Analysis: Martinelli’s Panama: Tilt or Tide… to the

Right?

Ricaurte Soler, one of Panama’s best known academics, used to observe that his country’s sentiment generally militated against contemporary international political currents. However imprecise, this blanket statement does have some truth to it, especially after 1989, when Panama’s politics consistently displayed an ideological lag when seen in a wider international context. Although the country was caught up in the political undertow which sprouted dictatorships in most of the region during that period, Panama was one of the last countries to exit the current, and it did so only after a forceful and controversial military intervention spearheaded by the United States. This still fiercely debated event broke the continuity of the country’s modern history and battered policy measures otherwise in place for decades. Today, Panama’s own history seems to be only weakly at odds with the rest of Latin American history, which until recently, tilted the region to a murkily defined ideological left.

But Panama always has been a singular country, mainly due to its geography and derived social factors, which framed its economy with a unique blend of insularity and cosmopolitanism. This is best reflected in the long and intimate love-hate relationship with the United States (US), a country which at times continues to exert a draconian tidal influence over the Panamanian citizenry despite Washington’s orderly withdrawal from the Panama Canal Zone in 1999.

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