More than 35 years have passed since the U.S. invaded Panama to oust the dictator Manuel Noriega, but threats by President Donald Trump to reclaim the Panama Canal – by force if necessary – are reopening past scars and stoking new fears.

PANAMA CITY — In the neighborhood of El Chorrillo, colorful murals span the sides of large apartment buildings housing some of Panama’s poorest people. The artwork tells the story of a community rich in history; a corregimiento – a subdivision – that originally housed workers from the Caribbean who helped build the Panama Canal.

The white spray-painted words “Duelo Nacional 20 de Diciembre. Fuera Gringo Mierda,” which translates to “National Day of Mourning December 20th. Out With American S—,” against a stark black wall serve as a reminder of the neighborhood’s painful history.

The United States invaded Panama on Dec. 20, 1989, in an operation codenamed Operation Just Cause. The U.S. stated the operation was to “safeguard the lives of Americans, to defend democracy in Panama, to combat drug trafficking and to protect the integrity of the Panama Canal Treaty.”

The American mission ultimately removed Panama’s money laundering, drug smuggling dictator, Gen. Manuel Noriega, whose military headquarters were located in El Chorrillo, also considered one of Panama City’s most dangerous areas.

For those who lived through the U.S. operation, the memory is still fresh. Panamanians have dubbed the event the Invasion of 1989, and many consider it an infringement of their nation’s sovereignty.

More than 35 years have passed since the military operation, but threats by President Donald Trump to reclaim the Panama Canal – by force if necessary – are reopening past scars.

Today, El Chorrillo has largely been left behind by government investment and commercial growth that have renewed other parts of Panama. Many of its buildings are dilapidated. Still, residents find joy in their sense of community. On a Sunday morning in the central plaza, a group of domino players laughed jubilantly over their game, residents danced to the sound of upbeat rhythms and neighbors chatted under the plaza’s awning, shaded from the hot tropical sun.

Mercedes Coralia Herrera Reina, a 70-year-old Panamanian and El Chorrillo native, sat with her friend on a bench near the plaza. She experienced the 1989 invasion and bore witness to both the immediate destruction and lingering effects of American intervention in her country.

“They wanted to kill us and we had to stay firm,” she said in Spanish, yelling over the reggae blaring from the communal speaker. “We live poor, but we live well. The United States has money, and they don’t live well.”

The 1989 invasion was just one of many moments of conflict in the long history of U.S. presence in Panama. In 1964, tensions over Panamanian sovereignty rose to the surface in the American-controlled Canal Zone. The conflict became known as the Flag Riots or Martyr’s Day.

On Jan. 9, 1964, Panamanian high schoolers from the National Institute of Panama scaled the fence dividing the American-controlled Canal Zone from Panama City and planted the Panamanian flag at the American-run Balboa High School. The institute’s students found it unfair that the American high school’s students refused to fly the Panamanian flag beside the American flag on their school’s flagpole and sought to protest what they viewed as violation of Panama’s sovereignty.

The act unleashed rioting, looting and violence. According to an exhibition at the Museum of Panamanian History, more than 20 Panamanians died and more than 400 were wounded.

At the time of the incident, Rosario Barrera was 5 years old. Despite her age, she took notice of the severity of the situation. “I understood that there was a problem. I understood that people were dying,” she said.

The building where Barrera’s parents worked at the time was burned by protestors.

“The destruction, I remember. I will never forget that, it was horrible. … Everything was burnt. It just smelled terrible,” Barrera said. “Not even the invasion [in 1989] looked so bad as that, for a little kid.”

For Barrera and other Panamanians, Trump’s statements about the U.S. regaining control of the Panama Canal opened old wounds.

On Dec. 22, 2024, during a campaign speech at AmericaFest in Phoenix, Trump announced that his administration “could try to regain control of the Panama Canal.”

At a Jan. 9 press conference at Mar-a-Lago, reporters asked Trump if he could assure the public that he would not use “military or economic coercion” to take control of Greenland – another of his foreign policy goals – or the Panama Canal. He responded, “No, I can’t assure you.”

The president’s motivation for wanting to “retake” control of the waterway: Alleged Chinese influence and high fees charged to American cargo and military vessels to pass through the canal.

The president has reiterated his concerns about Chinese influence on the U.S.-built and formerly U.S.-operated canal, saying during his Jan. 20 inaugural address, “China is operating the Panama Canal. And we didn’t give it to China. We gave it to Panama, and we’re taking it back.”

In a Dec. 25, 2024, Truth Social post, Trump wrote that Chinese soldiers were “lovingly, but illegally, operating the Panama Canal.” The post referenced two Panama Canal ports, Balboa and Cristóbal, which are currently operated by Hong Kong-based conglomerate CK Hutchison Holdings Limited. The company recently reached an agreement to sell the ports to the U.S.-based investment company BlackRock for $23 billion. The pending deal has brought criticism and scrutiny from the Chinese government.

The deal is also currently stalled after a Panamanian government audit described “irregularities” in the ports’ contracts that allow them to operate in Panama. The auditors say CK Hutchison owes $1.2 billion to Panama. CK Hutchison denied the audit’s findings.

Trump’s claims have been echoed by his Cabinet, including by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who met with Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino on Feb. 2. In the meeting, Rubio said the Chinese Communist Party constituted a “threat to the canal,” adding that China’s undue influence violates the treaty concerning the permanent neutrality and operation of the Panama Canal.

Evan Ellis, research professor of Latin American studies at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, rejected the argument that China is operating the canal, which allows large ships to transit the globe’s two great oceans by using a waterway and locks operated by the Panama Canal Authority – an independent agency accountable to the Panamanian government.

“[The] two [Chinese] operations have nothing to do with the operation of the locks themselves,” Ellis said. “Both operations are outside of the locks and have no actual contact with the locks.”

He said another Panamanian government agency, the Panama Maritime Authority, has jurisdiction over the seagoing vessels and ports outside of the canal and its operations.

In the face of Trump’s rhetoric, some Panamanians who lived through the 1989 invasion and Martyrs’ Day 1964 said Trump’s statements remind them of the past.

The Invasion of 1989

Shortly before 1 a.m. on Dec. 20, 1989, U.S. special operations forces initiated the military action to remove Noriega, targeting Noriega’s Panama Defense Force headquarters in the heavily populated El Chorrillo neighborhood.

That day, Reina, the El Chorrillo resident who is now 70, faced the startling reality of the American military attacking her neighborhood. As AC-130 gunships and mortar teams fired at Noriega’s headquarters, La Comandancia, she knew she and her family had no other option but to stay put.

“Because we [were] poor… where were we going to live?” Reina asked.

The military operation was years in the making and centered around the U.S.’s tumultuous relationship with Noriega, a paid CIA informant turned military dictator.

Noriega was a CIA intelligence asset for 30 years, supporting U.S. efforts to crack down on communist insurgents in El Salvador and Nicaragua.

Following Gen. Omar Torrijos’s death in 1981, Noriega, who was the chief of military intelligence at the time, assumed de facto control of the country.

Noriega’s dictatorship was marked by drug trafficking, money laundering and racketeering. By the mid-1980s, his relationship with the U.S. began to deteriorate.

Tensions between the countries escalated in 1989. On May 7, Panama held its general elections and, according to third-party election observers, Guillermo Endara’s opposition party won. Noriega contested the results and ordered Panama’s Electoral Tribunal to nullify the results.

It was at this point that the U.S. began to consider the use of force to remove Noriega from power. On May 11, President George H.W. Bush said the U.S. was ready to “carry out its obligations and assert and enforce its treaty rights in Panama under the Panama Canal treaties.” U.S. officials were also concerned for the 35,000 American citizens living in Panama who, according to Bush, were in “imminent danger.”

Seven months later, the U.S. launched Operation Just Cause.

‘There were war tanks’

Like Reina, Jacqueline Lyons, a descendant of Panama Canal builders from Jamaica and Barbados, also observed the events of Dec. 20.

“That big plane, the B-52. They bombed the side of El Chorrillo,” Lyons said. “The streets were crowded. There were war tanks.”

For five days, armored personnel carriers trudged through the wreckage left in El Chorrillo while American troops continued their search for Noriega across Panama City. U.S. troops faced scattered resistance from Panama’s military, but by Dec. 24, the U.S. was dominant within Panama. The operation involved an estimated 24,000 American soldiers.

Damaris Contrera was living in Calidonia, a neighborhood 3 kilometers north of El Chorrillo. She saw Panamanians attempting to flee from American troops.

“On Balboa Avenue people were running,” Contrera said. “People were saying, ‘The invasion is coming! Get out! Get out!’”

“[There were] burned men in El Chorrillo. It was crazy,” Contrera said.

The impacts of the invasion even touched Panamanians who were living outside of the country during the days of the American intervention.

Roberto Eisenmann Jr., the longtime publisher and editor of La Prensa newspaper in Panama City, was living in exile in Miami. He was forced to flee the country on multiple occasions throughout the years, once for challenging Torrijos and a second time for his criticism of Noriega.

While he was physically distanced from the violence and destruction, Eisenmann had his convictions about the invasion.

“There was a group of people that said, under no circumstances do we want an invasion, because it’s an open wound in our national psyche no matter how we look at it,” Eisenmann said. “I felt that way, and I felt it was going to be longer and maybe more costly to get rid of him [Noriega].”

The operation reached a turning point on Jan. 3, 1990, when U.S. Drug Enforcement agents arrested Noriega at the Vatican Embassy in Panama City.

The invasion aftermath

Although the operation ended Noriega’s authoritarian reign, residents of El Chorrillo and other neighborhoods around Panama City say they suffered.

Fires caused by the American attack left an estimated 18,000 Panamanian civilians homeless, forcing many to seek shelter in refugee camps at Balboa High School and later at Albrook Air Force Station.

Both the American and Panamanian governments reported loss of life.

On Dec. 27, 1989, the U.S. Army estimated that of “250 corpses [found], 20 could have been soldiers.” Panamanian officials estimated the number of civilian casualties to be 400 dead and 2,000 wounded.

In January 1990, U.S. officials changed their official estimate to 201 Panamanian civilians and 314 Panamanian soldiers killed.

The U.S. National Guard reported that 23 service members were killed and more than 300 were wounded in the invasion.

Estimates of Panamanian civilian deaths are still contested.

A 1991 report published by Physicians for Human Rights concluded that the 201 Panamanian civilian deaths reported by both the U.S. Southern Command and Panamanian Legal Medicine Institute, the body tasked with medically investigating the invasion, were “severely underestimated.”

In the years since the invasion, independent human rights organizations have analyzed the actions of both Americans and Panamanians.

A report published by Americas Watch said “the tactics and weapons utilized [by U.S. forces] resulted in an inordinate number of civilian victims, in violation of specific obligations under the Geneva Conventions.”

According to Michael Conniff, Latin American historian and professor emeritus of history at San José State University, Panamanian sentiments towards the invasion were complex and shifted with time.

“Right after the invasion, Panamanians were almost unanimous and it was great to get rid of Noriega,” Conniff said. “But as time went on they began to look back and say, ‘Well, that was a high price to pay to arrest just one guy,’ and it left the country devastated for a year or two.”

A history of conflict

The 1964 and 1989 conflicts between the U.S. and Panama were not isolated incidents. The two countries’ complicated and intertwined history dates back much further.

The U.S. played a dominant role in building and managing the Panama Canal starting in 1903, when the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty gave the U.S. the 10-mile wide strip of land that would later become the Canal Zone.

During canal construction, white, skilled canal workers were paid in gold, while mostly Black workers from the West Indies were paid in silver, a system historians say set a tone of racial disparity and discrimination throughout the canal construction zone.

“From this emerged a system of segregation on the works whereby everything was marked either silver or gold whether it was the toilets, whether it was the post office, whether it was a shop or a drinking fountain,” said author Matthew Parker in a 2011 American Experience documentary on the canal.

Related story

• A population caught amid the threats: Panama Canal workers

The Canal Zone was a 533-square-mile U.S. enclave where American employees of the Panama Canal Commission and military personnel lived. The zone’s residents, known as “Zonians,” enjoyed a higher standard of living provided by the U.S. government.

Zonians maintained manicured lawns and shopped at American-stocked commissaries, while native Panamanians were barred from entering the zone unless their cars bore Canal Zone license plates.

Conniff said the attitudes of the Zonians further contributed to tensions with Panamanian.

“Many Zonians who were sent down there were tone-deaf to the Panamanians. They didn’t listen, didn’t care and did not try to create a good working relationship with the Panamanians,” Conniff said.

Eisenmann, who grew up in Panama City during the existence of the Canal Zone, said the zone’s physical barrier was a nuisance and an insult to native Panamanians.

“I had to have a license issued by the Canal Zone to go across the Canal Zone to my own country,” Eisenmann said. “It was actually a colony breaking Panama in half.”

The Zone had American high schools, military bases and post offices. In many ways, life inside felt like stepping into a tropical version of the continental United States.

For some Panamanians living on the outside, the way of life inside the Zone fueled resentment that would ultimately boil over in 1964.

In the 1950s and into the 1960s, national flags became symbols of conflict over sovereignty. In late 1963, President John F. Kennedy, responding to Panamanian concerns, ordered that the American flag and the Panamanian flag would be flown side-by-side at U.S. properties in the Canal Zone. Kennedy’s order was met with resistance from some Americans within the zone. After Kennedy’s assasination in November 1963, the Canal Zone governor, Gen. Robert J. Fleming, in an effort to reduce tension, ordered that neither flag should be flown.

In response, the Balboa High School students hoisted the U.S. flag anyway. This led to the January incident where Panamanian students raised their flag instead.

As the Panamanian students began to hoist their country’s flag, a skirmish broke out between Americans and Panamanians. The Panamanian flag was torn in the melee. Word of the scuffle quickly traveled across Panama City.

Osvaldo Jordán, a Panamanian political scientist and researcher, described Martyrs’ Day as “the peak of the animosity” between American Zonians and Panamanians.

At the time of the Flag Riots, Eisenmann had a business two blocks from Fourth of July Avenue – the street that served as the border between the Canal Zone and Panama City.

“On the radio, they said these kids are rushing back because they tore the flag, and by the time the kids got back on Fourth of July Avenue, there were crowds,” Eisenmann recalled.

Now, more than 60 years after Martyrs’ Day, Panamanian resentment towards Zonians lingers. For some, the American enclave has left a nasty scar on the countries’ relationship.

Barrera, who was in elementary school at the time of the Flag Riots, still carries this hurt.

“They were bigots,” Barrera said of Zonians. “These people thought we were dirt.”

Jorge Ramón Arosemena, current executive director of the City of Knowledge – a non-profit and business hub converted from former U.S. Fort Clayton – was studying civil engineering at the University of Panama during the events of Jan. 9, 1964. He said younger generations of Panamanians have never experienced the reality of the Canal Zone.

“The older [generation] talk about how humiliating it was to come into the Canal Zone and be treated like you were sh–, because that’s how we were treated,” Arosemena said.

The actions of the martyrs are still celebrated by Panamanian society today.

“I believe strongly that the Panama Canal is now Panamanian thanks to those kids on the ninth of January,” Eisemann said.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Panama John Feeley echoed Eisenmann: “The martyrs are a genuine, real rejection of a – probably the best way I can say it would be relatively benign apartheid.”

Reflecting on the invasion and Martyrs’ Day

To Reina, the El Chorrillo resident, Trump’s threats would breach Panama’s territorial sovereignty – something she knows all too well from the invasion.

“We are free and sovereign. In the name of God, we are sovereign until we die,” Reina said.

When asked how she perceives Trump’s desire to retake control of the canal, she iterated the isthmus’ importance to her country and advised the Trump administration to focus on its country’s internal affairs.

“We don’t have anything but the canal,” Reina said. “They [the United States] are looking at what is not theirs. … Look at what is yours, so that rises, not at what is not yours – that is called stealing.”

Barrera feels Trump’s threats are reversing progress.

“In ‘77, the Carter treaties were signed. Carter was conscious that we needed our land back. We needed to be whole,” Barrera said. “[Trump] wants in, but no, this is ours. We fought for it. Blood was shed over this. How dare you try and come in and tell us that you’re going to take it back.”

From Barrera’s perspective, one common emotion permeates through the entirety of Panamanian society.

“Nobody really understands what he wants, but we’re all angry,” Barrera said. “His arguments regarding Panama and the canal are baseless.”

From Arosemena’s perspective, younger Panamanians are now experiencing what it is like to face threats to sovereignty, just like their elders.

“Now you’re going to live what we lived. For you, it’s a theoretical thing when he says he’s going to take over. … For us, we lived it,” Arosemena said.

If the U.S. were to initiate a military operation to retake the canal, Panama could find itself in a vulnerable position. Following the fall of Noriega, the country abolished its formal military forces and replaced them with various public security and law enforcement agencies.

“I wouldn’t want to imagine it,” Edwin Cabrera, a Panamanian political analyst, said of the possibility of a U.S.-led invasion to retake control of the canal. “I don’t want to imagine it, not because the United States can’t do it or doesn’t have the strength to do it. But I think we could enter a spiral of sabotage and paralysis of the canal.”

Jordán, the political scientist, said Trump’s threats are sparking renewed feelings tied to the invasion, but highlighted a key difference between 1989 and now.

“For us, it resonates into what happened and for that reason, it becomes credible,” Jordán said. “However, in 1989 we saw a reason for it to happen. Right now, it’s unfair.”

Republish This Story

Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.