“Speech for the Omar Torrijos Foundation” by General Manuel Antonio Noriega (1/17/1989)
“Speech for the Omar Torrijos Foundation” by General Manuel Antonio Noriega
January 17, 1989
Prologue by Captain Severino Mejia, COC Chief
The Commander’s Operations Center (COC) collects the statement Political-Doctrinal Speech by Commander Noriega, given at the Omar Foundation Dinner on January 17, 1989, to be disseminated to an audience that believes in a Panama free of all foreign ties; that believes that we can define our destiny by ourselves without a foreign embassy having to dictate to us guidelines for conduct; that believes in a Democracy, but not for a few, but for the majority of our people who have had to make their share of sacrifice in the face of the aggression of the barbarians from the north. We are sure that what is expressed here by our Commander will be valid, in the same proportion that each one of us contributes his grain of sand to achieve a Panama as our people want: Free, Sovereign and at Peace for Economic Progress.
General Manuel Antonio Noriega:
I once wrote in the magazine Lotería that I concluded with the last book that had been given to General Torrijos. It was a book, one of those kind of weird ones that he called “astrological, esoteric” etc, and that he also liked a lot, and in which he said that Aquarians never die. And he liked it, and I put it in the magazine, with the philosophical and energetic sense that Aquarians like him who have that ideal, who have that movement, who create that energy and who develop in that life have it today and always.
Mr. President of the Republic, Manuel Solís Palma; Professor Maritza Herrera, President of the Omar Torrijos Herrera Foundation, distinguished Ministers of State present here , Honorable Magistrates of the Supreme Court of Justice, of the Electoral Tribunal, Representatives of the Parliament of the Republic, Ambassadors present, friends of the Homeland: Panama, members of the General Staff and Middle Management of the Defense Forces, friends all.
I am grateful for the honor of having served the Foundation, of addressing a few words to the friends of yesterday, of today, of the patriotic struggle that is immortal like matter and glory. It changes form, but never dies. And the struggle for the total liberation of these 77,082 square kilometers of Panamanian territory entails patriotic awareness, the will to sacrifice, the advance without fear, and without fear of the unknown, without even waiting for material compensation.
Today you all come to this place with the thought that honors the generational contribution of a man called Torrijos. You, within your qualification at the First Dinner of the year 89, use the moment with a cartographic visa that will tie up the milestones that will close the coordinates of the year 2000.
From this platform and with the political and personal hierarchy of those who are attending this evening, we cannot, and you do not expect it, and it would be frustrating if I came to speak about the infantry battalions and the struggle of advance tactics. You, as a genuine expression of Panamanian society in its different nuances as professionals, are interested like me, and you want to know or hear, and you have printed it in the folder that begins the event, you want to know or hear: to order criteria, even if they are different, on how the next government of 1989 should be formed.
And you can be part of that next government, so that the liberation struggle does not stop. So that the material things inherent to man improve, and do not stagnate or deteriorate. And we have to accept that the Defense Forces have a direct relationship, in all the answers that pertain to the bottom. They have a direct relationship with all those answers. With those three questions, knowing that those answers belong to a whole, where the Defense Forces are part of that whole.
Political parties, trade unions, and grassroots movements also have an equally direct relationship, as do those who have made their capacity for work and investment a challenge to wealth and production.
But we also have to accept that the United States of America has, who since the construction of the Trans-Isthmus Railroad, the direct relationship in the capacity of disposition in our destinies and in the capacity of destruction of our economy. And all that, in the name of a “democratic” model.
But gentlemen, it is irritating to the highest degree that they try to set themselves up as judges, before determining what is or is not “Democracy” and what Panamanian society needs or does not need. That is why when we hear the thesis of imposing “Democracy” on this society, we feel that no one can believe them. Because we all systematically imagine a stereotyped position, since the Democracy that the people yearn for is very far from the one that they try to impose on them from the specialized centers of Saxon culture, the profiles of the oligarchies managed by the “State Department”, or the “Establishment.”
And it is not exactly the white Democracy of handkerchiefs and pots and pans that the people want. The one that anonymous men want, the one that anonymous women want, those who have never appeared on the lists of delinquent contributors to Social Security or Income Tax. And it is precisely that social status that is most interested in what the Government is going to do now and that is interested in the composition of the next Government. And that is interested in things getting better.
And these questions have a direct connection with the answers of that man who also wants nationalist progress and the faithful maintenance of patriotism and the triumph over colonialism. Who wants the vindication of his sovereignty and a fixed program of the definitive exit from North American structures, which make up physical structures, without copies, which limit the free passage through his territory. Which strangle and deform the urban development of his communities and which consume and contaminate and do not preserve the ecological balance that is the reserve and source of the generation of the 21st century. And there is Bique and there is Veracruz, and there is Kobee and there is Farfa and all Nuevo Emperador and those are the seas. And there are the waters of La Lagarterita in Lake Gatún .
Economic dependence and its subordination is borrowing and is what has prevented the achievement of the developmental objectives of our Government. The process of identifying ideal purposes that brings us together tonight, we must accept as a mathematical truth: that the evolution of the peoples and societies that build their history in which we have lived for centuries, indicates to us that the energetic force of the Panamanian people in their generational struggle for liberation, together with their social and economic demands, cannot lose the momentum that the martyrs of January undertook in 1964.
And that the final objective of the last ten years to walk, which we need to enter the 21st century, has obvious milestones that are invariable, immovable, and that translated into the political arena are expressed in the governments of 1989 to 1994 or from 1994 to 1999.
What does this mean? That the essence of renewal in this relay race, the team that carries the torch of liberation, must stay at the forefront. Therefore, the governments to come, or the governmental milestones that await us until 1999, cannot change the style of their origin. Therefore: they must learn the lessons of history.
The style of the original governments from 1903 to 1968, sixty-five years, gentlemen, was totally of a special cut, in the image and likeness of the “establishment” of the pole of power of the Continent. The Panamanian State had already been formed and its society of rulers with strongly marked characters. Where a group or a single group of families had the best opportunities for the use of wealth and the right to elite education.
The return of Torrijos on December 16, 1969, the clearing of his reality, the support of the popular forces and the middle management of the National Guard, changed the destiny of this nation. And it is precisely to this first runner of the “relay race” that I am referring to as the governmental succession to reach the long-distance runner who will cross the finish line on December 31, 1999, of the administration. Is this an allegory that tells us about the political parties that administer and assume the leadership of the country, knowing that they do so in a coalition based on an anti-colonialist, liberationist principle in search of social development and the dignity of man?
They must be framed in a real, personal, creative search rather than a speculative philosophical one with the theoretical and doctoral reality of: what we are. where we come from… what are we for… what can we invest in… what we should dedicate ourselves to… what we should overcome… and what we should buy.
That is why we have to know that our times, our government projects must have priorities in trade, in marketing, in storage, in the country of deposit and transit, in the agricultural country , in basic production, in the foreign pirate exploitation of tuna, shrimp, sardines, etc., and that we cannot go with a wear and tear of a model of an industrial country whose capacity we do not have.
The next government must have a clear vision and decision to break formal structures that tie it down as a mere executive leader and turn it into a sluggish, slow-moving bureaucracy that allows, encourages and disfigures: the “bribe”, the “slash” and the “percentage”. The next government, I repeat, must have a clear vision and decision to break formal structures that tie it down as a pure and simple executive leader and turn it into the sluggish, slow-moving bureaucracy that allows, encourages and disfigures: the “bribe”, the “slash” and the “percentage”. “Percentage” of those searching for the profile here in Panama.
The adjustment of competing ministerial functions is required, within the framework of a duplication of functions with which they obey or respond to obsolete ministries and entities that were created to hide realities that have evolved in density and necessity.
As a consequence, it entails the creation of new work structures that are in tune with the new urgent demands that arise with the transition from one century to another.
The concept of political space, with its anarchic management and insubordination and challenge to the direction and discipline of the President of the Republic, must be a cause for profound adjustment, so that the parties know that they are instruments of a national plan and not a personal one. That they are vehicles towards a popular and social solution, and not autonomous patrols that compromise the strategy of unity and development of the nation.
The public employee who has been making inroads into para-union organizations in search of job stability should receive the same in direct proportion to his performance and loyalty. And do not hesitate to be politically loyal or partisan. I speak of the loyalty of “no sabotage,” recalling with this the deaths of the Panamanian Air Force by the criminals of “pseudo-unionism” in the service of a foreign embassy.
This government, which has not made “massive layoffs” or committed to drastic wage reductions, which has respected the fortnightly pay, must also understand that it cannot be replaced by a “throw in the towel” government, which seeks political solutions in the increase of payrolls. The redistribution of public employees is essential, based on needs and capabilities.
The Administrative Career Law is an objective of the leaders and is a an allied and evolutionary procedure for those who also have a responsibility for the Liberation Struggle when 1999 arrives. But to them, to the public employees, I also want to say, with the truth that characterizes me, that they should not “go camouflaged.” I also want to tell them not to be fooled or to be flirted with by the siren songs of those who, not believing in this Liberation Struggle, of those who have not appointed them to these positions, want to tie them to their opposition wagon, without a future of job and economic stability; they can be sure that the opposition, if it were to win, would immediately apply the policy of dismissals, which this Revolutionary Process has not wanted to apply.
The Government’s Development Strategy must contain, at this stage of urgency, the Centralization of the Allocation of Import Quotas, Import Stamps, Certificates and other Allocation procedures that constitute basic profits that can report specific lines of the National Economy.
Experience has shown that we must change materially, morally and mentally into entities with new uses and customs with rationalized control of what we have and what we can afford. We are talking about making our society a consumer community of indiscriminate buyers, of waste, of “Master Cards” and “ Visa Cards” or of the popular expression: “ Charge it to my account” because paper will last.
The return to small and medium-sized businesses as an economic reality is mandatory, because the crisis has shown the blackmail with participation and confusion of large companies. It was precisely the small and medium-sized businesses that faced the shortages, and they became the logistical creed of the working classes, linked to the food markets and popular fairs.
This strengthening of small and medium-sized businesses should not exclude government support for large companies or entrepreneurs who have other types of capacity, a different range of action and more extensive and complex risks.
The economic investments of all these companies and commercial organizations must also have a sense of social and humanistic utility. The government’s game must be clear, with no hidden cards in the security that investment is stimulated and guaranteed by that state.
And it is in the sum total of the Economy: what counts is the use of all the forces and all the economic forms and organizations , including the state organization, the cooperatives, the private companies in all their manifestations that exist without fear or apprehension and without threats.
The Banking Center. I know of requests for opening new banks. Banks with money, others who hid the money, are offering the money. New accounts are being opened. We continue to be the safest country for money. We are a magnetic point for deposit security, and from the experience lived by those concerned men of the banking community, they agreed with us, we must perfect the Banking System, so that it is a “Panamanian style” system in accordance with the circumstances of universal poverty of foreign debt and new models of banking transactions. For example: it was said that to combat drug trafficking it was necessary to reveal the “banking secret.” Panama heard that secret and launched “Operation Pisces”, but that credit was never recognized. And it was used to strangle others who had nothing to do with drug trafficking.
The experiment of the Banking System, including the demonstration of sharpness and capacity of its directors, put us in a position to create the System to reinforce and perfect it, because it truly responds to a historical and geopolitical reality of this Panamanian nation since the times when the Spanish Colony established its exchange houses and deposits in the isthmus, it was responding to that reality. It was responding in that century to a truth: it could exist, that it did not either in the Viceroyalty of Peru, or in the Viceroyalty of New Granada and that it could only function in the Isthmus of Panama. And there are the ruins of the Portobelo Customs House that silently narrate its past of wealth, power and splendor.
The International Monetary Fund, the IMF, which has become a dangerous monster born out of the Bretton Woods Agreements , is a manifest and putative offspring of the Empire. They made the policy of the monetary areas that after abandoning the Gold Standard created in a long history, the “Sterling Area”, the “Dollar Area” with the pretext of giving direct support to the currencies of poor countries with gold reserves, which is nothing more than speculation that surprised the good faith of the underdeveloped fools of the world.
The “Sterling Area” existed until after the First World War, they passed the gold to England, and after this war it was moved to “Fort Knox-Kentucky” and we see here that Great Britain itself was in great trouble to sustain its “Monetary Area”. History tells us that she had to appeal to the guarantees of the English empire itself for the preservation of that leadership.
But the United States’ competition, the struggle for domination, had already accumulated eighty percent of the gold, and dictated its famous Fiduciary Law that if a dollar was presented to the Federal Reserve Bank, it would be compensated with its equivalent in gold. This rather difficult system achieved a natural sympathy and attraction to thus propitiate the birth of the “Dollar Area”, and from here the “Dollar” became the currency of exchange in the Western world, replacing the Pound Sterling.
From then on, the scene changed from the two Englishmen announcing the official value of gold: out loud, in front of the public from the Tower of London, to Wall Street, which reserved the right to do so in silence from its refrigerated offices on 5th Avenue, fixing the value of the ounce of gold, the Troy ounce or the American Dollar, on the addition of a political price, which did not obey the Law of Supply and Demand, but which allowed the collection of “royalties” on operations where this currency was involved.
At the end of the Second World War, this system, due to the loss of a large part of the gold reserve, deeply threatened the existence of the “Dollar Area” where the post-war expenses were added.
And the spiral of history repeats the situation of England after the First World War. But for that and for that, it was necessary to create the instrument that would consolidate the “Dollar Area”. And it is there where the International Monetary Fund appears with the reinforcement participation of the majority of the western countries involved, through a large contribution to the Fund from which their currencies would be managed and monetary policies would be set and the factors that were linked, directly or indirectly, to the economic events of the subscribers, here in this act speaks loudly of the role of the process of release of reserves.
The historical development led to reality, which was responsible for going much further and leading to the “hour of laments.” And today, we have Latin America, Indian and mestizo, on its knees and lamenting.
And that is the IMF. And that is the System that calls for radical adjustments and implies the drastic reduction of public spending based on the elimination of functions and countless plans with social consequences. No government that has adopted the recipes of the International Monetary Fund has failed to experience social explosions in its communities. Our Government, consequently, cannot accept recipes for economic adjustments that could threaten our integration as a national community.
On Foreign Relations: The formation of a new government must have in its essential elements the capacity to adjust the Law to make its International Relations according to the liberationist cultural attitudes and identifications and economic opportunities in violation of its inalienable rights to be able to choose its friends or those of its kind.
Panama began in 1903 to play the sad role of being a nation that had its International Relations “by hand.” Even today, despite the breaking of dependence on the “Continental cone of power,” we have felt the pressure not to sign the Trade Agreements with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the use of two pressure mechanisms continues so that Panama does not open its external range in other fields. And they also expel the pressure, direct or indirect, of that mechanism so that Russia does not establish relations with Panama.
The formation of a new government must include its security rearguard, the international areas that contribute to the prestige of the country’s self-determination and the search for diversification and economic exchange .
The National Liberation strategy cannot run the risk of appointing any official, career or otherwise, to any position in the Foreign Service who is oblivious to, ignorant of, or evasive of the fulfillment of his or her historic mission.
Simply because we are well versed in history, because they too would join the “Club of traitors” which is the blood type of the Zonian, of the mercenaries, of those who, due to their vision of their class, those who, due to cowardice, or those who, due to dependence, culture or training, cannot live without these supposed ideological principles. Due to the ambition for power in a manifestation of latent moral dwarfism.
The adjustment of the Foreign Service staff must be done with not only administrative economy, but also with importance in area, because a Foreign Service officer is an advanced observer of our doctrine.
On Freedom of Expression: On Freedom of Expression, on Freedom of the Press that will be demanded from the new government, I want to refer you to Don José Figueres, Don “Pepe” Figueres, when the Sandinistas closed the newspaper “La Prensa” of Managua. Don “Pepe” Figueres, admired by all Panamanian democrats , whom no democrat can criticize, founder of Costa Rican democracy said: “All my life I fought against the Somoza Dynasty, because it was expansionist. They bought large properties in Costa Rica and persistently intervened in our affairs. What ‘s more , they were consummate torturers and bandits. The United States Embassy in Managua supported them. I have seen countless movements organized to overthrow them and I am grateful to the Sandinistas for having driven them out, finally! Now for the first time Nicaragua has a government that cares about its people. I would have preferred a different form of government in Managua. I am a staunch democrat and I am in favor of an Electoral System with Freedom of the Press. But I was very hurt when they closed La Prensa, but I also understand that Nicaragua is a nation at war, besieged by the United States and regional oligarchies . When Somoza invaded Costa Rica in 1948 and again in 1955, we also established and closed it. And we established press censorship as long as that threat lasted and continued.
Who established the Civil Crusade in Panama? Who used the embassies to conspire? Who made the move to remove us from the “Group of Eight”? Who sent those who later orchestrated the destabilization group to the Philippines? They, they, they! Those who have always used Panama as an experimental field. The proof is that in World War II, they established an operational center for a Chemical Warfare laboratory on San Jose Island in the San Miguel Archipelago. And La Caleta Island.
I want to make this meeting between men and women of the same mindset propitious to express to them that I am going to read the doctrinal foundations made by captains for whom this Commanding General, with great pride, serves as spokesperson: “Thus I want to consider Panama a physical field of low intensity conflict under the concept that they themselves develop. In the Santa Fe Document, as a form of struggle that includes special and psychological operations, two things are clearly seen: the first is omitted, the second: the radiant intention of the Americans to remain in Panama after the year 2000, through supposed negotiations for which they will need a manipulated and docile Government and Defense Forces. This Doctrinal Laboratory that is being developed in Panama, at the expense of the Panamanians, is ironic,” the captains continue, “because there are times when it is not possible to identify who are the insurgents, and who are not the insurgents. That although it is true from the point of view of the North Americans, we Panamanians are insurgents, in our own territory, because they pretend to democratize us.”
However, when we read the Manual RB 7–13 Insurrection Movement, that according to the subversive insurrection there are three models or strategies that can be used to overthrow a government or to implant one that pleases the “communists,” they say, these strategies are: that of the Popular United Front, that of the Right and that of the Left.
And analyzing the strategy of the Right, you will see our situation clearly presented in some variants, since the strategy supports the duty to involve the use of illegal agencies, both official and unofficial, to influence and manipulate the influential elements of society. Just as they have done with us.
To make comparisons, see that some of the agencies they recommend are: The subversive groups replaced here in Panama by the Civil Crusade, and the Civic Clubs that maintain their loyal status and freedom of propaganda and recruitment. Second: The Embassies and Consulates. The Manual indicates in the first group, so openly, the Manual RB 7–13 indicates that these subversive groups are the communists, however we have not seen that the communists are the ones who carry out subversive acts. And in point two they indicate in that manual that the embassies and consulates are Russia, China, Korea and others. But we here do not have an Embassy from Russia, China , or Korea.
But we do know that there is an Embassy that operates on Avenida Balboa, and a Consulate that operates on Avenida Balboa and a residence that is located in La Cresta and a meeting area that operates in all the restaurants in Panama. And all of this has been used as a base for sedition and clandestine activities in Panama.
The exchange missions that sell economic expressions that collect information such as the transnationals have been doing, the Panama Canal Commission, the A.I.D., the cultural exchanges and studying them with the technique applied to officers of the Defense Forces who could not resist this penetration into the courses of the North.
Advisors, Industrialists and Technicians, having in command of them the Second Chief of the Embassy, who has tried to impose coups and overthrow governments with specific plans. News and Travel Agencies, these have been one of the most used techniques, through the national disinformation, especially international, even going so far as to put Panama on a list of “dangerous” countries for recreational travel.
The cruise ship that used to go down to Colón has been prohibited from going down to Colón. They indicate that the population of those towns is “dangerous.” So we see that what they classify in their own doctrines as strategies used for subversive insurrection to overthrow governments, they have typically wanted to apply in Panama, with the pitiful help of the same Panamanians incarnated in 1903.
About Panamanian women: I am proud to express to you, invited by the President of the Omar Torrijos Herrera Foundation, that the fact that a woman is presiding over this event speaks clearly of the Reserve Liberation Process. The next government cannot ignore the belligerent role of Panamanian women in the political and social life of the country. They have given sufficient proof of courage and determination, creating organizations in defense of sovereignty, joining the Dignity Battalions in an outstanding way.
The next milestones that await us to reach the year 2000 have to possess the active and militant presence of the Panamanian woman, and something of the Panamanian woman parties that form that political unity of advancement and victory that goes against the colony.
That woman, in whom there was no moment of sadness, she had no moment of cowardice despite the tension, and she was present, and active and at the forefront. She did not think, nor wait, nor conjugate fear or danger in her dictionary. There was no moment of danger or militancy in which she did not have. There was no moment of sacrifice in which she as a mother, as a daughter, as a wife, as a sister did not have in her mind or in her thoughts only the destiny of the Homeland.
I humbly recommend this woman to all the leaders of the political parties that are against colonialism. And it is precisely this woman that I recommend to all the leaders of all the like-minded and friendly parties, that I recommend that they integrate her from today into the strategy of active and effective work of the generational form from 89 to 94, and that she constitute the real, formal, participating and militant inspiration of the long-distance team that will carry the torch of liberation with its companions , with its children, with its brothers , until noon on Friday, December 31, 1999, marking the exit route of the last foreign soldier from our country.
We must have a crystal ball that she will be there with the torch of liberation next to her partner, with determination . And she will be precisely the one who will turn the arrow where it says “out”, all of that is summed up in a philosophical concept that a woman from the Defense Forces said parachutist on the closing day: “Where there are women who advance, there are no men who retreat.”
I thank you for the invitation tonight, to this meeting of friends and men committed to a mission; to this dinner of the Foundation where there are men from different political parties, where there are men who do not even belong to political parties , where there are diplomats, where there are industrialists, merchants, workers, trade unionists, where there are women, where there are young people and students, but we have all come here tonight because we have a common denominator, because beyond the political banners that we must wave or the claims that we make at an electoral table, we have a common denominator; of not being nor accepting being a colony, and second because the cultural and social identification of all those who here tonight share the salt and water of this table is unique, it is specific, and it constitutes the search for the infinite where there is the ideal, the search for the ideal where there is progress, the search for progress where there is movement, the search for movement where there is energy, the search for energy where there is life.
I conclude by responding to the suggestive topic of tonight’s dinner: Towards the year 2000, what? I respond as Bolivar said in Patimilca, in the heat and lying in a hammock with a fever : towards the year 2000, comprised of ’89 and ’94 and ’94 and ’99 , as Bolivar said in Patimilca, “To win.”
Noriega, Manuel Antonio. Discurso Pronunciado Por El General Manuel Antonio Noriega En El Marco De La Cena Ofrecida Por La Fundación Omar. Fuerzas de Defensa de Panamá, 1989, app.box.com/s/rd4ce18hglfnyvgr16hr7c5jzkeqob6z
