Talks about Military Bases (from La Prensa, Dec. 1995)
Talks about Military Bases
by Horacio E. Rodríguez
from La Prensa, December 13, 1995
The Southern Command’s Colonel Richard O’Connor declared, and it was later confirmed by the new U.S Ambassador to Panama William Hughes, that the United States does not have funds budgeted to pay rent for military bases in Panama beyond the year 2000. For this reason, our government ought to suspend and immediately cancel the talks on this issue with the U.S. government.
In fact, we are opposed to such talks or dialogues from the start. Merely entering such an event about the presence of military bases with the United States - the country which massacred us on January 9, 1964 and later invaded us on December 20, 1989- would be to dishonor the memory of the January martyrs, whose slogan was “No Bases,” and for that gave their blood.
It is also totally incorrect that the presence of even a single base would diminish drug trafficking and money laundering. The greatest number of U.S. military bases are in the United States’ territory itself, and it is precisely the country with the largest consumption of drugs on the planet. So we are obliged to ask: What are the U.S. military bases doing, or what have they done, to prevent drug consumption? The response is obvious.
With respect to the laundering of money, how can military bases prevent this illegal act? Will they invade the banks here, with all their military force, in cases where they have proof or well-grounded suspicion of money laundering? Will they invade Punta Paitilla [a wealthy neighborhood near the banking sector in Panama City], just as they invaded the martyred neighborhood of El Chorrillo on December 20, 1989?
There is no way of knowing for certain how the military bases will be able to control money laundering, for which reason we insist that talks on the issue be cancelled. There is more. On the front page of La Estrella last November 18, the following appears: “The Argentine Ambassador to the United States, Dr. Raœl Granillo Ocampo, said yesterday that the United States is the country where the most money from drug trafficking is laundered.” What have the hundreds of military bases in the United States done to control this laundering?
Regarding possible unemployment that could exist if the United States fully carries out the Torrijos-Carter Treaties, this should be resolved by the brilliant and thoughtful minds that are changing in one way or another Panama’s economicy policy and proposing its insertion into the World Trade Organization.
On the other hand the presence of even a single military base on the isthmus would sustain the high levels of prostitution and resulting venereal and infectious diseases, such as the terrible AIDS, to which there is still no cure.
And finally, if it is true that a great majority of Panamanians don’t want to hear about militarism and national armies, why have and maintain foreign troops on our nation’s soil? Why can there be North American generals and colonels here but not Panamanian ones?
The stars and stripes ought to fly only from the U.S. Embassy, and no other place in the nation.
(The author is Inspections Secretary of the Panamanian Workers Federation, Panama’s largest labor federation.)
