Military Foundations of Panamanian Politics (review)

On October 11, 1968, a group of Panamanian National Guard officers ousted that nation's president, Arnulfo Arias. Thus began two decades of military rule in a nation unaccustomed to military dictators. As Robert C. Harding points out, the 1968 putsch also marked the beginning of an important period of changes in Panama's political climate—changes that have outlasted the military regime.

Military Foundations of Panamanian Politics examines the "Panamanian military's politicization and the resultant changes in the country's political system" (p. 3). Following a brief introductory narrative, the text moves quickly to the 1940s and the fascinating antics of the former police commander-turned-president, José Antonio Remón.

Much of the remainder of the text deals with the short- and long-term effects of the 1968 coup, and herein lies the strength of this monograph. In 1972 Panama's National Assembly adopted a new constitution that named General Omar Torrijos "Jefe Máximo de la Revolución Panameña." Similarly, the Labor Code of 1972 "brought the Torrijos regime more legitimacy in the form of popular support" (p. 96). These moves, along with Torrijos's designation of the urban shantytown San Miguelito as an "experimental district," deftly solidified the national guard's hold on power while adding a veneer of popular support (p. 105). The Torrijos-Carter treaties of 1977 further galvanized these accomplishments.

Having outlined the ebb and flow of the 1968 coup, Harding turns to "the legitimization of the regime" (p. 127). Following the signing of the treaties, Panama's national guard "returned to their barracks," and Torrijos handpicked a new president, Aristides Aroyo. Aroyo headed a new "quasi-civilian" political party, the Partido Revolucionario Democrático (PRD), which would promote a civilian political platform aimed at perpetuating political gains achieved by the Torrijos government (p. 128). While General Torrijos's death in 1981 complicated the transition to civilian rule, the PRD ensured that Torrijismo would continue to figure prominently in Panamanian politics.

While writing convincingly of the 1968 coup and its legitimization, Harding relies too heavily on secondary, non-Panamanian sources. His discussion of Panama's service-sector economy, for example, would have benefited from Alfredo Castillero Calvo's seminal work, Economía terciaria y sociedad (1980). Considered in conjunction with Andrew Zimbalist and John Weeks' Panama at the Crossroads (1991), which Harding does consult, Castillero's work makes evident that Panama's economy did not suddenly "leap-frog easily to a service-based economy" in the 1970s as Harding suggests (pp. 64, 105). Similarly, while Harding makes casual reference to student activism, close examination of Jorge Conte Porras's La rebelión de las esfinges accentuates the significance of students in Panamanian politics and why Torrijos needed to co-opt them into his base of support.

Even at the very heart of his argument, instead of employing documents from Panama City to analyze the events of October 1968 (years of GDP/GNP data and the Ministerio de Justicia's own 1983 publication, Ideario de un proceso: La revolución panameña, for example), Harding repeatedly cites country studies and World Bank data to support his analysis (for example, see pp. 97, 99, 103, 135, and 188). The author's reliance on foreign sources significantly diminishes the depth and breadth of this book's analytical scope.

Harding is simply wrong when he declares General Omar Torrijos a communist (p. 90). He fails to provide compelling corroboration because none exists, and this mistake calls into question much of his subsequent discussion. Those who knew General Torrijos best say that he denied membership, clandestine or otherwise, in the Communist Party. General Torrijos is a complex, enigmatic historical figure that defies such reductionist labels.

This book adds important new insight to the literature on Panamanian politics. The author's interviews with ex-president Ernesto...