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Latin America Views the U.S. Post-Panama
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18013 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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5 / 1990 |
1,695 Words |
| Author
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Mark Holston
Mark Holston writes about Latin American issues for Américas,
Seis Continentes, Hispanic, and other international
publications. The author wishes to thank InterContinental
Hotels in S‹o Paulo and Rio de Janeiro for their assistance in
making this report possible. |
The tracer bullets that raced from U.S. Army helicopters toward the Panama City headquarters of Manuel Noriega on December 20, 1989, signaled much more than just the beginning of the end for the Panamanian dictator.
They graphically illuminated the basic concern that many Latin Americans have harbored about the United States since U. S. Gunboats steamed around the Caribbean in the early days of this century, enforcing the will of the United States with battalions of Marines.
Operation Just Cause was the largest deployment of U.S. combat forces in a "police" action in Latin America since 25,000 American troops occupied the Dominican Republic in 1965. When Latin American leaders, intellectuals, and journalists awoke to find that the long-hinted U.S. action to topple Noriega had actually taken place, charges of "Yankee imperialism" exploded northward.
"Massacre at the Canal” screamed a massive headline in Rio de Janeiro's daily newspaper Tribuna de Imprensa. Bogotá's El Espectador decried "the most shameless of interventions" and criticized "the invincible blindness of the U.S. leaders, and Mexican author Carlos Fuentes, writing in the Mexico City daily Excelsior, asked, "Is Teddy Roosevelt still in Power? Are the Big Stick, dollar diplomacy, and Manifest Destiny still viable policies?"
The Big Stick, whether wielded by Teddy Roosevelt or George Bush, is the most-loathed symbol of U.S. supremacy in the Western Hemisphere. Yet, what was unique about the Panamanian situation was the open-and-shut case against Noriega. "I think Latin Americans
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