Jalousie windows in my brother’s apartment are cranked wide open. Dogs are yapping from windows across the way.
“Trump has invaded Venezuela,” my brother calls out. “Nicolás and Cilia have been taken!” CNN, early on-line news... There’s almost nothing. My head is filled with this stunning news as I leave for the club where my friends have arranged for us to meet.
We are five women. We go way back to Las Esclavas, the Catholic school I attended from first through eighth grades. My schoolmates live in Panama City. I left long ago but cling to the sweet notes of memory. I am privileged to be able to return freely to where it all began.
“Ella es mantequilla,” one of my friends uses this long-ago phrase when speaking to the waitress. Marlena will slip in like butter. I am a guest of the others. They won’t let me pay.
Our continental breakfast is a platter of fruit: banana slices, chunks of piña and papaya; frituras de maiz a la Marisol (double-fried corn fritters), tostadas con canela y azucar (buttered toast dipped in sugar and cinnamon). I am a kid again.
These friends are fully recognizable to me. Patria—homeland—still informs who we are, though we have lived our adult lives in different countries. Patria still informs the rules for how to live instilled in childhood, the music, the broad leaves of the tropics, the bougainvillea, our own Panamanian singsong. Our roles as women—daughters, wives, mothers—paint a wide swatch across cultures.
We are taking turns laughing when we hear the name Trump. “El presidente Trump está por hablar.” The snack-bar has turned on the television mounted on the paneled wall nearby.
Trump and Marco Rubio. President Trump is speaking in Spanish with someone else’s voice. Dubbed. I can’t concentrate on the words. The President sounds more contained in this measured voice, not capricious, not unpredictable.
I feel a chill. I am in the thick of history in this very moment. Americans are interfering in the affairs of a sovereign country in Latin America. It’s a recurring story.
We still know almost nothing until Trump mentions the Venezuelan oil that Americans will manufacture and run. Things are coming clear.
My friends are shocked that the Americans kidnapped only Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. For what purpose, they ask? ¿Y qué de Diosdado Cabello? Cabello, the Interior Minister, they say, is brutal, runs the military, everything....
“Venezuela has a population of 30 million people—now very poor. There will be chaos.”
“Panamá is one of the only successes the United States has had since colonial times—grabbing and then letting go.” Comparing Venezuela and Panama, Anita adds, “In Panama we had an elected government ready to take over when Noriega surrendered to the United States. We had a 90-year history with the U.S. Thirteen thousand troops stationed in the Canal Zone. The population of Panama then was two and a half million.” *
Over the next few days, I ask people on the street how they feel about Maduro and the American actions. I don’t hear outrage, which shocks me at first.
Some say, What took so long?
“Ese fué un dictador que arruinó a su país.”
“What about the many others implicated? Who will run the country?”
As we travel by car, we see people hanging out of car windows waving the Venezuelan flag. The Venezuelans here are rejoicing.
Approximately 8 million Venezuelans have left their country because of repression or economic need—nearly 25 percent of the population. Most of these migrants have settled in other Latin American nations.
My own heart is mixed. I recoil at the sense of entitlement by the United States. Our sense of ownership of the entire continent. Our support, time after time, of heinous dictators, like Trujillo (Dominican Republic), Somoza (Nicaragua), and Batista (Cuba) who brutalized their own people.
I understand the joy that Venezuelans who have fled their nation feel today.
Patria. I belong to two—and love two homes deeply.
Here’s a gorgeous song by Panama’s own maestro, Ruben Blades. Panameños think of “Patria” as a second national anthem. It is full of longing and beautiful to so many.
Venezolanos: Imagine your homeland as you hear this meditation on home.
* Footnote:
Panama has experienced a long history of incursions by the United States. Here’s a little bit of shorthand regarding the Noriega affair.
A free republic since its separation from Colombia with U.S. support (1903), Panama experienced an invasion by the United States thirty-six years ago (1989-90) that rid Panamanians of dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega, plucked from Panama and flown to Miami to face charges of drug trafficking and money laundering in the U.S. Panamanians were rid of a brutal leader. The majority of Panamanians had wanted him out, saw no way of stopping him at the time.
Noriega was sentenced to 40 years in prison in a Miami facility. He served 17 years, then was extradited to France to serve another charge, and repatriated to Panama in 2011, where he was also imprisoned. He died in 2017.
Many Panamanians were killed during the invasion. The numbers are debated today. It remains a tragic and murky time in Panama’s history.
Per treaties between the two countries well under way in 1990, the Panama Canal fully reverted to Panama on December 31, 1999.
Dear reader: Thank you for being here on the other side of this equation. You are very important to me. Did you find this conversation useful? U.S. incursions in the Americas are a tangled matter. Painful. Definitive.
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