Word: panama
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...reflected lights of Panama City dance impishly on the waters of the bay as Lucho Azcarraga and his band play Auld Lang Syne at Fred Cotton's farewell party on the grounds of the Amador Officer's Club. There are more than 250 guests, nearly all of them middle-aged and conspicuously American, wearing colorful shirts and dresses, Hawaiian leis draped around their necks. Azcarraga's pudgy fingers are surprisingly agile on the organ keyboard as he pumps out the Scottish farewell. But then they should be. Although he is over 70, he plays this tune quite often. Most...
Only two days after Panama's legislature voted to lift a 19-day state of emergency last week, the government cracked down again. Authorities shut down an opposing radio station, and armed men, in full view of police, torched a building owned by a prominent member of the opposition. Thousands of protesters thronged the streets of the capital, calling for the removal of General Manuel Antonio Noriega, the country's de facto leader, who is accused of corruption and murder...
Meanwhile, about 2,000 people attacked the U.S. embassy, denouncing a recent U.S. Senate resolution that called on Noriega to step down. The State Department charged that Panamanian officials orchestrated the mob attack. Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams called on Panama's military leaders to "remove their institution from politics" and keep the politics more democratic...
Colonel Diaz, meanwhile, had barricaded himself with a group of armed supporters in his garish million-dollar Panama City mansion -- a domicile the newly religious and repentant military man now admits was paid for with bribes. "This is an illegitimate government that has created an institutionalized crisis," he told TIME. "I knew that the only way to change the system is to get rid of Noriega." He hopes he can foment a rebellion that will bring down the general. In addition to his accusations concerning Torrijos, Diaz charged that Noriega helped rig the 1984 presidential elections and that the Defense...
...government responded to Diaz's charges by issuing a statement that he was "suffering from a serious state of paranoia." While Noriega made no move to arrest his former colleague, President Eric Arturo Delvalle blamed the colonel and unidentified "external forces" for the rioting. Officials in Panama City have recently charged that U.S. opponents of the 1979 Panama Canal treaties are trying to undermine the government...