Panama - For Whom The Canal Tolls?
UnpublishedSeptember/October
1979
Volume:
13
Number:
5
Article
Events in Guatemala and El Salvador in the months since the Sandinista victory have provided a gold mine for "domino theorists". In an upsurge of militant actions in August, members of the Popular Revolutionary Bloc in El Salvador took over six factories in the capital city, while another group of workers staged a hunger strike in the main cathedral.
Roger Burbach
In recent months, NACLA has been the target of an attack by one of the world's largest agribusiness corporations, Castle & Cooke. The company accuses NACLA of be- ing a fountainhead of "mis- information" and one of the main instigators of a social movement that is out to destroy American values.
Paul Horowitz
What more visible symbol of national sovereignty than a flag? Throughout history the culmination of anti-colonialist struggles has been embodied in lowering the oppressor's banner and flying in its place the colors of the newly liberated. By the same measure then the sight of the U.
Typewriters Needed I On two different occasions last month NACLA's offices were robbed, leaving us with no typewriters. We urgently need replacements, so if you have any typewriters to donate or loan please let us know.
Roger Burbach & Patricia Flynn
On July 19 the revolutionary ar- my of the Sandinista National Liberation Front entered Managua, victorious after a six- teen year struggle against the dic- tatorial regime of Anastasio Somoza. The following day, 50,000 cheering people thronged the newly renamed Plaza of the Revolution in Managua to welcome the rebel government.
LATIN AMERICA Andrew Graham-Yooill, The Press in Argentina 1973-8 (Writers and Scholars Educational Trust, 1979). $10 paper, 171 pgs.
After several months it was clear that the National Guard would remain in power. By that time the military had routed a pro-Arias guerrilla effort in the province of Chiriqui, abolished the National Assembly, outlawed political parties and set up a provisional Military Junta.
The regime of Omar Torrijos has been ap- plauded by many within and outside Panama as "revolutionary." Torrijos himself indulged in flirting with this image.
But by this time the once vigorous mass movement had lost its autonomy. The earlier alliances made by the various popular leaders left the masses defenseless when the impact of the world capitalist crisis on Panama's economy forced the state to undo the progress of earlier years.