Mount Hope.
While the roadblock was for the ostensible purpose of restricting access to
the Canal Zone, it also controlled access to Colon. The US claimed that
access to Colon was not blocked at this point, some Panamanian accounts
differ, but in any case the roadblock was turned over to the guardia on
January 10.

A third US Army roadblock was set up near where the closed Colon Corridor
intersects Bolivar Highway on a narrow neck of landfill near the limits of
Colon on the one hand and the zone's Mount Hope industrial area and Rainbow
City residential area on the other. American soldiers first positioned
themselves on Bolivar Highway (in the Canal Zone) but a crowd of protesters
began to outflank them by walking down the closed corridor toward Rainbow
City. The US troops then occupied the Panamanian corridor to prevent this,
relinquishing the position to the guardia when the latter appeared shortly
thereafter.

Rainbow City remained quiet. Despite historic tensions between West Indians
and other Panamanian ethnic groups, it was not attacked by Panamanians.
American authorities, on the other hand, were afraid that the West Indian
community at Rainbow City would join in a Panamanian attack on the adjacent
Zonian residential community of Margarita. The army evacuated the Sixth
Street area of Margarita, which would have been vulnerable had there been
snipers under the bluff and across the drainage canal in Rainbow City. No
such violence took place.

(continued in Part 3)

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  NY Transfer News Collective   *   A Service of Blythe Systems 
           Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us          
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