Word: panamas
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Multilingual and multifaceted, Blades has a knack for being different things to different people. In his native Panama, he is a respected lawyer and national celebrity, a man of the people and potential presidential contender. To fans of Caribbean salsa, he is a musical pioneer and a charismatic leader of the Nueva Cancion (New Song) movement, a steamy mix of poetry, politics and tropical rhythms that has left an imprint on Latin music. In the U.S., he is an up-and-coming actor who has worked with Richard Pryor, Whoopi Goldberg and Robert Redford in such films as Fatal Beauty...
...Blades, something constructive includes the possibility of someday running for President of Panama. The U.S. invasion of his country, which Blades denounces as a "flagrant transgression of international law," has only increased his determination to enter political life. Yet he is aware that his chances of electoral success hinge on cultivating a broad-based constituency. "I've always made it clear that I wasn't playing the Latin version of Jesus. I need local support for my position...
...officials announced Jan. 9 that 220 "unarmed civilians not involved in fighting and street disorders" had been killed in violence "directly related" to the invasion -- an ominously qualified statistic. But even that number, which has been challenged, is proportionally equivalent to 22,000 Americans. Add 314 Panamanian troops, and Panama's loss in a couple of days is equivalent to America's during the entire Viet Nam War. Yet compare the American press's indifference to Panamanian deaths with its lavish emphasis on -- and, it seems, exaggeration of -- the death count in Rumania...
Carting Noriega off for trial in America is another insult to Panama, and a mockery of the notions of justice it is intended to celebrate. After all, his crimes against the U.S. are pretty trivial compared with his crimes against his own country. It doesn't really blunt the insult that the Panamanians are happy enough to see him go, and offered him up to us as a sort of reward...
Bush himself was quick to apologize when overenthusiastic American troops raided the Nicaraguan embassy in Panama City. The sanctity of embassies is a bit of international law important to the U.S. Yet it seems like misplaced fastidiousness to worry about the sovereignty of nations' embassies when you so clearly don't worry about the sovereignty of nations...