Tree Becomes Symbol of New Life for Panamanians

Among the 12,000 refugees camped on blankets and cardboard at Balboa High School, a wiry man in Bermuda shorts squatted over his foot-high coconut palm Sunday to hang an array of makeshift Christmas ornaments.

The unemployed machinist had lost his home and everything in it to fire ignited by a U.S. air strike last week, but he was determined not to lose out on a Christmas tree. Among the decorations he strung were condiments from a U.S. Army rations package, a paper cup and Camel cigarette wrappers.

“We have to celebrate Christmas,” said Cristobal Colon--the name Christopher Columbus used in Spain.

“Whether things are good or bad, whether we have anything or not, we always celebrate Christmas,” he added as his neighbors crowded around.

Even under normal circumstances, a steamy Christmas in the tropics is an incongruous event. But after a U.S. invasion to oust Panamanian strongman Manuel A. Noriega, the holiday seemed both sad and surreal.

U.S. soldiers on patrol downtown dripped with perspiration under the weight of their flak jackets and camouflage uniforms as they reminisced about winters back home. At the headquarters of the new, U.S.-installed government, Sgt. Richard Ellis manned an M-60 machine gun from the turret of an armored personnel carrier and peered at the pictures of his three children taped in the window.

“I look at them every day, all the time,” said Ellis, 30, of Canton, Mass. “Christmas is for kids and it turns you into a big juvenile. You get down and play, and when that gets taken away, it bothers me.”

Nearby, at a concertina-shaped, barbed-wire barricade, Staff Sgt. Lionel San Jose said he received a picture of his first son for Christmas.

“It’s kind of hard for me because we just had a little boy two weeks before I came here,” said San Jose, 31, of Los Angeles. “But a lot of the Panamanian people were happy to see us here and that makes us feel better.”

The soldiers, who arrived in October and hope to leave by February, said they had received candy cane from the base and stockings from home. And, at the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command, hundreds of packages addressed to “any American GI,” arrived by airlift from the United States.

But Christmas dinner was to be a brown plastic bag of K-rations--officially known as “Meals Ready to Eat,” but widely disparaged as “Meals Rejected Everywhere.” The likely fare: corned beef hash or tuna with noodles.

Good-natured Panamanians also joked Sunday that there were “no more looting days until Christmas,” after almost all of the major warehouses and department stores had been sacked.

In poor housing projects, meanwhile, kids could be seen playing with brand new soccer balls and listening to fancy cassette players.

At Noriega’s private residence in the swank suburb of San Francisco, members of the 82nd Airborne Division slouched in wicker chairs beside the ousted dictator’s Christmas tree, which was adorned with white ribbons and blonde dolls.

Christmas ornaments broken in the U.S. assault littered the ground in front of Noriega’s old office at Ft. Amador, a base shared by U.S. and Panamanian forces; unopened presents to the general were stacked inside. A banner on the American half of the base read, “Felices Pascuas--Merry Christmas.” The message on the Panamanian side: “Welcome To Those Who Bring Peace.”

As word of Noriega’s surrender spread at nightfall on Christmas Eve, Panamanians turned out on the balconies and in the streets to cheer and bang on pots, an act that once symbolized opposition to Noriega.

“No more Noriega,” they shouted gleefully. “Merry Christmas.”

In the Balboa refugee camp, dreams were larger than life for some of the newly homeless. Celina Rivera, 58, applauded the U.S. invasion that leveled her shanty home and said she looked upon President Bush as Santa Claus.

“Bush said he is going to give each of us a chalet,” she said.

“Yeah, with a swimming pool,” chimed in a laughing youth.

Down the way, past the camouflaged “Porta-potties,” children and adults gathered around Colon’s Christmas tree.

“Houses and clothes are material,” said Celia White, who lost all of hers. “What is important is our spirit to struggle and get ahead.”

Colon, 42, sprinkled rice and lentils under the tree, where he had laid offerings of bread and orange and egg--”so that they will never be scarce.”

He said the tree was a symbol in the aftermath of the invasion--”because I am not dead,” he said. “Because I am alive.”