The regime of Omar Torrijos has been ap-
plauded by many within and outside Panama
as “revolutionary.” Torrijos himself indulged
in flirting with this image. Being, or at least
seeming, revolutionary has been an asset dur-
ing certain moments of his regime’s history.
The Panamanian military, under then Col-
onel Torrijos, took power in October 1968,
following a crisis of the political rule that had
been traditionally exercised by a few related
families in Panama. By the late 1960s this
oligarchy had failed to meet the economic
needs of a rapidly increasing urban popula-
tion, to modernize the agrarian sector or to
address the middle class quest for more
political participation.’ Even more impor-
tant, in 1967 it failed in its efforts to secure a
treaty with the United States which would
decolonize the Canal Zone.
After more than ten years of governing
Panama, and particularly after Torrijos
capitulated to a neo-colonial solution to the
Panama Canal question, it has become clear
that there was nothing revolutionary in Torri-
jos’ approach to the pressing social, political
and economic questions that confronted him
when he took power. In fact he soon emerged
as a populist leader from a fairly classic mold,
willing only to push for certain reforms in the
areas of labor, land tenure, education and
politics which would in no way threaten the
foundations of the existing social relations of
production or give real political power to the
masses.
POPULISM IN PANAMA
There are two important aspects of
populism as a political phenomenon that are
particularly relevant to the Torrijos regime.
One is the heterogeneous nature of the class
alliance that supports it, including labor, ur-
ban masses, peasantry, middle classes and the
more advanced fraction of the bourgeoisie. 2
In the case of Torrijos this alliance was
dominated by transnational finance capital
and took the form of a civil-military regime.
A second aspect of populism is the relative
weight of the various classes, fractions of
classes or groups within that alliance. Unlike
Peron in Argentina who counted primarily
on the urban workers and masses in his bid to
undermine the political power of the landed
oligarchy, Torrijos relied largely on the rural
masses themselves. This difference is of course
due to important differences in the economic
structures of the two countries.
While 48% of Panama’s 1.75 million
population is urban, they are largely service
workers, underemployed and unemployed.
The rural sector, with more of the population
working as small farmers, rural proletariat or
landless peasantry has been dominated by the
latifundists (the large, usually backward,
landholding elite), primarily through their
control of credit and distribution.
Torrijos, in an effort to break the political
control of the latifundists, sought to organize
the various fractions of the rural sector into
state-sponsored rice production collectives
(Asentamientos Campesinos), agrarian pro-
duction teams (Juntas Agrarias de Produc-
cion) and cooperatives. The new production
units, together with several state-owned sugar
mills, were aimed at cheapening food staples
and increasing sugar exports. These projects,
financed by the World Bank and funneled
through Panama’s Agricultural Development
Bank, served to deepen capitalist relations in
the agricultural sector. But more immediate-
ly, they displaced the latifundists as the
political brokers in the rural sector, replacing
them with the Torrijos regime as the primary
source of credit, transportation and
marketing facilities.
Decolonizing the Canal Zone and control-
ling the Canal administration were the new
regime’s most important political objectives.
Its economic objectives were outlined five
weeks after seizing state power:
‘) the vigorous broadening of the Colon Free
Zone operations; . . 3) tourism; 4) exploita-
tion of mineral resources recently discovered on
the Atlantic zone; 5) promoting Panama as an
international financial center based on existing
national and foreign banks; 6) rational and
prudent continuation of the import substitution
policy…. I
20SeptOct 1979
Torrijos’ acceptance of a Canal treaty th2
contains far less than he had hoped for can b
explained by examining the scope and dept
of U.S. domination over both the private an
public sector of Panamanian society, an
more importantly by the dependence of th
regime on transnational finance capital.
Menu
