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The Weak and the Powerful: Omar Torrijos, Panama, and the Non-Aligned Movement in the World (IHS Book Talk)

Dr. Jonathan Brown, emeritus professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin, followed an unconventional path to academia. Following a master’s degree in history at the University of Arizona, he received a commission in the Army R.O.T.C. program. Brown served as a lieutenant in the Panama Canal Zone from 1968 to 1970. Later promoted to captain, he completed his final tour of duty in Thailand in 1971 before enrolling in the history doctoral program at UT-Austin. His first book, A Socioeconomic History of Argentina (1979), won the Bolton Prize for the best book in English on Latin American history. Over his career, Brown has published six books. Spanning centuries and continents, his scholarship explores labor, nationalism, and revolution among other themes

In October 2024, the Institute for Historical Studies hosted a book talk for Dr. Brown’s latest publication, The Weak and the Powerful: Omar Torrijos, Panama, and the Nonaligned Movement in the World. This most recent work reflects the contours of his career—both within and outside academia. His initial exposure to Panama and General Torrijos began when he was stationed in the Southern Command from 1968 to 1970. However, Dr. Brown would not undertake a study of the canal until nearly five decades later. The impetus was another project. His 2017 book, Cuba’s Revolutionary World, traced the Cuban Revolution’s influence on hemispheric affairs and ultimately renewed his interest in the Canal Zone. Where Cuba’s Revolutionary World de-centers the United States and focuses on Cuban foreign policy, The Weak and the Powerful positions Panama as a critical yet understudied player in regional politics.

Book cover of The Weak and the Powerful: Omar Torrijos, Panama, and the Non-Aligned Movement in the World

The Weak and the Powerful opens with a provocative question: “How does a small country, without resort to war, convince a great power to give back valuable real estate?” This framing shifts the focus away from traditional spheres of influence in Cold War studies. During his talk, Brown shared that he aimed to write about imperialism while focusing on its victims. The Weak and the Powerful largely succeeds in centering Panama, although this history filters through the biography of the nation’s strongman. The United States and its political leaders remain on the periphery of this transnational study. Instead, the book devotes considerable attention to Panama’s relations with the Global South and members of the Non-Aligned Movement. General Torrijos proactively engaged these countries to build solidarity and to unite many “weak” powers against the United States. “He made it difficult for American diplomats to engage with international organizations without living up to their own democratic principles,” concludes Brown.

Picture of Omar Torrijos photographed in the countryside with Panamanian farmers — *Omar Torrijos with Panamanian farmers. Source: Wikimedia Commons*

Omar Torrijos, who took power through a military coup in 1968, successfully negotiated an end to nearly a century of U.S. occupation of the Canal Zone. Remarkably, he did so not through force but through negotiation. For this accomplishment, Brown argues that “the Panamanian strongman deserves a study of international dimensions” (7). Thus, The Weak and the Powerful devotes considerable attention to Torrijos’ biography. The author traces the dictator’s rise through the Panamanian National Guard, which offered economic and social mobility to many Panamanians. Perhaps surprising to many readers, military service also provided Torrijos with “a greater sense of social inequities in the mountains, plains, and jungles of the nation” (24). The dictator came to see himself as a progressive, championing issues of social justice and offering a reformist domestic agenda.

Black and white picture of General Omar Torrijos and with President Carter. — *General Omar Torrijos with President Carter [Panama Treaty]. Source: Library of Congress*

Inclusionary policies and social reforms allowed Torrijos to cultivate popular support and to consolidate his power. Brown also maintains that the Torrijos regime made scant use of repression in contrast to other Latin American dictatorships of the era. Ultimately, this leadership style allowed Torrijos to hold power as long as it took to sign the Panama Canal Accords. Illuminating this history, The Weak and the Powerful offers a compelling reexamination of Panama’s role in hemispheric politics. The book highlights Torrijos’ strategic use of international alliances to pressure the United States into granting historic concessions. This achievement came at a time of significant U.S. intervention in Latin America—an irony that reinforces Brown’s larger argument that “no model of international relations can explain [Torrijos’] accomplishments” (269). Ultimately, Dr. Brown’s return to the Panama Canal offers a fresh perspective on treaty negotiations and enriches existing Cold War historiography.

Gabrielle Esparza is a Ph.D. candidate in Latin American history, with a focus on twentieth-century Argentina. Her dissertation examines the evolution of President Raúl Alfonsín’s human rights policies from his candidacy to his presidency in post-dictatorship Argentina. At the University of Texas at Austin, Gabrielle has served as a graduate research assistant at the Texas State Historical Association and as co-coordinator of the Symposium on Gender, History, and Sexuality in 2020-2021. Gabrielle was also Associate Editor and Communications Director of Not Even Past from 2021-2022. Currently, Gabrielle works as a graduate research assistant in the Institute for Historical Studies and as an Editorial Assistant for The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Latin American History.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Cuba’s Revolutionary World

By Jonathan C. Brown

On January 2, 1959, Fidel Castro, the rebel comandante who had just overthrown Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, addressed a crowd of jubilant supporters. Recalling the failed popular uprisings of past decades, Castro assured them that this time “the real Revolution” had arrived. Castro’s words proved prophetic not only for his countrymen but for Latin America and the wider world.

Fidel Castro announcing the arrival of “the real revolution,” 1959.

The political turmoil that rocked a small Caribbean nation in the 1950s became one of the twentieth century’s most transformative events. Initially, Castro’s revolution augured well for democratic reform movements then gaining traction in Latin America. But what had begun promisingly veered off course as Castro took a heavy hand in efforts to centralize Cuba’s economy and stamp out private enterprise. Embracing the Soviet Union as an ally, Castro and his lieutenants, Che Guevara and Raúl Castro, sought to export the socialist revolution abroad through armed insurrection. Chairman Khrushchev’s early support aided the Cuban revolutionaries in defeating of the CIA invasion of Cuban émigré fighters at the Bay of Pigs. However, he subsequently lost his job over the 1962 Missile Crisis that pushed the superpowers to the brink of nuclear war.

By the end of the 1960s, rural and urban uprisings linked to the Cuban Revolution had spilled over from Central America into the bigger countries of South America. Revolutionary groups whose leaders had trained in Havana were operating in Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, and Argentina. Most of the rural and urban guerrillas may not have traveled to Cuba. Yet they certainly followed Fidel’s “anti-imperialist” example. Che himself attempted to spread the revolution to Bolivia, where he died. Other rebel groups with names such as the Tupamaros and Montoneros and still others with initials like FALN, ELN, and MIR defined the 1960s as the age of student unrest.

Castro’s provocations inspired intense opposition. Cuban anti-communists who had fled to Miami found a patron in the CIA, which actively supported their efforts to topple Castro’s regime. American presidents supported anti-communist forces that often utilized disproportionate violence against pro-Cuban dissidence in their own countries. The insurrections fomented by leftist guerrillas lent support to Latin America’s military castes, who promised to restore stability. Brazil was the first to succumb to a coup in 1964. A decade later, juntas of generals governed most Spanish and Portuguese-speaking nations of the Western Hemisphere. Rightwing terror claimed increasing numbers of casualties into the 1980s. Thus did a revolution that had seemed to signal the death knell of dictatorship in Latin America produce its tragic opposite.

Latin America’s military establishments especially came to oppose revolution because they learned what had happened to the Cuban army that failed to defeat Castro’s guerrilla rebellion. Revolutionary firing squads killed hundreds of military and police officers when the Batista dictatorship fell. Consequently, Che Guevara’s travels in Latin America proved especially toxic. President Jânio Quadros of Brazil resigned one week after presenting Guevara with a medal and Argentina’s army generals deposed President Arturo Frondizi several months after he “secretly” met with El Che.

Omar Torrijos and Fidel Castro in 1976

However, it is instructive that two generals who performed coups d’état in 1968 took advantage of the nationalist feelings of peasants and workers to establish pro-Cuban juntas. Generals Juan Velasco of Peru and Omar Torrijos of Panama ousted elected governments in order to implement overdue social reforms. Many countries of Latin America followed the Brazilian example of establishing long-term counterrevolutionary military dictatorships. Brazil’s generals governed for twenty-one years.

The Cold War that Cuba introduced to Latin America affected the lives of countless ordinary citizens. Humberto Sorí Marín, the revolution’s first agriculture minister. opposed the turn toward communism, resigned, and fled to Miami, only to return with a cache of weapons for an uprising against Castro. He died before a firing squad. There was also Osvaldo Ramírez, the bandit king of the Escambray Mountains who led a widespread guerrilla rebellion against Castro’s rule until militia troops shot and killed him in battle. His anti-communist guerrilla successors endured within Cuba until 1965.

Cuban militiamen capture an anti-Castro guerilla fighter, c. 1962.

Antonio “Tony” Zamora was one Castro opponent who survived. He aspired to study law but left Cuba in 1960 to join the brigade of exiled Cuban youths who landed at the Bay of Pigs. President Kennedy ransomed Zamora and his fellow prisoners following the Cuban Missile Crisis. Tony became a lawyer in Miami and went on to advocate greater dialog with the Castro regime as the Cuban Revolution approached its fiftieth anniversary.

Cuba’s revolution attracted youthful visitors from all over Latin America who wished to learn how they too might become armed revolutionaries. Julio García left the University of Buenos Aires to learn how to fight as a guerrilla in 1962. However, he and several other Argentineans quit the camps after training became too rigorous for them. Venezuelans like Luben Petkoff did finish Cuban guerrilla training. Luben engaged in combat for nearly ten years only to give up finally with a pardon from one of the few democracies that survived the 1960s.

Venezuelan Leftist Guerillas

Women too became involved in the turmoil. The guerrilla Tania gave up her life for the revolution, this one in Bolivia. Tania’s real name was Tamara Bunke Bider, an Argentinean-born East German who first met Che Guevara as a government translator in East Berlin. She immigrated to Cuba in the early 1960s and eventually became Che’s spy in La Paz, Bolivia. Tania campaigned with Guevara’s last guerrilla group in 1967 and suffered the fate of most of his followers.

Student rioters in Córdoba, Argentina, 1969

Argentina’s Norma Arrostita visited Havana in 1967 to attend a conference of armed leftists from all over Latin America. When she returned to Buenos Aires, Norma acted as the lookout for the kidnapping and killing of a former general who once served as Argentina’s president. A founding member of the urban guerrilla group known as the Montoneros, Arrostita later “disappeared” in a military prison like thousands of other suspected radicals.

As Mao used to say, “The revolution is not a dinner party.” Fidel Castro provided the corollary. “But the counterrevolution” he said, “is always more cruel.”

Jonathan C. Brown, Cuba’s Revolutionary World (2017)

For more on twentieth-century Latin American revolutions, try these:

Jorge I. Domínguez, Cuba: Order and Revolution (1978).
The foundational text for any serious study of Cuba’s three revolutions in the modern age: the Wars of Independence, the 1933 Revolution and rise of Fulgencio Batista, and the 1959 Revolution of Fidel Castro and his many associates.

Alexandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958-1964 (1997).
A fascinating account of Havana-Moscow relations culminating in the October Missile Crisis of 1962. The authors had access to Soviet and US document collections but only a few Cuban ones, which are generally not available to researchers. The title derives from a statement by President Kennedy during a White House discussion about Premier Khrushchev’s possible motivations for placing nuclear missiles in Cuba.

Jan Lust, Lucha revolucionaria: Perú, 1958-1967 (2013).
The most thorough study of a guerrilla movement in any country of Latin America during the 1960s. The author interviewed survivors and collected detailed information on leaders and fighters from a variety of sources.

Valeria Manzano, The Age of Youth in Argentina: Culture, Politics, and Sexuality from Perón to Videla (2014).
An important study of the student movements of one important country in South America during an age of youthful protests and cultural change wrought by national political turmoil and military interventions. The book covers the period from the 1955 overthrow of Juan Perón to the 1976 coup d’état that preceded the last military dictatorship of the country.

I am Tourism/Yo Soy Turismo

By Blake Scott and Andres Lombana-Bermudez

A new documentary film series.

This short film tells the migration story of the Emberá indigenous community, Parara Puru, and how the community entered into Panama’s tourism industry.

“The past is never dead,” as William Faulkner and this website remind us, “It’s not even past.” We explore the endurance of the past in the present through ethnographic filmmaking. In January 2013, we traveled to Panama to observe and participate in the country’s growing tourism industry. We met with guides, tourists, entrepreneurs, maids, hustlers, retirees, and a whole lot of beautiful and very complicated human beings. The documentary film series, I am tourism/ Yo soy turismo sheds light on the personal histories that make up contemporary tourism in Panama and the Caribbean.

This short video is the beginning of the documentary project. This semester we will be revising this first video and working on another short film focused on the cruise ship industry in the Caribbean city of Colon. Our goal is to create a series of short films that can serve as an educational resource for students of tourism, history, and cross-cultural exchange.

Chagres National Park in Panama (Ecotourism in Panama)

If you have any feedback or comments, or would like to learn more about the project, please let us know.

For more information on the history and culture of the Emberá in Panama:

“Indigenous Land and Environmental Conflicts in Panama: Neoliberal Multiculturalism, Changing Legislation, and Human Rights,” by Julie Velásquez Runk, Journal of Latin American Geography, Volume 11, Number 2, 2012, pp. 21-47.
“Emberá Indigenous Tourism and the Trap of Authenticity: Beyond Inauthenticity and Invention,” by Dimitrios Theodossopoulos, Anthropological Quarterly, Volume 86, Number 2, Spring 2013, pp. 397-425.

To learn about the Panama Canal and its role in Panamanian History:

The Canal Builders: Making America’s Empire at the Panama Canal by Julie Greene
The Panama Canal: The Crisis in Historical Perspective by Walter LaFeber

More documentaries about Panama, the Canal, and Tourism:

Panama Deception, by Barbara Trent
Paraiso for Sale, by Anayansi Prado

You may also like Jonathan Brown’s piece about LBJ’s fascinating conversation with the Panamanian President: A Rare Phone Call from One President to Another

A Rare Phone Call from One President to Another

by Jonathan C. Brown

“Señor Presidente,” Lyndon Baines Johnson said via a long-distance telephone call from the Oval Office. “We are very sorry over the violence which you have had down there but gratified that you have appealed to the Panamanian people to remain calm.” President Johnson often talked politics on the phone but seldom with foreign leaders. Johnson, who had just succeeded to the presidency of the world’s most powerful country, was speaking to the head of state of one of the smaller nations of the Western Hemisphere. The call marked the only time that Johnson spoke to a Latin American counterpart by telephone during his presidency—a fact that demonstrates how serious he considered the situation. This unique president-to-president phone conversation occurred on January 10, 1964, following the first full day of riots by Panamanian youths along the fence line between Panama City and the U.S. occupied Canal Zone. It was the first foreign crisis of the Johnson presidency. Johnson’s call was translated by a Spanish-speaking U.S. Army colonel, transcribed by the White House staff, and preserved in the archives of the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum.

Remarkably, Panamanian President Roberto F. Chiari, more than held his own in this conversation between unequal powers. “Fine, Mr. President,” responded Chiari, “the only way that we can remove the causes of friction is through a prompt and thorough revision of the treaties between our countries.” Johnson answered that he understood Chiari’s concern and said that the United States also had vital interests connected to this matter.

But Chiari did not relent. “This situation has been building up for a long time, Mr. President,” said the Panamanian head of state, “and it can only be solved through a complete review and adjustment of all agreements. . . . I went to Washington in [1962] and discussed this with President Kennedy in the hope that we could resolve the issues,” the Panamanian chief executive explained. “Two years have gone by and practically nothing has been accomplished. I am convinced that the intransigence and even indifference of the U. S. are responsible for what is happening here now.”

Anti-American protests and violence occurred frequently in the decade of the 1960s. Why did President Johnson consider that this riot in Panama amounted to an international crisis that he had to handle personally?

A number of factors explain the importance of Panama to American foreign policy during the early days of the Johnson Administration. He had just assumed office following the assassination of the popular John F. Kennedy, who successfully faced down the Russians in the October 1962 missile crisis. Johnson undoubtedly felt that he also needed to prove his toughness in foreign affairs. His presidential legitimacy was at stake.

Moreover, the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and its challenge to American hegemony in the hemisphere posed a threat that Communism might take over another Latin American nation. No sitting president would win reelection if a “second Cuba” occurred during his watch, and exaggerated reports from Panama were pouring into the White House warning of Communist agents active in the violence. President Johnson already had his eye on the 1964 presidential election coming in just ten months.

Finally, the existence of the U.S.-controlled Canal Zone was becoming a prominent issue in Inter-American relations. The zone itself consisted of ten-by-fifty-mile swath of land surrounding the inter-oceanic canal in which about five thousand English-speaking administrators, operators, and military personnel lived. It divided the Spanish-speaking nations of Mexico and Central America from those of South America. To many, the Panama Canal symbolized U.S. domination over the entire hemisphere.

The Zone also nurtured a colonial mentality among its civilian workers, many of whom had spent most of their adult years there. Surrounded by impoverished Panamanians, the three thousand American citizens operating the Panama Canal tended to be exceptionally patriotic, even jingoistic. Some had never ventured into Panama City. Time magazine once called the Zonians “more American than America.” Many households had Panamanian or West Indian maids and gardeners. Yet the Zonians disdained the Panamanians and refused to fly their national banner. According to canal treaty dating from 1903, the United States occupied the Canal Zone but the Republic of Panama retained sovereignty of the strip of land that split the nation into two parts. Panamanians were demanding that the Americans also raise the flag of Panama too. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Kennedy agreed, and each had ordered the joint display of both national banners in the Canal Zone.

However, the Zonians and their school kids disobeyed the presidential mandates. American residents of the Canal Zone, who voted absentee in US elections, enjoyed strong support on Capitol Hill and Senators and Congressmen encouraged their opposition. Congress refused to increase the payments to the government of Panama for the lease of the Canal Zone lands and the Senate stymied the renegotiation of the 1903 treaty.

After six decades of American intransigence, Panamanian students had had enough. On January 9, 1964, they entered the Canal Zone throwing bricks and smashing windows. Arsonists set fire to automobiles and buildings. Fidel Castro’s revolution in Cuba and his anti-American speeches inspired some of the rioters. Others reacted to the nation’s shame about its dependency on foreigners and the presence of the U.S. Armed Forces and the civilian Zonians.

Under these circumstances, American troops stationed in Panama were called out to defend the Canal Zone with small arms fire. During the several days of rioting, twenty-one Panamanians and four American soldiers lost their lives. The wounded numbered in the hundreds. In the final analysis, President Lyndon Johnson’s extraordinary phone call to the Panamanian head of state marked the beginning of a long process of negotiations that ended up, thirteen years later, in the treaty ceding the inter-oceanic canal to control to Panama. President Jimmy Carter and the popular Panamanian dictator General Omar Torrijos signed this agreement at the White House in 1977, and the final stage of the process of transmission came in 1999.

Permit me to add a personal postscript. This research forms part of one chapter of my book manuscript on United States-Latin American relations in the turbulent decade of the 1960s. I myself played a minor role in the drama. During the 1964 Panamanian flag riots, I was an undergraduate student and cadet in the Reserve Officer Training Corps at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Later, as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army, I took up my first foreign assignment at Fort Amador on the Pacific side of the Panama Canal. I arrived in December of 1968, just two months after the coup d’état, by which Lieutenant Coronel Torrijos had seized power. Now I am writing the history through which I have lived.

You can read a full transcript of the conversation here and listen to the audio in the video below (it begins after a brief intro):

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