THE PANAMA DECEPTION
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1992 Frank Maloney
THE PANAMA DECEPTION is a documentary film directed by Barbara Trent and produced by the Empowerment Project. Not rated -- contains violence and graphic images of corpses.
THE PANAMA DECEPTION like all good documentary films has passion and a point of view; it does not pretend to be "objective" reportage. This is an impassioned argument for the idea that the American people must know that and how they were lied to about the invasion of Panama, and not just by the Bush administration and the Pentagon, but by the network news, by the leading newspapers of the country, by the very men and women whose jobs are supposedly to present us with the a complete picture of daily events, and not just parrot official propaganda.
Like the previous documentary, COVERUP: THE IRAN-CONTRA AFFAIR, Barbara Trent marshals her assertions and her facts in the form of video, TV clips, newspaper and magazine clippings, press briefings, speeches, and interviews with experts and with eye-witnesses. There is never any doubt about Trent's point of view, but she presents it powerfully and documents it exhaustively. She briefly covers the history of Panama from its U.S.-backed secession from Columbia, through its Canal Zone days, through the Treaty signed by Jimmy Carter and denounced by Ronald Reagan that renounced U.S. sovereignty in the C.Z., and finally through the rise of Manuel Noriega and of George Bush. It documents their long association and their final falling out. It lays out the long, orchestrated build-up to the invasion as a U.S. strategy of dirty tricks to be blamed on Noriega but perpetrated by U.S. agents. Finally, it tells what it can about the invasion and the way it was not covered directly by the U.S. media. There are virtually no videotapes of the first three days of the invasion and precious little other documentation of it, thanks to the thorough efforts of the U.S. military to suppress all efforts by reporters, photographers, and cameramen.
In interview after interview, the film builds its case for what really happened in Panama, of the atrocities by U.S. forces, the summary executions, the random violence, especially in the poor areas, the rounding up and interrogation of thousands of civilians, many of whom were on enemies lists prepared by the U.S.-supported Endara government. And most shocking of all, it documents its assertion that between 2500 and 4000 Panamanians died in the invasion, ten or more times figures put out by the U.S. government at various times.
Some of us are not too shocked to find another case of the government lying to us, especially in the area of foreign operations, but I for one was shocked to be shown how the U.S. television and newspaper media did nothing to question the official version of events in Panama, how they fully and complacently cooperated with the government to mislead us, how they helped make a demon out of our long-time tool Noriega, how they valued only American lives, American deaths.
Of course, the story of the Panamanian invasion continues today. The country is still in ruins, still waiting for reconstruction money. Our puppets are still running the government for us; our soldiers are still randomly patrolling outside our bases, and the Bush administration is telling what we want to hear: that democracy was restored to country that had never known democracy, that the drug trade was impeded when in fact the drug traffic through Panama has doubled or trebled since the invasion, that the country is on its feet when 20,000 are still homeless and living in refugee camps we operate.
And Bush is running for re-election.
The indictments in this film are many and far-reaching. Its analysis of the reasons for the invasion are especially disturbing, its forecasts for future U.S. interventions in the Andean nations, launched from our bases in Panama haunting.
I strongly urge you to see this film. You are not going to be exposed to its point of view anywhere else. And we all need to be.
(In the Seattle area, THE PANAMA DECEPTION is playing at the Metro Cinemas in the University District. The film opened last month in L.A., but it was shown as a video. The Seattle run is of the only film copy currently. The Seattle run is intended to finance the production of more copies. It is tentatively booked into 20 U.S. cities, if the Empowerment Project can raise even money to strike enough copies at $1600 a copy. Volunteers are passing the hat and encouraging audience members to get out the word after each showing here.)
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
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