PANAMA: THE ROAD TO RECOVERY : Panamanians in Ravaged Neighborhood Applaud the Invasion

Manuel Blanco rummaged through the ashes that had been his home and salvaged a hammer with a charred handle and a blackened pair of pliers.

The two tools and the clothes on his back were what remained of his earthly possessions. Even so, the 70-year-old retired auto mechanic said he is glad U.S. forces invaded Panama and overthrew the dictatorship of Gen. Manuel A. Noriega.

“It hurts that I’ve lost everything, but what are you going to do? The gringos had to do it like they did. I only wish they would have done it long ago,” he said.

He stood on blackened sheets of corrugated tin that had been the roof of the two-story wooden apartment building where he lived with his wife and their granddaughter. The only remnants of the building were two masonry columns that supported the communal bathrooms.

Blanco and his neighbors had the misfortune to live a block from the headquarters of the Panama Defense Forces, Noriega’s command center.

U.S. tanks and rocket-firing helicopters destroyed the military headquarters before dawn Wednesday. The barrage sparked fires that raced through housing in the working-class Chorrillo neighborhood, creating at least 20,000 refugees.

“No one has more right to speak than we do, the ones hurt most by the attack,” said Ruben Camargo, 37, standing in front of his ruined home. Camargo, a goldsmith, was luckier than Blanco in that he lived with his wife and two children in a more substantial cinder-block structure.

U.S. forces evacuated the area at daybreak Wednesday, hours after the assault began.

Camargo said his 4-year-old daughter was traumatized by the hours of fire and bombing, and she wakes up crying during the night.

“One single person is guilty of all this. So much death because of one man, and that man’s name is Manuel Antonio Noriega,” said Camargo when asked if he resents the invaders.

Of a dozen Chorrillo residents interviewed, all applauded the U.S. action.

The closest thing to criticism was voiced by taxi driver Bolivar Escobar, 32, standing in his flooded home on the ground floor of a destroyed housing block. Most of his family’s possessions were destroyed or stolen. He salvaged a red cape embroidered with silver trim--a costume that his 11-year-old daughter had worn.

“The invasion itself was correct; the form, no,” he said. “They should have come with much more personnel to establish positions corner by corner to prevent looting. And they could have used less shelling. A lot of people died in their sleep. Now we have to start from zero,” he said.

Hospital authorities estimated between 200 and 300 people were killed in the invasion, at least half of them civilians. Hundreds more were injured.

“It was the only way to get him (Noriega) out,” Camargo said. “He could have quit and given us all the gift of a happy Christmas, not this bitter Christmas we’re having.”