The Noriega Mess: The Drugs, the Canal, and Why America Invaded

by Luis E. Murillo

This book covers the history of the Canal Zone, the Panama Canal and Panama and the relations between the United States and its protectorate Panama from the early 1960s to the mid-1990s. This is a particularly turbulent era for Panama and the Panama Canal spanning the coup against Arnulfo Arias, the period of dictators Omar Torrijos and Manuel Noriega, the drug trade, the Panama Canal treaties, and the American invasion ordered by President George Bush, Sr., in December 1989. It involves major foreign policy triumphs and disasters of presidents Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush, Sr. What sets apart this volume from the commercial books that appeared right after the invasion is not only its massive level of information (a thousand pages and thousands of references), but the use it makes of archival and journalistic sources about Panama and the invasion which became available in the five years following the invasion. These! sources (military debriefings, trial proceedings in Miami and Panama on the Noriega case and those of many dictatorship collaborators, details of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International debacle, the absurd levels of foreign debt, the involvement of the World Bank, autobiographies of major players like George Shultz's, journalistic works by Bob Woodward, Seymour Hersh and Public Broadcasting Service) were simply not available to the authors of most books on Panama published before the mid-1990s. Author Luis E. Murillo, a well known writer in Panama and university professor and researcher in the United States, has made full use of recently uncovered and public information, presenting it in a well organized and coherent narrative which is at the same time erudite and easy to follow. This book draws on interviews with important witnesses, fact-finding trips, Freedom-of-Information-Act classified documents, academic treatises, World Bank debt tables, Inter-American Development Bank reports, over 150 books, congressional hearings, and 3,000 media reports. It pays attention not only to American, but to Panamanian, Colombian, and European press accounts as well. The book includes verbatim, as an appendix, the Miami indictment against General Manuel Noriega (a major historical document) and 46 chapters, 8 appendices, 72 photographs, and 3 maps. Among the periodicals cited are The Miami Herald, La Prensa, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Congressional Record, Quiubo, Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, La Nacion, Foreign Affairs, The Financial Times, El Pais, El Tiempo, Newsweek, The Boston Globe, Harper's, Life, The Journal of Commerce, The American Lawyer, Business Week, Time, The Economist. The maps and photographs cover Panama, Panama Canal Zone, Panama City, Contadora Island, General Manuel Noriega, General Omar Torrijos, Arnulfo Arias, Ruben Miro, Hector Gallego, Marcos McGrath, Panama Canal Treaties signing ceremony with Jimmy Carter, Ruben Dario Paredes, General John Galvin, Aristides Royo, Ricardo de la Espriella, Ricardo Arias Calderon, Nicolas Ardito Barletta, Guillermo Endara, George Bush, Hugo Spadafora, Carmelo Spadafora, Roberto Eisenmann, Guillermo Sanchez Borbon, Miguel Antonio Bernal, Omaira Mayin Correa, Roberto Diaz Herrera, Jesse Helms, Deborah DeMoss, Eric Arturo Delvalle, Jose Isabel Blandon, Alfonse D'Amato, Manuel Solis Palma, Guillermo Ford, Dick Cheney, Jose Sebastian Laboa, Eduardo Herrera, Nivaldo Madrinan, Luis Papo Cordoba.

1096 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1995

Reviews

[Paul Pinel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is very good and accurate. Having met most of the people mentioned in this book and being friends with several of them. I first read it in 1995. This current edition has several pages left out from the original, but still a good excellent book for an accurate historical reference as to this era of Panamanian history.