Latins Are Leery of U.S. Motive in Panama

Many in Washington reportedly are irritated, to say the least, at the lack of Latin American support for U.S. efforts to unseat Gen. Manuel A. Noriega. Conversely, south of the Rio Grande there is a feeling that Latin American resistance to U.S. moves in Panama has not been all that it should be. The dilemma lies in how the Panama crisis is seen from north and south.

For reasons that remain mysterious but not necessarily relevant, the U.S. government had a falling out with Noriega, its old friend and loyal retainer. It then proceeded to make public charges that, whatever their accuracy, were familiar to everyone in Latin American political and diplomatic circles: that Noriega had ties with the drug trade, occasionally dealt with his opponents in a brutal fashion and dictated to the official government, naming and replacing five presidents at his whim. But Noriega is no more corrupt and authoritarian now that the United States wants to get rid of him than he was yesterday when Washington had him on its payroll.

For Latin Americans there is a fundamental problem of principle involved in the flagrant U.S. effort to do away with Noriega. The principle is non-intervention, and the problem is precedent. To accept the legitimacy of any U.S. attempt to override another recognized government would create an intolerable precedent that could be used in the future against those who supported American actions in the past. If the United States props up or destabilizes a government (as in Nicaragua, before and after the Sandinista revolution) simply on the basis of ideological preference, or to get even for a double- or triple-cross in the shadiest of contexts (the case of Noriega--or worse still, as many believe, because of second thoughts about the Panama Canal treaties), then what is to stop it from acting in a similar vein elsewhere one day?

This feeling was less evident at the beginning of the Panamanian incident, but has gathered strength as the blatancy of American efforts to overthrow Noriega has sharpened. Coupled with the sending of U.S. troops to Honduras, the expanded U.S. campaign against Noriega has underlined the difficulties of even seeming to side with the United States.

At the outset of the crisis the so-called Group of Eight (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela) excluded Panama from their deliberations; now they are wondering whether that contributed to the Reagan Administration’s efforts to isolate the Noriega regime internationally. The (now) Group of Seven foreign ministers plan to review their stance, which has drawn criticism in several member countries.

In Mexico, where government officials hardly ever air their disagreements, the outgoing undersecretary of foreign relations publicly expressed displeasure with the Latin American stance and called for hemispheric solidarity against U.S. intervention. As he phrased it, when forced to choose between self-determination and democracy, the former comes first.

In the last analysis the Latin nations are caught between a rock--backing the Reagan Administration in its vendetta against Noriega--and a hard place--support for a classically distasteful caudillo. No one wants to side with Noriega, but neither does any Latin American statesman want to be seen as countenancing a boldfaced U.S. intervention in the region.

To say that the fight against Noriega is a struggle for democracy, and not for U.S. interests, begs the question from a Latin standpoint. The deposed Panamanian president, Eric Arturo Delvalle, had been a mere token vice president to Nicolas Ardito Barletta, who took office after what was widely viewed as a fraudulent election. When Noriega forced Ardito Barletta out, Delvalle was given the honor of the office, but not much else. Delvalle was no more a democratic ruler than Noriega, and Noriega is hardly the most repressive or corrupt ruler that Latin America has known in recent times.

The drug question is perhaps the novel element in the U.S. attempt to impose its will in Panama, but an indictment by an American court is far from being tantamount to undisputed evidence of guilt--at least by Latin American standards.

Moreover, the swelling public opposition to Noriega in Panama is more a result of the U.S. action than a cause. Many, if not most, of those protesting in the streets are there primarily because the U.S. freeze of Panamanian assets and payments has also frozen paychecks, bank accounts and business earnings.

The United States might like to think that its actions in the Panamanian crisis are noble. That may well be so, but in Latin America it looks more like a 1988 version of the same old song: U.S. intervention in the hemisphere for its own reasons, which are rarely new and never right from the perspective of Latin American interests.