MASSIVE REPRESSION by GERARDO SOLORZANO Students flee tear gas during protests in Panama City The situation in Panama is becoming increasingly difficult. The problems of the present bourgeois Bonapartist regime are sharpening, while no way out of the growing economic crisis is in sight. Unemployment and the high cost of living are constant features and represent the basic problems faced by the Panamanian people today. The bourgeoisie is still attempting to resolve the crisis at the expense of the workers. To do this it relies on the military reformist regime, which defends bourgeois inferests in all domains. In the July issue of its monthly organ, the Liga Socialista Revolucionaria (LSR — Revolutionary Socialist League), sympathizing organization of the Fourth International, reported: "The bourgeois Bonapartist regime has once again demonstrated its real objectives: curb the development of the independent organization of the workers, open the door wider to imperialist capital, maintain capitalist exploitation, " The massive repression that was unleashed in Panama in September has confirmed the analyses of our fraternal organization, as has the struggle the Panamanian revolutionary left is waging against the military reformist regime and its antipopular policyIncapable of resolving the sharp economic crisis that has ruined working classes, the Panamanian regime decided at the beginning of September to order an increase in the price of rice and milk, basic staples of the diet of the Panamanian people. This increase came on top of an already long list of other increases in the prices of basic goods effected by the Torrijos regime, the aim being to make the exploited classes bear the costs of the crisis of capitalism. The LSR and the other organizations of the revolutionary left in Panama* decided to demonstrate against the high cost of living once again. The demonstrations, initiated by students, received broad popular support, resulting in the largest mobilizations seen in the country's capital in the past eight years. * The role of the LSR in organizing the demonstrations was recognized by the bourgeois press itself. In fact, the New York Times of September 24 spoke of "the Trotskyist and ultraleftist groups... that ignored the radical rhetoric of the government, which they consider oligarchic and bourgeois."
The response of the military regime was not long in coming. The first of the demonstrations, held September 10, was attacked by shock troops of the Federación de Estudiantes de Panamá (FEP - Federation of Students of Panama), an organization whose leadership is directly controlled and financed by bourgeois Bonapartism. Not satisfied with the physical aggression against all those who demonstrated against the price increases, the government accused the organizations of the revolutionary left of being responsible for the plundering and destrucfion of some warehouses in the main commercial area of the city. These organizations were also accused of being "counterrevolutionary, ,* "Fifth columnist, "agents of the CIA." At the same time, the regime tried to create the impression that the mobilizations had been organized as part of a "plot" against the "revolutionary process" aimed at overthrowing the regime and that this "plot" had been orchestrated by the CIA and the Panamanian bourgeoisie. But the most important aspect of the events was the open willingness of the officers to repress the demonstrators when they marched toward the central headquarters of the Panamanian Guard. This attitude on the part of the present bourgeois regime is explained by the fact that the officers and the bourgeoisie of which they are a part know that the problem of the price increases is quite deeply felt by the masses and that the protest on this issue could generate conflicts leading to a sharpening of the class struggle. Far from falling into the trap of the government's diversionary statements, the Panamanian popular masses continued to manifest their protest against the antipopular measures, unemployment, and the nationalist demagogy that characterizes the military regime which has held power since the coup of October 11, 1968. On Monday, September 13, the students of the Instituto Nacional (the largest secondary school of the capital) marched through the streets of the city to the presidential palace, accompanied by their fathers and teachers aides, to protest against the price increases and the attacks on the previous demonsfrations by "elements led by a pseudo-student progovernment body, " as was explained in the protest communiqué issued by the Parents and Teachers Aides Association of the Instituto Nacional. The communiqué also stated: "The acts of
PANAMA vandalism were committed under the complacent eye of the authorities of the Ministry of Education, on the specific orders of the director of student affairs. " If also demanded that the national government promptly intervene to cut off all aid to the FEP, which was responsible for these acts. While the voices of protest against the regime mounted, the regime itself intensified all its propagandistic, demagogic, and repressive energies in an effort to put across the idea that the whole thing was part of a "destabilizafion plan" and that if was the government that was the victim of aggression and not the large number of students, fathers, and housewives who were wounded in clashes instigated and commanded by elements supporting the regime and by members of the regime's own security and secret service apparatuses. They thus managed to create the image abroad that the Torrijos government was under attack by North American agencies, thereby obscuring the real cause of the problem: the high cost of living that is being imposed on the Panamanian people day by day. Far from abandoning their protests, the LSR and the revolutionary left organizations, along with the Panamanian masses, continued their mobilization. The workers of the CATI (Genuine Federation of Independent Workers), which is not under government control, called for a demonstration on Friday, September 17. On the night of September 16 the headquarters of the federation were invaded by troops and thirteen leading workers and five students were arrested. According to all evidence, the intent of this operation by the repressive forces was to prevent the demonstration of the following day and thus to provoke a feeling among the masses that the struggle had been crushed. The LSR and the other groups organized another demonstration for Monday, September 20. As the demonstration of more than a thousand students moved off the university campus, the regime's "antiriot" forces attacked brutally. Several dozen students were wounded, more than 150 were arrested, and the university was shut down after an intervention by troops who surrounded the campus and launched tear gas grenades against the students, Three days later, the military regime, which had lost all trust among the masses and had been discredited, was forced to release the arrested students and reopen the university. In the meantime, throughout this period the Stalinists of the Partido del Pueblo (People's party, the Panamanian Communist party) made every effort to continue their unconditional support of the regime, attempting to turn the anticommunist pronouncements of the officers and their press against the sectors influenced by the revolutionary left groups and standing alongside the FEP at the head of the denunciation of the alleged CIA plot. *The September 22 issue of El Excelsior of Mexico wrote: "In regard to the nighttime disturbances, official sources reported that the majority of the direct participants were Trotskyists of the Liga Socialista Revolucionaria. " 28
Initial lessons The serious confrontations that have occurred in Panama indicate what on urgent necessity it is for revolutionary militants io carry out the task of giving a new impetus to the struggles and at the same time to fight for the democratization of mass participation, which will permit the partial retreat to be overcome and replaced by a much more organic rise of struggles. The organizations under the leadership of the Stalinist opportunism of the Panamanian CP have been strongly shaken by the impact of the mobilizations, as have the student sectors under the influence of the capitulationism and servility of the FEP. At the same time, the centrist organizations have been able to see that the success of such actions depends not on an apparatus of control of the masses but rather on stimulating the creative mobilization of the masses themselves and on their coordination and centralization. The attempt of the government and its press to present the events as a conspiracy against the "revolution" has quickly collapsed because of a whole series of obscure events that have placed question marks over the regime's version of the events and because of the clear response of the popular sectors of the revolutionary left, which have shown that calling for defense of the regime amounts to defending the offensive against the workers. The isolated sectors of the traditional bourgeoisie which tried to take advantage of the situation to criticize the regime found this difficult because of the clear class positions of the mobilizations and the slogans raised. Given the contradictions among the factions that support the regime and the military apparatus and given the continuity of the mobilizations, the evolution of the class struggle may be posed in terms of the following probable alternatives:
1) A sharper political polarization of the fundamental classes, the bourgeoisie and the workers. In this case the options of each of the two class fronts will be manifested more openly.
2) A convergence between the moderate factions of the bourgeoisie and the reformist factions of the workers and people's movement aimed at maintaining the survival of Bonapartism at all costs. Which of these two possibilities will actually occur will depend on the development of the world crisis of capitalism and the degree to which the revolutionary organizations consolidate themselves among the toiling classes. Neither the political and military strength of the regime nor the social bose of Stalinism and the other reformist sectors should be underestimated, in spite of the fact that their margin for maneuver has been narrowing. The dangerous class collaborationist illusions that motivate Stalinism in Panama, combined with the nationalist demagogy of the regime, will have enormous negative consequences unless there is a revolutionary Marxist alternative that succeeds in preparing the exploited classes for difficult battles against capitalism and its spearheod, Yankee imperialism. September 27, 1976