Comment by yequalsx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yequalsx | Hacker News Reader

I grew up in the Canal Zone, Panama. I'm in the last generation of true Zonians. When the Panama Canal Treaty started to take effect on October 1, 1979 we all thought it was the beginning of the end of the Panama Canal. When Panama took over the railroad it shortly became defunct so our beliefs weren't entirely without foundation. Military personnel at one point were banned from riding it.

We were angry about losing, from our perspective, our homeland. The Canal Zone police force was disbanded and the PDF (Panama Defense Forces) started patrolling my home town. More and more Panama encroached on what I thought of as my homeland. During Noriega I was convinced Panama would run the canal into the ground.

I went back to Panama 8 years ago and I was pleasantly surprised at the progress the country has made. They've done a great job in running the canal and the country has noticeably benefited from America's withdrawal. My anecdotal experience is that colonialism is bad. Even in benign forms.

I talked with an elderly rabiblanco the last time I was there. He said America leaving made Panama grow up. By all indications they have done so and I'm glad to see it.

I've spent some time in Panama. It's an interesting country in that it's not reliant on tourism. Tourism is an afterthought really. It's a small country and the canal generates an enormous amount of revenue for its size. It's going to generate more and the country is going to have a lot of money to grow up and expand. Investment in Panama is probably a good bet these days.

Random: years ago when I was trying to sort out a messy political question for Django's "localflavor" library which handles local phone/address/ID number/etc. types (the question: should the independent nations under the Compact of Free Association be considered "US states" for purposes of this library, since the US provides their postal service and assigns them "state" codes?), I snuck in an easter egg.

The solution to the political question was to carefully choose a default set of things which would be accepted as "US states", along with sets of constants describing other options you could plug in. One of those, which still lives today as localflavor.us.us_states.OBSOLETE_STATES, lists codes which once were accepted as "states" by the USPS, but no longer are. One of those is, of course, the abbreviation for the Panama Canal Zone ('CZ'). So if you ever need to send mail back in time to the Canal Zone, Django will help you do it.

> They've done a great job in running the canal and the country has noticeably benefited from America's withdrawal.

Your comment is missing the part where the US military had to go in and take down Noriega. The intervention allowed Guillermo Endara to take power and dissolved the Panamanian Defense Force. Without it, Noriega would certainly still be in power.

Under Torrijos–Carter Treaties the US has a right to intervene militarily to protect the canal. This is probably the biggest thing keeping it from becoming a defacto Russian or Chinese port or drug-runner owned port. Look, I'm all for local politics but your post suggests that everything just went fine with the locals, but in reality the port will always be under US protection in one form or another, which helps keep it thriving.

Remember locals were outraged and protesting in the streets that the US dare attack their beloved bloodthristy dictator. Dies hards still exist:

>Eighteen years after the invasion, Panama's National Assembly unanimously declared 20 December 2007 to be a day of national mourning.

Source: wikipedia.

I don't believe my comment is missing anything. I was writing about some nostalgia and how I'm impressed with the efforts of Panama. I never implied or suggested that Panama has no problems. Just that they've done much better than I thought they would. Besides, the U.S. was a major supporter of the PDF before Noriega and at the beginning of his power. We had no qualms dealing with Torrijos or with PDF intervention in national politics. So long as the dictator was still on our side we were fine with it.

Lots of civilians died in El Chorillo. It's ok for people to mourn their loss. There were bad and stupid decisions on both sides during those days.

Panamanian here.

> Without it, Noriega would certainly still be in power.

That's debatable. Thankfully the US took care of the situation efficiently, but the general climate was pointing towards a bloody civil war.

> Under Torrijos–Carter Treaties the US has a right to intervene militarily to protect the canal.

Thankfully in my opinion. Though you could argue that it also makes the Canal a target.

> Remember locals were outraged and protesting in the streets that the US dare attack their beloved bloodthirsty dictator. Dies hards still exist

This is the only part I truly disagree with. A very small minority actually protested in favor of General Noriega. Pretty much the whole country was on board with removing him from power with the obvious exception of people that followed him to power of their own. Panamanians were not outraged because of the removal of their dictator, but of the methods used to do so that left a bloody trail and piles of dead bodies.

December 20 is a national mourning day in recognition of the people that gave their life during such turmoil, not in the name of a power hungry and greedy Noriega.

EDIT: The US soldiers where super nice to me as a kid. I even got to drive in a tank and they gave me a shitload of soda.

Some useful context can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panamanian_general_election,_1....

I've always found it notable that the purpose of the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama was to remove a dictator and replace him with a democratically elected government.

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