A Day at the Races

During a weekend jaunt to Mexico City for the annual running of the "Caribbean Classic," Panama's strongman, General Omar Torrijos, ran into a stretch of bad luck. First, the general, who seized power in a coup 14 months ago, lost a bundle on a Panamanian nag that had the nerve to finish fifth in a field of twelve. Then, back in Panama City, a couple of colonels tried to make it a daily double by turning him out of office in a countercoup. The result, within 48 fast-moving hours, was a counter-countercoup, something that not even Panama has experienced before.

The plot seemed to have been stolen from O. Henry's Cabbages and Kings. The action was confined mainly to the Guardia Nacional, the swaggering 5,000-man force that defends, polices and --nowadays--governs the tiny country of 1.3 million. Until problems of pride and suspicions of graft arose, Torrijos had been close to the two rebellious colonels. One of them, mustachioed Colonel Ramiro Silvera, 42, had spent much of his career as Panama's top traffic cop before becoming Torrijos' No. 2 man in the Guardia. The other plotter, popular Colonel Amado Sanjur, 38, was Silvera's chief of staff.

There had been jealousy in Torrijos' four-man junta ever since the coup of October 1968, which ousted President Arnulfo Arias for the third time in his remarkable political career--this time after only eleven days in office. When one junta member, Colonel Boris Martinez, began to get overambitious, Torrijos had him handcuffed, gagged, and tossed aboard a plane to Florida, where he now works as a filling station attendant. Evidently fearing similar treatment, Silvera and Sanjur decided to move first. With Torrijos out of town, they summoned the puppet provisional President, Colonel Jose Pinilla, and his Vice President, Colonel Bolivar Urrutia. to Guardia headquarters. Torrijos was finished, they announced. His crime? He had indulged in personalismo (building a "personality cult").

It might have been a textbook coup. The obvious dissidents were carted off to jail. The radio stations broadcast the news calmly, and there was no panic in the streets. But the colonels had miscalculated in one vital area: most of the Guardia remained loyal to the tough, personable 40-year-old general, who had promoted many of the junior officers.

Even as the colonels reshuffled Torrijos' Cabinet, rival Guardia officers prepared to bring their chief back. Next day, word came from Mexico City: 'Torrijos is returning." On that signal, 14 truckloads of Guardsmen roared out of a garrison at outlying Tocumen Airport. Some fanned out over the country, others sped into Panama City and pulled up at the dingy, Victorian Guardia headquarters. After a bit of harmless shooting, Sanjur and Silvera were led off to jail.

Folk Hero. Meanwhile, Torrijos dashed back to Panama--after a fashion. After a long, hopscotch flight back from Mexico in a small plane, Torrijos finally landed by the light of torches at a remote airstrip near David, 300 miles west of Panama City. Then came a triumphant, ten-hour ride into the capital in a fleet of rattletrap buses whose entourage of private cars and cheering campesinos grew at every hamlet.

The opera bouffe episode made Torrijos, who likes to style himself the "Maximum Leader," into a folk hero. His first act was to replace Pinilla and Urrutia with two civilians. The conspiring colonels are being held for trial by military tribunal. Torrijos is under pressure to go easy on them so as not to create an atmosphere that would frighten away foreign investors. But the colonels will be lucky if they get off with exile at a Florida filling station.

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