[R-G] The Panama Deception

[Anthony Fenton]

The award winning 1992 documentary The Panama Deception is now  
available on DVD.

The film may also be viewed: http://video.google.com/videoplay? 
docid=-446387292666223710

And, they showed the film on Democracy Now! back in '03:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/13/1556240

Copyright 1993 Gale Group, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
ASAP
Copyright 1993 Cineaste Publishers, Inc.
Cineaste

January 1, 1993

SECTION: Pg. p43(2) Vol. V20 No. N1 ISSN: 0009-7004

ACC-NO: 14420047

LENGTH: 1426 words

HEADLINE: The Panama Deception.

BYLINE: Ryan, Susan

BODY:


Produced by Barbara Trent, Joanne Doroshow, Nico Panigutti and David  
Kasper; directed by Barbara Trent; written and edited by David  
Kasper; cinematography by Michael Dobo and Masnuel Becker; narration  
by Elizabeth Montgomery; music by Chuck Wild. Distributed by Tara  
Releasing, 124 Belvedere St., San Rafael, CA 94901, phone (415)  
454-5838 and The Video Project, 5332 College Ave., Oakland, CA 94618,  
phone 1 (800) 4-PLANET. For further information, contact The  
Empowerment Project, 1653 18th St., Santa Monica, CA 90404, phone  
(310) 828-8807.

On December 19, 1989, most Americans were glued to their televisions  
in disbelief as thousands of U.S. troops prepared to attack  
Panamawith the stated purpose of ousting the man the media loved to  
hate, General Manuel Noriega. By early morning, they were reassured  
that Operation "Just Cause" had achieved its goal of hitting twenty- 
seven targets, thus making Panama safe for Americans living in that  
country as well as those safely at home in front of their  
televisions. But themedia failed to investigate many crucial issues,  
including the fate of Panamanian citizens and a detailed explanation  
of the |just cause'for which American troops were fighting. These are  
the questions ThePanama Deception sets out to answer, and, in so  
doing, it provides aprovocative, well-documented analysis of U.S.  
relations with Panama and a devastating critique of the mainstream  
media and its complicitywith the official government line.

For those familiar with the findings of the report of the Independent  
Commission of Inquiry see The U.S. Invasion of Panama: The Truth  
Behind Operation Just Cause, South End Press, 1991), the film's  
exploration of the contradictions between the official reasons for  
the invasion and the real motivations will come as no surprise, but  
for manyThe Panama Deception will serve as a shocking illustration of  
the brutal face of American foreign policy.

During the attack, the U.S. unleashed a force of 24,000 troops  
equipped with highly sophisticated weaponry and aircraft against a  
country with an army smaller than the New York City Police  
Department. With uncanny echoes of Grenada less than a decade  
earlier, this illegal invasion against a sovereign nation was made in  
the name of "the protection of American lives" as well as the defense  
of the Panama Canal,the restoration of democracy, and the removal of  
Noriega and his drug trafficking operation - reasons which might have  
sounded good at the White House but failed to convince anyone with a  
knowledge of the history of U.S.-Panamanian relations.

As a result of the controversial 1977 Carter-Torrijos treaties, the  
Canal was scheduled to be turned over to Panama by the year 2000. The  
treaty provided for the closure of all fourteen Southern Command  
bases in Panama by 1999 which would make more difficult U.S. military  
access to the rest of Latin America. Seen in these terms, the  
invasion provided a convenient justification for continued U.S.  
military presence in the area as well as the rationale for the  
renegotiation of the treaties. From an international vantage point,  
the overpowering show of force demonstrated that the U.S. retained  
control over |its ownbackyard.'

The Panama Deception explores these contradictions as well as the  
many other lies generated to deflect criticism of the attack which  
violated both the U.N. and O.A.S. charters. Using archival footage  
and interviews with a wide range of both Panamanian and American  
authorities, the film puts the invasion in context by showing the  
troubled history of the Canal's construction at the beginning of the  
century, the resulting confrontations over the years between the U.S.  
military and Panamanians, and the problematic relationship during the  
Seventieswith Panama's popular leader, General Omar Torrijos. The  
montage of archival images reprising the historical relationship  
includes several which foreshadow the events of 1989. Of particular  
note is the televised segment of a soon-to-be-elected Ronald Reagan  
recreating the role of Teddy Roosevelt as he compares the Canal Zone  
to the acquisition of Alaska in saying, "We bought it, we paid for  
it, and General Torrijos should be told we're going to keep it."

The film also chronicles the rise and fall of Noriega as he was  
courted, then rejected, by the American government after he became a  
political liability. The sequence on the U.S. media's demonization of  
Noriega, including Bush's inarticulate rambling about "Mr. Noriega,  
the drug-related, drug-indicted dictator of Panama" would be comical  
ifwe didn't know that this was just the prelude to a bloody  
confrontation. As an interview with an ex-CIA analyst reveals, the  
invasion wasintended to "reverse Bush's image as a wimp," a rather  
large price for the Panamanian people to pay for the sake of his  
political viability.

In addition to analyzing the invasion and filling in many  
specificdetails about the excessive force used, the film also  
presents the Panamanian perspective, the side we never saw on the  
nightly news. Eyewitness accounts of the bombing and the fear felt by  
the people as they saw their families killed, their homes destroyed,  
and their city devastated, powerfully convey the human suffering  
caused by this act of aggression. In contrast to the images of  
Panamanians welcoming the Americans as a liberating force which the  
mainstream broadcast media presented, the angry voices of Panamians  
describe the horror, pain, and continued disruption of their lives.  
While some might call it heavy-handed, the ironic juxtaposition of  
official commentary by government spokesmen with actual footage of  
the invasion and its aftermath succeeds in revealing that lies were  
created on every level - the sitesof the bombings in civilian  
neighborhoods, the search and destroy methods of the U.S. military in  
the days following the attack, the number of Panamanians killed, and  
the continued impact on the people in the form of homelessness,  
unemployment, and political instability.

Various regional and international human rights commissions estimate  
that between 2,500 and 4,000 Panamanians were killed in the invasion,  
a far cry from official U.S. reports of only several hundred. Many of  
those interviewed in the film - like Isabel Corro, a Panamanian human  
rights worker - continue to raise money for the exhumation of bodies  
from mass graves which Pentagon spokesmen deny exist.

As the film makes clear, the U.S. government was not solely  
responsible for the deception. The mainstream media was shamefully  
complicit in passing on government press releases as news. Interviews  
with media analysts Michael Parenti and Mark Hertsgard discuss the  
total collaboration of the media in this dress rehearsal of  
restrictions on the press later repeated during the Gulf War. Several  
cleverly edited sequences mesh the images and voices of Dan Rather,  
Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, and other arbiters of information as they  
use virtually thesame language to describe the invasion and what it | 
means' to the American public.

In this respect, The Panama Deception is not only a visual analysis  
of the events of December 1989, it is also an indictment of the news  
apparatus in a society where alternative interpretations of events  
rarely reach the public at large. In Panama, the suppression of  
information included the destruction of photographs and videotape  
documenting the high number of civilian casualties.

Through the efforts of The Empowerment Project, The Panama Deception  
had opened theatrically in over sixty cities across the U.S. even  
before it won an Academy Award this year. Utilizing their past  
experience in community organizing, the filmmakers created a unique  
distribution strategy in which post-screening discussion sessions  
were held in theaters, not only to answer questions but also to  
redirect the audience's rage over the invasion into positive  
political action, such as appearing on local radio talk shows or  
writing letters to the editors of their local newspapers in order to  
challenge their own sourcesof information.

Stylistically, the film has several drawbacks. The continuous use of  
voice-over narration to explain most of the imagery assumes that the  
audience is not able to make connections on its own. The animated  
maps and some of the video graphics seem better suited to a didactic  
instructional film than an investigative documentary. Still, these  
objections are minor in comparison with the overall significance of  
ThePanama Deception as an impressive source of information on an  
event our government would sooner have us forget.