Panamanian strongman Gen. Manuel Noriega was US ally one minute, foe the next
Latin America has seen its fair share of military dictators, but Panama's Gen Manuel Antonio Noriega, who died late Monday aged 83, was one of a kind.
A machete-waving strongman and one-time CIA informant, he colluded with Colombian cocaine traffickers and also lent to left wing revolutionaries in Central America. No other leader in the hemisphere was able to combine so many seemingly contradictory elements in his quest for power.
His rein was shortlived and his dramatic December 1989 ouster during a U.S. military invasion was the first and only time Washington has sent troops to depose and detain a foreign leader in Latin America.
Noriega was convicted on drug trafficking charges in Miami in 1992 after a nine-month trial, and spent the rest of his life in jail.
“It never happened before and it never happened again,” said Guy Lewis, one of the federal prosecutors at Noriega's trial. “The U.S. had never required the presence of a defendant in this manner, sending the 82nd Airborne to effectively arrest him and turn him over to the DEA. It remains a milestone in criminal prosecutions,” he added.
At the time of the invasion Panama, a small country of barely two million people, played an outsize role in the geopolitics of the hemisphere. Several thousand U.S. troops were stationed at a series of large military bases along the Panama Canal to protect safe age for fast-growing U.S. commerce with Asia.
But under treaties signed with Panama in 1977 the bases were set to close and the canal to transition to Panamanian control.
It was right at that crucial moment that Noriega emerged from the shadows of another dictator, albeit the more benevolent General Omar Torrijos. For the next three years he threw Panama into turmoil, culminating in the invasion in December 1989.
The Cold War was still raging and the U.S. government was deeply concerned about the spread of the Soviet Union’s communist influence in Latin America. Noriega’s alliance with pro-Moscow beachheads in Cuba and Nicaragua made his rise to power even more troubling for Washington.
His brutish methods to crush democracy in Panama, coupled with his anti-American demagoguery, made him one of the most feared despots in the world. Hailed by hardliners on the left, he was widely despised by Panama’s wealthy elite and middle class, earning the nickname ‘Pineapple Face’ (Cara de Pina) due to his pock-marked skin.
"Noriega should be ed as having been an amoral authoritarian who denied most Panamanians during his era of power their basic civil rights," said retired General Fred Woerner, 83, former head of the U.S. Southern Command in Panama (1987-89).
Amadis Jimenez, a former captain in Noriega’s Panama Defense Forces, recalled his former boss as “a sinister conspirator and spy” who betrayed his country. “Noriega is a product, like many others, of the CIA’s global network. He will into history as ... the strongman of the USA at one moment who got out of hand.”
His former political opponents lament Noriega’s failure to repent for his misdeeds, but say the country has moved on. In his last TV interview a year ago “he did not shed light on past events or ask for forgiveness,” said Panamanian lawyer Ebrahim Asvat.
“After 27 years he is a figure of the past without followers or any type of personal charisma,” he added.
While the United States has more recently used its military power to overthrow hostile governments in the Middle East, the U.S. military action in Panama - dubbed Operation Just Cause - was the last time U.S. troops invaded a country in Latin America.
In 1994 U.S. troops led a United Nations backed intervention in Haiti to restore President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power, the last time U.S. troops were deployed in combat in the hemisphere.
Shortly after midnight on Dec 20 1989, more than 26,000 U.S. troops, backed by helicopter gunships, tanks and Stealth fighter jets, struck with overwhelming force. Within hours, Noriega's military dictatorship collapsed and a democratic government was installed.
Some 300 Panamanians and 23 U.S. soliders died in the invasion, nine from friendly fire. Noriega took refuge for 10 days in the Vatican embassy before surrendering after troops barraged the diplomatic residence with loud rock music, including aptly worded hits such "I fought the law, and the law won."
Noriega spent two decades in jail in Miami where he apparently found religion and was a model prisoner.
He was transferred to jail in in 2010 on money laundering charges, and a year later was transfered to prison in Panama for other crimes, including a number of extra-judicial killings, among them some of his own officers who rose up against him in two unsuccesful coup attempts.
“The irony of this man's life and legacy is that ... it will only merit a small footnote in the obits section. Even in Panama, he is now inconsequential,” said Orlando J Pérez, an expert on civil-military relations at Millersville University of Pennsylvannia. “For most Panamanians Noriega is a curious historical artifact and one they wish to forget, even those that once ed the military regime.”
His wife divorced him and he was also abandoned by his mistress. But his three daughters stuck by him until his death.
Lewis, now 55, was a young prosecutor at the time of the Noriega trial. "I prosecuted a lot of defendants from corporate executives to Cuban spies, but there was a sense of evil about Noriega. It was palpable," he said.
Noriega's defenders said he was a victim of shady U.S. foreign policy gone awry, arguing his seizure was ordered by the istration of George H. Bush to silence Noriega from telling tales on the president's former dealings as CIA director.
"The media loved it, this idea, these allegations of this link between President Bush and Noriega and his relationship to the CIA," said Lewis. "In reality Noriega was as we portrayed him. He was a fairly low level informant for the U.S. government and a corrupt law enforcement official. There were no revelations."
There was good reason why Washington did business with Noriega, some experts say, given the critical importance of the canal and Noriega's relations with left-wing revolutionary leaders in Central America and Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
In many ways Noriega was something of a paper tiger and not the mastermind he was feared to be, Lewis and others argue.
"Like all infamous and famous figures in history they thrive on propaganda, they build themselves up because we create these mythic and monstrous personalities and we begin to believe the myth and the monstrosity," he said.
"While there was no doubt he wielded great power in Panama, he was little more than a crooked cop."