By Propuesta Socialista, IWU-FI Panama section
The last invasion of our country by US imperialism took place 35 years ago, in which thousands of Panamanians died in a bloody invasion. All governments since then – from Endara Ford and Arias Calderón, who called for the invasion; to Ernesto Peréz Balladares (from the PRD party), who tried to approve the CMA ‘Multilateral Anti-Drug Centre’ (disguised military bases); to Mireya Moscoso (from the nationalist ‘Panameñista’ party), in whose government the so-called ‘complementary’ Salas-Becker agreement was signed; to Martín Torrijos (PRD), who maintained the ‘security agreements’ with the United States; to Ricardo Martinelli from the conservative CD-RM party, who signed an agreement for the construction of naval and air bases with US advisors, and who also confessed to having voted for the Zionist state of Israel at the request of the American Government; to Juan Carlos Varela (Panameñista), who deepened these agreements; as did Laurentino Cortizo (PRD), who made secret agreements with the United States; and José Raúl Mulino, the current president (CD-RM), who boasts of having requested for the 1989 invasion, and who in several speeches called for direct US involvement in the province of Darien to control migration at the border, thus violating the Political Constitution of Panama – have been under the tutelage, and have surrendered all the same, to US imperialism.
These governments, and other ‘gringueros’, do not leave the American Embassy, and render accounts to the ambassador of the day. Or, as the mayor of the capital, Mayer Mizrachi (who declares himself an admirer of Trump) says, if the gringos had not invaded then he would not be mayor.
To ratify his loyalty to the Americans, one day before the 35th anniversary of the invasion, Mulino vindicated the American invasion, defiling the Panamanian men and women who lost their lives, their homes, who were tortured and disappeared, and where used as guinea pigs to the weapons that the gringos experimented on our country (to which the invaders called ‘collateral damage’). So it was that, on December 20th of this year, Mulino did not go to the official commemorations, and the ‘gringo’ media, just like every over year, hid the invasion of ’89, even indicating the 20th as a holiday instead of a day of National Mourning. Against this background, our organisation, Propuesta Socialista IWU-FI, in the spokespersonship of comrade Priscilla Vásquez, in an act commemorating the date, organised by the Alianza Pueblo Unido por la vida, pointed out that the struggle for our sovereignty is more valid than ever and should be placed as one of the fundamental points of a united programme of the working class and the people.
On December 21, Trump threatened Panama with taking away the Canal if we do not follow his instructions.
All this in the midst of First Quantum’s request to Trump to ‘order’ the operation of a mine, as if we were a colony of the United States. This with the complicit silence of the Mulino government.
In the face of Donald Trump’s serious threats, Mulino made a statement responding to Trump that the Canal belongs to Panama, without taking, however, any real diplomatic action.
Faced with this scenario, we call to continue the mobilisation in defence of our sovereignty, for the expulsion from the country of ‘Minera Panama’, against the draft bill nº163, that directs our funds from the Social Security to the banks and other businesses, and against the position of the gringos allied with Donald Trump, with Mulino at its head, and all the former post-invasion presidents who now constitute a ‘commission’ supposedly to watch over our sovereignty; in other words, to watch over the interests of US imperialism.
It is necessary for the peoples of the world to continue to repudiate imperialism in general and in Panama to continue the struggle against Yankee imperialism.
