Noriega's Machiavellian Reign in Panama
The history of Latin America in the 20th century is replete with examples of dictators ruling their countries like their own private fiefdoms. In one example from about 1988 to 1989, General Manuel Antonio Noriega ruled Panama in just such a manner, taking cues from Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince as if this book was his own instruction manual.
Noriega seized power from the political leadership of the country and ruled in his own interest. He was deeply implicated in the murder of a political rival, Dr. Hugo Spadafora, he ruled the drug trafficking trade, abused rival presidential candidates, and detained and grossly maltreated one group of officers involved in an attempted coup before executing other coup-plotters later. In total, he followed the princely dictum that being feared is better than being hated. However, his downfall came when he rhetorically challenged a foreign power, the United States, and his sympathizers took his hyperbole to heart. Essentially, Noriega followed Machiavelli's playbook well and doing so enabled him to rule for a few years, until another power dethroned him.
A triggering even occurred on July 31, 1981 when General Omar Torrijos, the unelected leader of Panama who came to power in a coup in the 1960s, died in a plane crash in the western part of the country. Then-Colonel Noriega was one of Torrijos’s military staff members at the time of his death. On Aug. 12, 1983, Noriega assumed control of the Guardia Civil - the Civil Guard - and changed its name to the Fuerzas Defensas de Panama - the Panama Defense Forces (PDF). As a prince must “know well how … to be a great pretender and dissembler,” Noriega made the right decision in the name change, for the new moniker gave the country’s military a name that evoked more national power, with an external focus, and gave Noriega himself greater stature.
Moreover, Noriega acted as a populist leader during his time in power, like his spiritual patron, General Omar Torrijos, before him. Noriega also sought to legitimize his regime by linking himself to the much beloved General Omar Torrijos; a propaganda mural at a PDF base in Rio Hato, Panama, showed Torrijos and Noriega together staring off into the future. However, Torrijos knew more about Noriega’s character than many others did as he called the future dictator, “My gangster.” Perhaps Noriega’s character as well as the circumstances and timing of his rise to leadership led to his internalizing of Machiavelli’s rules, which he followed to stay in power. Ultimately, Noriega proved one of Machiavelli’s most salient points: that being in power is itself proof that one should be in power.
A key point Machiavelli presented about being a prince is that one must “know how to enter into evil, when forced by necessity.” When necessary, Noriega took action by removing the competition, and he did so maliciously. In 1985, Noriega was involved in the murder of one his vocal critics on various issues: Dr. Hugo Spadafora. This well-known former Panamanian government official was tortured, had his head chopped off, and his body was dumped “near the Panamanian-Costa Rican border.”
At the time of this murder, Noriega was not directly linked to the crime, as he was after his downfall. He shielded himself well by following the advice that if the prince were to commit some act of violence or other crime, the best course of action for him is to have another take the blame. Of course, the removal of opposition all-at-once is a signature move by the prince, and the publicity from this murder likely chilled Noriega’s and the government’s critics. Unknown is whether Spadafora’s death was the first act of murder by Noriega as he rose to power; what is known is that this would not be the last.
Noriega also had a U.S. critic on his doorstep, which he could not remove, but could belittle. The pro-Noriega media outlets painted the Hispanic U.S. General Marc Cisneros, commander of U.S. Army South in Panama, as “enemy number one” and “as a Latin traitor, a genocidal general.” The PDF held a rally with a burning coffin, shown with the name “Cisneros,” photographs of which appeared in Panama’s newspapers. The same media disparagingly called Cisneros “El Pocho Maldito” (the bad little Mexican-American) and the U.S. General’s image as El Pocho Maldito started appearing in Panama City next to pro-Panama slogans. Being mean is “a vice that enables a prince to rule,” wrote Machiavelli, and Noriega extended this meanness to anyone who was a competitor, particularly Cisneros, a fellow Hispanic and a U.S. General.
Noriega’s infamous connection to drug trafficking was, as Machiavelli opined, a vice; this vice, though, was one that was likely unavoidable, owing to Panama’s geographic position in the trafficking routes from south to north. Since he could not avoid the trafficking going on around him, he chose to be involved with this vice; his option improved the stability and security of Panama because he controlled the narco-trafficking, unlike in Colombia at the same time frame where multiple drug lords competed for percentages of the drug trade.
Again repeating the act of eliminating the competition to stay in his position, Noriega removed the chosen president from power. The President of Panama, Eric Delvalle, “fired” Noriega from his military position as PDF Commander on Feb. 25, 1988. However, Noriega was not going into retirement so easily: the next morning, the Noriega-supporting National Assembly removed Delvalle from his position as president and the presidential cabinet appointed Manuel Solis Palma (handpicked by Noriega), then the Education Minister, as the “Minister In Charge of the Presidency” immediately thereafter.
Machiavelli advised eliminating the potential “equals” and Noriega, who had already created a base of supporters within the National Assembly, was able to have Delvalle swept away quickly. While not good for Panamanian democracy, this shuffling of the political deck of cards allowed Noriega to stay in power and consolidate his reign; he again followed the advice that “a prince who wants to maintain his state is often forced not to be good.”
To further his crusade of terror against the political opposition, Noriega once again engaged in political violence during the next presidential election campaign in May 1989. He had his own goon squads in the “Dignity Battalion” militia beat up the candidates for president and vice presidents, Guillermo Endara, Ricardo Arias Calderon, and Billy Ford, respectively. The attack left the candidates dazed and bloodied; this well-staged and televised event influenced, and scared, the opposition political party and its candidates. However, this ruthless violence did not stop the presidential campaign, as the opposition candidates from the Arnulfista party did not surrender to Noriega’s thuggery.
After the election, “a straw count showed Endara winning easily.” Noriega, fearing a loss, had the “electoral tribunal” stop counting the votes, “annulled the election,” and appointed a new crony, Francisco Rodriguez, then the comptroller general, as a “caretaker president.” Noriega’s opposition once again knew there were no limits to the General’s desire to influence the election and stay in power. Noriega used the power base he created, from the military to the National Assembly to the electoral tribunal, to do his bidding to keep him in power. Machiavelli advised the prince to strike his enemies before they strike him, be ruthless but not unnecessarily brutal, and commit violence all-at-once so as to get the acts completed quickly. Here, Noriega followed Machiavelli’s guidance well.
Noriega increased his populism with anti-U.S. rhetoric, which accomplished the Machiavellian goal of keeping the focus on the enemy. He called the U.S. Government imperialists and violators of Panamanian sovereignty, while demanding the U.S. withdraw from his country. At the same time, he had his police forces detain busloads of U.S. school children who were being transported from their U.S. Department of Defense schools to their homes off of the U.S. military bases, even attempting to tow away one of the buses with the children onboard. The incident finally ended when the U.S. military police arrived. This act further inflamed tensions and sent fear through the U.S. community of military and government civilian workers, who demanded safety for their families. Thus, while stoking his supporters, he prodded the soft target of the families of the U.S. personnel.
The best route to rule for a prince is by creating fear of him, without hatred. Of course, there will be people who conspire against the prince, though the conspirators face “infinite” odds in toppling him. One such incident happened to Noriega. On March 16, 1988, several Panamanian Air Force officers and a PDF Colonel participated in a failed coup against the General, who then rounded them up and held them in captivity. Two days after the failed coup, Noriega declared a “state of emergency …which suspended constitutional rights in Panama,” which Machiavelli would have found completely appropriate.
When rebellions like this one by the PDF officers occur, the wise prince does not let the “disorder” continue in order to assuage the rebellious population or avoid war. Rather, as Machiavelli argues, the leader must address the problem quickly with war and not appeasement, because the latter will only bring more trouble later.
Noriega re-visited the issue of these failed coup leaders soon enough: “Before the May 1989 elections ... [Noriega] had paraded them in the [PDF] garrison courtyards wrapped in nothing but American flags and PDF officers had them taunted and beaten.” This move signaled to the captives and any uncaptured supporters what little power they actually had. Perhaps the only thing more ruthless, and thus better for the maintenance of his rule that Noriega could have done, was to have these officers publicly executed for treason. Surely, this thought went through Noriega’s mind. Had he done such a ruthless act, Noriega might have prevented the second coup attempt against him.
With political and military tensions heightening after the summer of 1989, other PDF officers hatched another coup attempt on Oct. 3 of that same year. Major Moisés Giroldi, commander of the Urraca Infantry Company garrisoned at Noriega’s La Comandancia headquarters, convinced his troops they could detain the General and convince him to leave power. After some gunfire, and the detention of Noriega for a few hours, the coup collapsed when officers and PDF units faithful to the General streamed into Panama City to rescue him. Giroldi and other coup participants were soon executed, one by Noriega himself. Noriega resumed his public activities, appearing even more triumphantly and blaming the U.S. for conspiring against him.
Certainly, Noriega was right to blame the U.S., and per Machiavelli, followed the playbook well by cruelly committing violence all-at-once against the conspirators, which is less cruel than doing so in a protracted manner. This violent act sent a message throughout his political and military structures - do not betray General Noriega - and thus put fear into the hearts of his enemies. Machiavelli notes that atrocities are acceptable, if they result in achieving the desired ends; for Noriega, by executing the coup leaders, he convinced other potential adversaries that his power was absolute. To the end of his reign, no one else dared conduct a coup against Noriega.
