Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, "What's Funny About This" (11 page)

The students had blocked the street on the hilltop in front of
the church and weren't going to let us through. "Democracy! Free
press!" said Davis, as we flashed our credentials.

"No free press!" shouted student number 30. They'd all given
themselves numbers, which they wore pinned to their chests.

"No democracy?" said Davis.

"No democracy!" shouted 30.

Then, out of the gloom, appeared a pair of American preppies, he in tweeds and a necktie, she in a demure loden coat. "Hi!"
the boy said brightly. "We're from the International Human Rights
Law Group. We're here to observe Korean democracy."

"Ask number 30 about that," said Davis.

Down at the bottom of the hill, riot police were forming up,
shield to shield, grenade launchers loaded.

"Yeah, you little fuck," I said to number 30. "What do you
think about getting democratically hammered, about half a minute
from now?"

The members of the International Human Rights Law Group
gasped to hear someone speaking to a genuine Korean like that,
right in the middle of Korea's first presidential elections in sixteen
years. But then they caught a look at the advancing police. The law
group took off like surprised mice.

Haley, Davis and I were too slow. We could hear the grenades being fired, half a dozen of them, K4-CHUNK/CHUNK/CHUNK/
CHUNK/CHUNK/CHUNK. "Incoming!!!" yelled Haley, the last
thing he'd be able to say for half an hour. The grenades burst just
above our heads.

We ran screaming down an alley, slamming into walls and
garbage cans, coughing and gagging, a scum of tears running down
our sightless faces. After two hundred yards we collapsed, bent
over in pained hacking and gasps. A group of Korean men, earnestly merry with drink, were coming up the other way. They
stopped in front of our little spectacle. The lead fellow bowed and
said, "You Americans yes what do you think about Korean democracy?"

"Awwwwk ugch ugch ugch," said Haley.

But the Koreans were not making a joke. "What do you think
about Korean democracy?" said their leader, gravely.

"Tastes terrible!" said Davis.

They hustled us into a storefront cafe and bought us a great
many large bottles of OB beer. We sat there sneezing and weeping
and coughing. They sat there asking, "What do you think about
Korean democracy?"

That turned out to be all the English they knew.

JULY 1987

Panama has the damndest anti-government protestors. They're all
dressed up in neckties or linen dirndl skirts and driving around in
BMWs and Jeep Wagoneers, honking horns and waving white
hankies out the windows. Opposition HQ is that infamous center of
treachery and sedition worldwide, the Chamber of Commerce
building. A National Civilian Crusade has been formed from more
than a hundred trade associations and charity-ball-type organizations. Everybody is full of moral indignation, also civic boosterism.
Cruzada Civilista Nacional demonstrations take place before
luncheon and at the cocktail hour along Calle 50, Panama City's
main artery for the shop-till-you-drop set. It's like watching your
mom and dad riot at the mall.

White is the opposition color, appropriately enough. Less
affluent Panamanians, who tend to have more black and Indian
blood, call the opposition rabe blancos, "white butts." The rabes
who've soiled their handkerchiefs wave white business stationery and pages torn from Month-At-A-Glance calendars. Office towers
are festooned with white adding-machine tape streamers; white
three-by-five index cards flutter from the windows; and white confetti is made with document shredders. (This is only the second
known use-after Fawn Hall's-of the shredding machine in the
fight for democracy.) Protest signs are done with computer graphics
and slogans displayed on word processor printouts.

In the better residential neighborhoods the noon and six P.M.
demos are marked by children, housewives and kitchen help
banging on pots and pans. At least one enterprising member of the
opposition is selling a pot-banging cassette so dinner won't be late.
There are no sweaty marches or boring sit-ins. When the opposition
wants to stage a mass rally it calls for a "White Caravan," and
everyone drives through town with the air conditioning on. If
people can't make it, they send the maid.

This is genius, to use littering, noise-making and traffic jams
as political protest in a Latin country. Think how quickly we would
have been out of Vietnam if golf, commuting and watching Mayberry R.F.D. had been anti-war in the United States.

A full-blown Civilian Crusade shindig musters eight to ten
thousand people. But a government-sponsored whoop-up can draw
as many or more. The pro-government types, who more or less
support military strongman General Manuel Antonio Noriega, are
fatter, have worse teeth and wear more polyester. Their Panamanian
flag-draped caravanas patrioticas are filled with Japanese economy
cars. It's not really rich versus poor. It's more like the Elks versus
the Rotary Club. The dentists and bank tellers are mad at the meter
maids and postal clerks.

I couldn't always tell them apart. On my first day covering the
Panama shenanigans I saw a phalanx of riot police, or "Dobermans," as they affectionately call themselves. Nearby was a group
of neatly dressed businesslike folk holding bundles of leaflets. I
rushed up to them and said, "Is this the anti-government demonstration?"

"We are the government," replied one, in a huff. They were
members of the national legislature.

The government cheats a bit with its anti-demonstration demonstrations, handing out gas money and giving public employees the day off then taking roll call at the rally. During a week of
ceremonies marking the anniversary of the 1981 death of national
hero General Omar Torrijos, the government staged a wonderfully
named "Carnival of National Dignity." There were a half-dozen
salsa and merengue bands and free beer and firecrackers for
everyone.

Not all of the pro-government sentiment is manufactured,
however. When gringo reporters are spotted, loyalist crowd members yell complaints that they aren't getting their share of U.S.
press coverage. "You must print pictures of this," several people
shouted at me (although I wasn't carrying a camera). And one large
and beery lady, more full of political spirit than political savvy,
leaned halfway out of her car window and shrieked, "This proves
Panama does not want communism!" Seeing that the basic conflict
in Panama pits right-wing businessmen against a right-wing military, I guess it doesn't.

Sometimes a white caravan and a pro-government caravan get
going at the same time, circling around the city like students from
rival high schools before a big football game. The pro-government
bunch are more willing to mix it up. They're the kids from Central
High downtown. The opposition-suburban souls whose real
strength is in the tennis team-tend to yell clever things and
skedaddle.

I saw one pro-government caravan led by a stake-bed truck
full of drunks come across a snazzy black Toyota Supra with a white
flag hanging from the window. The drunks let loose at the Supra
with slingshots. The Supra driver tried to make a U-turn, but,
before he could get his car around, four or five of the drunks leapt
off the truck and smashed his windshield with a rock the size of a
Thanksgiving turkey. The Supra made a rubber-peeling escape. A
volley of stones followed him, and so did I in my rental car. I
wanted a pithy quote. I was sticking my head out the window,
flashing my lights and screaming, "Prensa internacional! Prensa
internacional!" But the guy was doing eighty miles an hour through
side streets, and the last thing I saw was his white flag being tossed
onto a lawn.

The college students are demonstrating, too. They claim to be
opposed to the government and the opposition and the United States too. The schools have been closed so there aren't that many
students around, only about two hundred at the demonstration I
saw. Still, they put on the best show. The students chanted,
"Noriega fucks whores" and blocked a four-lane highway in front of
the University of Panama with piles of flaming garbage. One noneck in a highway-department truck ran the blockade, and the
students, who had been hoarding rocks and chunks of cement,
scored thirty direct hits on his truck. Hundreds of locals deserted
offices and factories to gather on pedestrian overpasses and watch
the fun.

When three platoons of soldiers arrived, the students hightailed it like a clutter of cats back inside the university gates. They
have a great system in Latin America: The college campuses are
recognized sanctuaries, and soldiers and police aren't supposed to
set foot on the grounds. (Of course, every now and then the
authorities get overexcited and break the rules and kill people, but
usually the tradition is respected.)

After a brief regrouping, the students ran up to the chain-link
fence that surrounds the campus and threw rocks and bottles. Then
the soldiers ran up to their side of the fence and blasted at the
students with shotguns. It was red-necks hunting quail through the
hedge at the bird preserve. Most of the shotgun shells were lowpower loads filled with size 71/z shot-tiny stuff that wouldn't kill
you unless it went right up your nose. (Though I did pick up a
couple of "high brass' shells that held enough powder to take off a
hand or a face.) The soldiers also threw pepper-gas cannisters and
fired pepper-gas rifle grenades into the campus, sometimes making
the mistake of low trajectory, which let the students grab the
grenades before they exploded and toss them back.

There was a lot of quarterback talent on both sides. The
students were sending two- and three-pound projectiles on eightyyard TD bombs. And there was one tall black corporal who made
John Elway look like a sissy throwing rice at a wedding. The
students set fire to a car, though not a very good one. My guess is it
belonged to a professor who liked to give surprise quizzes.

During a lull in the action I managed to slip into the school
with an NBC camera crew. The campus was fogged with gas.
Students brought us buckets of vinegar. Apparently, vinegar is the only specific against the pepper fumes, but it's a toss which hurts
worse when you get it in your eyes. An entire medical dispensary
had been set up in a lecture hall, complete with volunteer nurses
and space for a press conference. We talked to a dozen or so
injured students. One kid had at least fifteen pellets in his back
and side. He was very crabby.

We had some trouble getting back out again, until the military
finally decided that very few rioting students are forty years old,
fat, carrying fifty pounds of video equipment and frantically hollering, "Prensa internacional!"

A few minutes later a commotion of pro-student pot-banging
broke out in a high-rise across the highway from the university. The
soldiers happily turned their shotguns on the apartment building.
A man in a bathing suit was standing on one of the balconies. He
yelled at me, in English, "They're shooting at the fucking building!"

I yelled back, "For chrissake get inside." Panamanians are not
particularly brave people. Even Roberto Duran wound up holding
his tummy and going "No mds. No mds." And one of the soldiers
had lettered this bellicose statement on his helmet cover:
"RAMBO-terror of civilians." But no Panamanian can resist an
opportunity for self-dramatization.

The fellow in the bathing suit didn't budge. "Tell Reagan we
got a great fucking democracy going here," he shouted.

What, you may well wonder, is all this about? I mean, here
we've got a country that two-thirds of America thinks is a hat.
(Actually, the hats are made in Ecuador.) And, damn it, we can't be
expected to stay up to speed on every one of these Third World
pissing contests. Crazy greasers-they've always got bees in their
panty hose about something. We gave them their silly canal back.
Now what's the matter?

Well, fat, pock-faced General Manuel "Pineapple Head" Noriega is nobody's candidate for the Medal of Freedom. Panama is a
military dictatorship covered by a thin scum of constitutional
formalities. And the Pineapple reigns over the Panamanian Defense Force, which includes the army, police and several kinds of
plainclothes thugs. There is virtually no such thing as conflict of interest under Panamanian law. Senior military officers and their
relatives sit on the boards of nearly every corporation and control
most government contracts. According to U. S. Embassy sources,
Noriega has several large houses in Panama and property in the
south of France. At his daughter's wedding, guests were served
pink champagne with pictures of the bride and groom on the labels
and Baccarat-crystal party favors. If Ugly Mug is living within his
modest army salary, he's a better money manager than I -am.

There are other, juicier allegations. Noriega and ilk probably
pulled the 1985 torture murder of a government critic named Dr.
Hugo Spadafora. Panama is a country more greedy than evil.
Snuffing your bad-mouthers is not considered the small social gaffe
it is in most of Latin America. You're supposed to send them off in
exile to "the Valley of the Fallen"-Miami Beach. The U. S. Justice
Department is also investigating Noriega's use of Panama as a huge
drug money Laundromat. Furthermore, defected Cuban intelligence big-shot Major Florentino Aspillaga says Noriega has been
raking in dough selling U.S. high-tech items to Castro.