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From April 15 to May 3, the Panama Campaign office coordinated a national tour by a Panamanian and a Puerto Rican, both activists and popular educators who focus on the effects of the U.S. military presence in their countries. Jesús Alemancia is a member of the Panamanian Kuna indigenous group, and an analyst for the Panamanian Center for Social Research and Action. Wanda Colón Cortés is the director of the Puerto Rican Caribbean Project for Justice and Peace. Both have been focusing recently on U.S.- dictated counternarcotics policy in Latin America, because of its current use as a major justification for continued arms trade, U.S. military training and presence throughout Latin America.

In San Francisco, Jesús had interviews with the local Pacifica radio station and two freelance radio programs. In Tucson, he visited a project where local indigenous people are developing a seedbank of endangered species, and received a tour of the U.S.-Mexican border around Nogales (Arizona and Sonora, Mexico) from local community members. In St. Louis, Jesús met with a group of Panamanian and Spanish-language students at Lindenwood College, where the director of the host department was a U.S. citizen who had grown up in the Panama Canal Zone, and brought a U.S. military perspective to the discussion.

In Washington DC Jesús and John participated in a School of the Americas Watch rally and lobbying workshops. Wanda, Jesús, and John met with several Congressional staff and the Defense Department. Local organizers in DC are building on the experience of the tour to form an FOR local chapter to focus on the U.S. military presence in Panama and Puerto Rico, and throughout Latin America. In New York City and Brattleboro, Vermont, Wanda and Jesús also met with well-informed and engaged community and student groups, and were well cared-for by their hosts.

Following is a summary of brief presentations Jesús and Wanda gave at the Washington Office on Latin America:

Wanda: I work with the Caribbean Project for Justice and Peace (PCJP), an organization which for 25 years has dedicated itself to investigating and sensitizing the Puerto Rican people about the United States military presence in that country. In spite of current financial difficulties, the PCJP continues to produce and distribute educational materials and maintain relationships with others who work on these issues. This year on July 25 marks the 100-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Puerto Rico, and 100 years of a U.S. military presence on the island.

The War on Drugs today in Puerto Rico has been integrated into and is reflected in state structures, as well as civil society. This has increased the marginalization of and discrimination against certain sectors in society, often through the use of force or a military mentality. For example, there are some 60 housing projects that have been invaded and occupied by the police. The invasion occurred in a "Rambo-style publicity project," complete with cameras and helicopters, to show the public the government's great efforts against drugs. On the other hand, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has opened nine new offices on the island, with the justification that 60% of terrorist acts occur in Puerto Rico, a statistic which sounds absurd to Puerto Ricans.

The perception of a more educated sector is that the problem is not only domestic. But there are two perceptions: one of the more prepared sector, and another of the sector that suffers and lives the situation of domestic drug consumption and trafficking. Domestic drug traffic and consumption are increasing dramatically, and Puerto Rican society is showing it. Personal bankruptcy, suicide, mental health problems like depression are all symptoms of a consumer society which encourages uncontrolled consumption, with the idea that buying things will make one happy. On one hand, the working person's salary is compromised by his/her credit card, and on the other hand a monstruous underground economy flourishes. The government offers false aid, for example constructing projects where individual houses cost $200,000, a price which only 2000 people on the island could pay. This also contributes to the pressure to achieve a certain standard of living against impossible odds.

Just as all of society is implicated in the consumer culture, everyone is implicated in the problem of domestic drug traffic and consumption. The police and the politicians are corrupt. Someone who does not work could show up with a nice car and even buy your house, and there is no way to regulate or track people's income and expenditures. Everyone says, "Hey, but where did that guy get all that money?" but everyone knows.

Jesús: Informal negotiations between the U.S. and Panamanian governments to maintain a U.S. military presence in Panama after the year 2000 have been going on since 1995, and were finally publicly announced in July 1997. The conflict between civilian and military control has been central to the negotiations on the proposed Multilateral Counternarcotics Center (CMA, by its Spanish initials). The Panamanian government is under pressure to emphasize the proposed base's civilian character, pointing to training for police, lawyers, research. Descriptions that have surfaced thus far, however, suggest what is basically a military base, very similar to the already-existing Joint Center for Air Operations at Howard Air Force Base.

The negotiations have been kept secret, with the only major breakthrough for the public coming through a leak to the Mexican newspaper, El Excelsior, which published a draft agreement that was being negotiated by the two governments in January of this year. A few Latin American governments, such as the Mexican, Brazilian, and Colombian, have apparently expressed interest in participating in some such center, while the Rio Group has not given the proposal much attention.

In October of this year the electoral process opens, with the presidential election scheduled for May 2, 1999. Current President Pérez Balladares wants to get reelected. Early on in the reelection campaign a proposal was made to "marry" two pending referenda: one on the CMA and one on immediate reelection, with the argument that there was not money to hold two referenda in the same year. This proposal received a negative response both from the U.S. embassy and the nationalist sector of Pérez Balladares' own party. The U.S. argued that they were two separate issues, and didn't trust in Pérez Balladares' popularity to carry both issues. The PRD nationalists are against the CMA, seeing it as a threat to Panamanian sovereignty. Pérez Balladares did not want to lose the support of either, so the idea of "marriage" was dropped. Recently, Pérez Balladares has used strong language in criticizing the proposal, even calling it a "mamotreto," or big, useless document. It is not by chance that when the draft proposal was leaked it was leaked to a Mexican newspaper.

Basically the Panamanian public supports the idea of a continued U.S. military presence for economic reasons. Polls have shown 60-70% in favor. However, this idea has been sold without necessarily being supported by the numbers. The problem is that the profile of the U.S. military presence is such that its continuation seems like a done deal.

Also related is the situation in Colombia, and in the Panamanian-Colombian border region, called the Darién on the Panama side. At the end of 1997, violence in that region was exploited by the media, and people in that region were made to think that they needed to worry about their security, and who would defend them in the face of the "Colombianization" of Panama. This idea refers to the entrance of the mafia, drug traffic, narcoguerrillas, illegal immigration and all the socio-economic problems and violence that come with these. So then people say, we don't want the bases to stay, but then who will guarantee our security? Panama has no army. Should it create one?...

The best way to defeat the CMA is through a strategy that informs and mobilizes civil society in Panama and throughout Latin America. Panamanian society is starting to see more information. Information should also be sent to Brazilian and Colombian people and organizations. Panamanian ex-president and ex-Secretary General of the United Nations, Jorge Illueca, is a very strong figure in Latin America who opposes the CMA. Still, we need to break the information impasse. Recently President Pérez Balladares said the proposal is almost complete, with 80 changes, but no one knows what the changes are. Another important piece of the campaign could be pressure on the U.S. government from within the United States to comply with the Torrijos-Carter Treaties and the Chemical Weapons Convention.