The Postinvasion Blues

By Michael S. Serrill

After the U.S. invasion of Panama, the Bush Administration quietly passed the word that however much other Latin American nations might protest in public, their leaders were privately pleased that American troops had stepped in to oust General Manuel Antonio Noriega. A month later, with U.S. soldiers still patrolling Panama City and the U.S.-installed government struggling to assert its control, support for the invasion is beginning to fray. Today there is every indication that the invasion is doing new damage to U.S.-Latin American relations, which had only just begun to recover from the strains of the Reagan era. Last week signs of the hemispheric hostility were legion:

-- In Washington the White House announced that Vice President Dan Quayle was cutting back the itinerary for his upcoming trip through the region because leaders in Mexico, Venezuela and Costa Rica found it "inconvenient" to receive him. Quayle will confine his travels, scheduled for Jan. 27 to 29, to Honduras, Panama and Jamaica. Conceded a senior White House official: "We were hoping for a grander tour than this."

-- The U.S. indefinitely postponed the dispatch of an aircraft-carrier group to search for drug smugglers in the waters off Colombia after the government in Bogota made clear the ships would not be welcome.

-- President Alan Garcia Perez of Peru, who has called the Panama invasion a "criminal act," reiterated his threat to boycott the Andean drug summit set for Feb. 15 in Cartagena, Colombia, unless U.S. troops are withdrawn from Panama. Others scheduled to attend are Bush, Colombian President Virgilio Barco Vargas and Bolivian President Jaime Paz Zamora.

Though a senior Administration official maintained even last week that the reaction was "mild," Latin American condemnation of the Panama invasion was publicly unanimous, especially because it came after a year of reassurances that the North-South relationship would be one of consultation and multilateral decision making. While Latin leaders acknowledge that they are glad to be rid of Noriega, his removal, they say, was not worth a violation of the principle of nonintervention. Few Latin countries have so far recognized the government of Panamanian President Guillermo Endara, and few are likely to do so as long as U.S. troops remain in that country. Said former President Raul Alfonsin of Argentina: "Disrespect for international law leads to the law of the jungle, and in that jungle we Latins are not the lion."

The invasion was a particularly unhappy event in Mexico, where President Carlos Salinas de Gortari had cemented a cordial relationship with Washington, based in part on U.S. promises to respect Latin American sovereignty. Now the byword in Mexico City is restraint. A spokesman for Salinas said last week ties remain "mature, stable and good" and the two countries had "agreed to disagree" on Panama.

In fact, there was more public fuss over an entirely separate issue: NBC's broadcast two weeks ago of Drug Wars: The Camarena Story, a docudrama about the 1985 murder of American drug-enforcement agent Enrique ("Kiki") Camarena. The mini-series, based on the book Desperados by TIME Washington correspondent Elaine Shannon, suggested that the killing was sanctioned at the highest levels of the Mexican government.

Mexican officials were enraged by the program, and last week the government- owned television network launched a counterattack: an hour-long documentary charging that Camarena himself was a narcotics dealer and was killed after he betrayed the drug lords he worked for. Drug Enforcement Administration Director Jack Lawn, a prominent character in the NBC program, labeled the charges "outrageous" and pointed out that Camarena died penniless.

Salinas last week dramatized his feelings on both narcotics and U.S. intervention at a ceremony honoring 70 members of the Mexican army and Federal Judicial Police who died in 1989 in the fight against drugs. In a clear reference to Panama, the Mexican leader said narcotics trafficking "has been a pretext for foreign intervention, and this is inadmissible." Though the Bush Administration would like to believe otherwise, Salinas spoke for most Latin American leaders.

With reporting by Andrea Dabrowski/Mexico City and Dan Goodgame/Washington