HAPPENED IN PANAMA
The January 14 edition of the Mexico City daily El Dia carried a vivid report from Panama, date-lined January 12, on the violent incidents that broke out between the American armed’ forces and the people of Panama, From the dispatch, written by Leopoldo Aragon, we have translated the following:
"The Panamanian nation today buried twelve of its twenty~seven dead, who fell under North American bullets. Panama today is caught up with indignation-and with pride over its dead and its three hundred wounded. Since last Thursday Panama waged an unequal struggle with the might of the United States in the long anti~imperialist struggle. ee
"The terrible events that occurred here have great importance for Latin America and countries whose sovereignty is compromised by strdéng nations, A literally unarmed people has said, 'Enough of our blood! and has declared its intention of rebelling as it deems necessary to
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'finish with a totally anachronistic situation going back to 1903. 2.
"In the afternoon of Thursday,. January 9, some two hundred students of the National Institute entered the Canal Zone to protest the fact. that a secondary school had raised only the North American flag, violating the agreement to raise it together with the Panamanian, Tney brought their own fleg so that it could be raised,
wre North American poliee of the Canal Zone intercepted th hem and the boys agreed that a delegation of five of them should go up to the flag pole of the school to sing their national anthem and display their ensign. While they were singing, the North American students poked fun at them and began singing their anthem, The Panamanian students were then invited by the police to get going. They had a discussion with the police, as can be seen in newsreels, and the North American students then surrounded the delegation of five. , -
the newsreel: shows how the police proceeded to push the Panamanian .' youths and the menacing gestures of the Yankee students. The two -hundred ran. to join their comrades and then the police attacked the whole group, throwing tear gas. Their feelings aroused, the boys broke > lamps and threw chunks of gerbage, spreading out in various directions, _: trying to plant small Panamanian flags. Then the police began shooting, wounding: several, .
_ Group Becomes ce! Crowd
the shots and the wounds transformed the group into an angry crowd chased by the volice of the Zone, who succeeded in driving them out, but since the Zone is. separated from Panama by a painted line in Fourth of July Avenue, rebaptized. Kennedy Avenue, the youths ran along it shouting, ettracting people who had heard the shots. They.joined up, forming a group of some three thousand persons who entered or tried to enter the Zone carrying flags, along the sector of the avenue passing in front of the Legislative Palace,
"The police opened fire indiscriminately, causing deaths and wounds, The army then showed up, shooting and throwing tear gas and a .; Still more irritating product. The population of Panama seethed with '| indignation and joined the crowd by the thousands, The struggle went ~? on throughout the night and Friday morning. The people charged, liter= ally with shirts unbuttoned, baring their breasts to the North American’ bullets. Waves of them advanced and fell back before the gunfire, Armored caterpillar trucks carrying heavy machine guns, resembling tanks, appeared at the three.principal points of entry. At the street. . openings where there were considerable open areas, the troops threw up barriers of barbed wire, and posted sharpshooters in various tall buildings, mainly in the old Tivoli hotel and a convent from which a_ . deadly crossfire could be set up.
"The list of wounded and dead continued to grow and the radio and : telévision reported the facts. The people poured into the streets to destroy any North American vehicles they could find (North American
7 \ 7 mana Omne automobiles carry Cenal Zone plates wnich are quite different from the Panamanian end thus easily identifiable) and to burn and destroy any= thing that might be North American,
"rhe building of the USIS, the United States propaganda agency, was reduced to a heap of ashes: the Chase National Bank was left with~ * out a single unbroken window; the glass blocks of the front of the Electric Company were destroyed, proken with hammers and picks; the futuristic building of the Panamerican Airways and two more buildings located between the Tivoli and the convent on the side of the Panamanian ') gidewalk of Fourth of July Avenue, and dozens of other North American ‘| properties, were also set on fire,
"The crowds were on point of capturing the North American embassy, the numerous windows of which were shattered, The National Guard was readied to prevent it from being taken by assault, The armored trucks made sallies into Panamanian territory, crossing the line, in order to push back the Panamanian throngs, the armed forces of the United-States thus ‘violating sovereign Panamanian territory. The soldiers did not confine themselves to firing on the nearest people, but splashed bullets over the entire plaza of the Legislative Palace and beyond, since. ' wounded and dead! were found three thousand meters beyond the dividing line. . e
On Friday morning, "North American planes soon appeared with power ful loudspeakers demanding that the Panamanians get behind the dividing line. This order. produced an.effect totally-the opposite of the one expected, 'Theytre not going to tell us that. . . where we can or can=- - not be in our own home,! was the reply, and all along Fourth of July ' Avenue a sea of people congregated. In the plaza of the Legislative. Palace there were as many as twenty thousand people, I have been told.
"and it was extraordinary to see twenty thousand people throw themselves to the ground when there were bursts of machine-gun fire and get up and advance as soon as they ceased, 'They were stopping those that fell but the rest of us moved forward yelling at the Gringos what we _ thought of them,! | Jet Planes Buzz Homes
- “at noon and throughout the afternoon jet planes buzzed the roofs of houses, breaking the sound barrier, and then giving the penetrating roar of their motors. They sought intimidation, but once again the effect was the reverse. With greater passion people charged the points of invasion,
"The Legislative Pdl ace was a heap of glass smashed by thousands of machine~gun bullets. We want to dislodge the sharpshooters, explained iGeneral Andrew O'Meara, absolute dictator of the Cenal Zone, where mar~ ‘tial law had been declared the night before, The North American army also barred all traffic on the highway crossing the isthmus and Linking ‘Panama on the Pacific with the City of Colon on the Atlantic, and they barred passage from one side of the national territory to the other across the so-called Bridge of the Americas,"
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FRENCH