Combat In Panama : Chaos Could Threaten U.S. Policy : Reaction: Violent displays in the streets show thin support for Endara and the Noriega loyalists’ power to create disorder, officials say.

When Eastern Europe’s Communist dictators fell, citizens spilled into the streets in joyful parades to hail their new freedom. But instead of parades, the fall of Panama’s dictator brought an ugly wave of looting and surprisingly dogged resistance.

The reasons, scholars and former officials said Saturday, include the desperate poverty of Panama City’s barrios, some of which lie only a few blocks from glittering, modern shops, the sharp racial divisions of Panamanian society and Latin Americans’ traditional resentment of U.S. intervention.

And whatever the reasons for the chaos, it revealed two problems that could plague U.S. policy long after the looting is finally quelled: popular enthusiasm for the new government of Guillermo Endara appears thin, and the ability of Noriega’s followers to create disorder remains considerable.

“I don’t see a lot of support for the Endara government,” said Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Forces Committee. “If there isn’t support for Endara, we have problems.”

“Endara is not the strongest political figure you could ask for,” said Nestor Sanchez, a former senior Defense Department expert on Panama. “To think that the 70% vote for the opposition (in last May’s election) was for Endara would be erroneous. It was a vote against the dictatorship, not a vote for Endara to do the job that has to be done now.”

The continuing hit-and-run resistance to U.S. forces by Noriega’s paramilitary Dignity Battalions was also a sign that the job of restoring order may take longer than U.S. commanders initially expected.

“The Dignity Battalions are people who had no power or influence before,” said retired Army Col. William Comee, who served as a staff officer in Panama. “Noriega gave them guns and a good measure of discretion. They may not want to give that status up voluntarily.”

Panama has a long history of living on the edge of disorder.

“Even in the 19th Century, Panama had a reputation as a very difficult area to control,” said Lincoln Gordon, scholar at the Brookings Institution. “The authorities (in Colombia, which then ruled the isthmus) viewed Panama as a very difficult place, full of desperadoes, thieves and low-life elements.”

Even today, Gordon said, “this is not a highly organized society with deep historical roots, and it has no long historical culture on which it is based.”

Panama itself, after all, was formed as a nation by outside interests--chiefly the United States, which wanted to build a canal across what was then Colombian territory. For most of this century, many of the country’s most powerful institutions have been American: the Canal, the U.S. Army, the United Fruit Co.

As a result, scholars said, Panamanian society has many divisions--economic, racial, political--but few unifying factors.

Economically, said Brad Barham, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Panama has some of the most visible extremes of wealth and poverty in Latin America. As many as 70% of the residents of Panama City live on less than $2,000 a year, with most incomes closer to $1,000, he said. Yet because Panama is a world trade center with an economy based on the U.S. dollar, prices for most goods are very close to U.S. prices.

“Panama is a center for trade, with much wealth at the top, even though most people in Panama don’t benefit much from it,” Barham said. “The poor can see all this stuff around them, but it’s not really theirs. Imagine what it would be like to try to live on $1,000 here in the United States. . . . So when you take away the police force, you really open up the channels for a lot of pent-up frustration.”

The looting can be seen as “an act of social revenge against the country’s middle and upper classes, who have been repressing the poor in Panama for generations, usually with the support of the United States,” contended Peter Smith, director of the Center of Iberian and Latin American Studies at the University of California in San Diego.

The country’s aching racial and ethnic divisions add to the picture. Panama’s original settlers included wealthy Spaniards and black Caribbean slaves, and the class distinctions among them have been rigidly preserved.

“In Panama, those who own the stores are white, Asian, East Indian; those who loot them tend to be black, mestizo (mixed native Indian) and mulatto (mixed black and white),” said Richard Millett, a professor of Latin American studies at Southern Illinois University. “This has been historically true in Panama--that is, the darker, the poorer.”

Despite his excesses, Noriega won a measure of real popularity among Panama’s poor--in part because he came from one of Panama City’s poorest barrios, in part because he humbled the country’s traditional white politicians.

“Noriega is one of their own who kind of made it through all of the rigidities of Panamanian society, in defiance of the odds,” Smith said.

Indeed, Panama’s military leaders have traditionally shown more concern for the country’s poor than many civilian political leaders drawn, like labor lawyer Endara, from the white upper class.

“Historically, it has been the military who really got into civic action with the peasants,” said Sanchez. “It was not the oligarchy. From the peasant point of view, the PDF (Panama Defense Forces) were the ones giving them something.”

Many Panamanians initially welcomed the U.S. intervention, of course. But as fighting continued through a fourth day on Saturday, some reports from Panama suggested that resentment of the U.S. presence was also widespread.

Times staff writer Ronald L. Soble contributed to this story.