Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, "What's Funny About This" by P. J. O’Rourke
Authors: P. J. O’Rourke
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it is in most of Latin America. You're supposed to send them off in
exile to "the Valley of the Fallen"-Miami Beach. The U. S. Justice
Department is also investigating Noriega's use of Panama as a huge
drug money Laundromat. Furthermore, defected Cuban intelligence big-shot Major Florentino Aspillaga says Noriega has been
raking in dough selling U.S. high-tech items to Castro.
The opposition has a point. They would prefer nice, stable
democratic corruption like we have in the United States. But,
unfortunately for the cause of kick-out-the-wheel-chocks partisan
journalism, the pro-government people also have a point. Panama
used to be run by the normal south-of-the-Rio-Grande kitty litter
box of brain-dead hacienda owners and United Fruit business
squad. Then, in 1968, General Omar Torrijos led an army-backed
coup.
Torrijos was a half-baked socialist and a blow-hard, but he
was lovable and good-looking. He took a predictable, feisty underdog stance toward the U.S. and the local rich shitepokes, swearing
he would fight all of them in a guerrilla war if he had to, which he
knew he didn't. Panamanians, who have absolutely no immunity to
theatrics, went nuts over Omar. Actually, he was sort of an all-right
guy. He had genuine feeling for the poor, started some only moderately useless social programs and maintained a modest style of life,
keeping no more than two or three mistresses on the side. Torrijos
also managed, after decades of negotiations, to wrest a new canal
treaty from the United States. Admittedly, he wrested it from Jimmy
Carter, so it isn't like he played against the varsity, but it gave the Panamanians a patriotic thrill to get the middle of their country
back. And under Torrijos (though, to a certain extent, despite him)
Panama prospered. It became a middle-class country with one of
the highest per capita incomes in Latin America. Thousands of
jobs were added to the government payroll. People came up in the
world.
"Even the men who killed Torrijos loved him," a taxi driver
told me. (Taxi drivers all over the world, by the way, are under
Newspaper Guild contract to give easy quotes to foreign correspondents.) In fact, nobody killed Torrijos. He died of his macho
penchant for flying in bad weather. But such is the romance in the
Panamanian soul that nothing will do except he be a martyr.
When Torrijos bought the rancho, Noriega, his chief of staff,
was the natural heir. Watching him try to act like Omar is like
watching Ted Kennedy try to act like Jack. Members of Noriega's
own government admit he's a pig. But a lot of people are scared the
rabe blancos will bring back the bad old days of venal oligarchy.
(This is unlikely because most of the opposition belongs to the new
middle class, but that's politics for you.) Also, what's the big deal
about corruption? This is Panama, for godsake. The whole country
is a put-up job, sleazed into existence by Teddy Roosevelt so he'd
have someplace to put the Big Ditch. One pro-Noriega legislator
told me, in a fit of candor about peculation, "We are just doing the
same thing the others were from 1903."
The Panamanian government types are also mad about the
U. S. Senate resolution of June 26, 1987, in which the Panamanians were advised their democracy had B.O. and they'd better
send Noriega to the showers with a family-size bar of Dial. Part of
the resolution was in language identical to an opposition manifesto.
And how would we like it if the French Chamber of Deputies voted
for a Democratic Party policy statement telling everybody in America to listen up when Mario Cuomo speaks? Then the United States
trotted out the State Department's human-rights bureau, that feeble
Carter Administration leftover, and sent one of its goody-two-shoes
"human-rights investigators' to pester the natives. How about a
Saudi Arabian human-rights investigator arriving uninvited in
D.C.? "By Muhammad, you are not cutting off enough hands of
it is in most of Latin America. You're supposed to send them off in
exile to "the Valley of the Fallen"-Miami Beach. The U. S. Justice
Department is also investigating Noriega's use of Panama as a huge
drug money Laundromat. Furthermore, defected Cuban intelligence big-shot Major Florentino Aspillaga says Noriega has been
raking in dough selling U.S. high-tech items to Castro.
The opposition has a point. They would prefer nice, stable
democratic corruption like we have in the United States. But,
unfortunately for the cause of kick-out-the-wheel-chocks partisan
journalism, the pro-government people also have a point. Panama
used to be run by the normal south-of-the-Rio-Grande kitty litter
box of brain-dead hacienda owners and United Fruit business
squad. Then, in 1968, General Omar Torrijos led an army-backed
coup.
Torrijos was a half-baked socialist and a blow-hard, but he
was lovable and good-looking. He took a predictable, feisty underdog stance toward the U.S. and the local rich shitepokes, swearing
he would fight all of them in a guerrilla war if he had to, which he
knew he didn't. Panamanians, who have absolutely no immunity to
theatrics, went nuts over Omar. Actually, he was sort of an all-right
guy. He had genuine feeling for the poor, started some only moderately useless social programs and maintained a modest style of life,
keeping no more than two or three mistresses on the side. Torrijos
also managed, after decades of negotiations, to wrest a new canal
treaty from the United States. Admittedly, he wrested it from Jimmy
Carter, so it isn't like he played against the varsity, but it gave the Panamanians a patriotic thrill to get the middle of their country
back. And under Torrijos (though, to a certain extent, despite him)
Panama prospered. It became a middle-class country with one of
the highest per capita incomes in Latin America. Thousands of
jobs were added to the government payroll. People came up in the
world.
"Even the men who killed Torrijos loved him," a taxi driver
told me. (Taxi drivers all over the world, by the way, are under
Newspaper Guild contract to give easy quotes to foreign correspondents.) In fact, nobody killed Torrijos. He died of his macho
penchant for flying in bad weather. But such is the romance in the
Panamanian soul that nothing will do except he be a martyr.
When Torrijos bought the rancho, Noriega, his chief of staff,
was the natural heir. Watching him try to act like Omar is like
watching Ted Kennedy try to act like Jack. Members of Noriega's
own government admit he's a pig. But a lot of people are scared the
rabe blancos will bring back the bad old days of venal oligarchy.
(This is unlikely because most of the opposition belongs to the new
middle class, but that's politics for you.) Also, what's the big deal
about corruption? This is Panama, for godsake. The whole country
is a put-up job, sleazed into existence by Teddy Roosevelt so he'd
have someplace to put the Big Ditch. One pro-Noriega legislator
told me, in a fit of candor about peculation, "We are just doing the
same thing the others were from 1903."
The Panamanian government types are also mad about the
U. S. Senate resolution of June 26, 1987, in which the Panamanians were advised their democracy had B.O. and they'd better
send Noriega to the showers with a family-size bar of Dial. Part of
the resolution was in language identical to an opposition manifesto.
And how would we like it if the French Chamber of Deputies voted
for a Democratic Party policy statement telling everybody in America to listen up when Mario Cuomo speaks? Then the United States
trotted out the State Department's human-rights bureau, that feeble
Carter Administration leftover, and sent one of its goody-two-shoes
"human-rights investigators' to pester the natives. How about a
Saudi Arabian human-rights investigator arriving uninvited in
D.C.? "By Muhammad, you are not cutting off enough hands of
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