Getting to Know the General Read Online Free PDF Page A

wonder of the world . . .’ ‘We left our country and our home life . . .’ ‘No desire to live under a repressive form of government . . .’ ‘The Canal can’t be worked without a US Zone and US laws . . .’ ‘The Zone’s got to be incorporated into the Union like the Virgin Islands.’ The audience cheered occasionally but not very often, usually when a speaker attacked a member of his own government. Christian names were used like pejoratives, as though there had been treachery in the family. ‘Gerry’ was a traitor, ‘Henry’ was a traitor. ‘In 1975 a secret agreement was made between Henry and Torrijos.’ They could find no term bad enough to describe the State Department, perhaps because it hadn’t got a Christian name.
    The protesters looked very lost and lonely in the vast stadium and the hot and humid night, and one felt a little sorry for them. God and Country would almost certainly let them down just as surely as Gerry and Henry had done. A young woman asked the audience to send letters and ‘clippings’ to members of Congress. ‘I can supply you with their telephone numbers.’ She wasn’t as impressive as the Negro in El Chorillo. Buckets stood around for contributions to help Mr Drummond’s suit against Henry and Gerry, and the audience was asked to go into the arena to sign a petition, but not many went.
    These people too looked on 1977 as a critical year, but confrontation in their eyes was a simple affair of flying in reinforcements from Fort Bragg in North Carolina to aid the 10,000 troops already in the Zone. They had been encouraged by the mildness of some riots the previous October which perhaps had been provoked in order to prove to Henry and Gerry that Panama was ungovernable. They didn’t know that the General had received fifteen days’ advance warning of what was planned from a CIA agent who squealed. As a result forty students were lodged for the day in prison where the General lectured them on the true nature of political and economic problems, and then they were released.
    6
    The next day my friend Diederich left for his home in Mexico, and Chuchu and I began to plan a journey together through the interior of Panama. I suspected that a rumour of our project would reach Señor V. When I went to see the General at the house of Rory González (Torrijos wanted to know my reactions to the meeting in El Chorillo and I gave them as frankly as I have written them here – even to the doubts about his Chief of Staff), our conversation was interrupted by Señor V on the telephone. He demanded to know what my travel plans were. I was evasive. My intentions, I said, altered every hour – I wanted to drift with the wind. He insisted that I should dine with him that night and together we would work out a programme. A programme was essential. I would of course take his car . . .
    ‘I have Chuchu’s car.’
    ‘But his car has been bombed.’
    That was true – Chuchu had told me the car had blown up outside his house when his son turned on the engine, though luckily only the car suffered injury.
    ‘The General has lent him one of his.’
    It did occur to me several times on our journey that the General’s car might well prove a more enticing target.
    I told the General what was happening: I told him how much I disliked making a programme with Señor V. Torrijos was in a very good humour (perhaps because he was flying off next day to his rendezvous at Bogotá airport). He agreed at once that any programme was detestable. I should go off with Chuchu where I wanted and forget all about Señor V. ‘If he proposes anything,’ he said, ‘do the opposite.’
    Chuchu and I had lunch at the Marisco. The proprietor, a Basque, was a friend of his and yet another refugee – a veteran refugee this time, from Franco. I was still thirsty in the heat and the humidity and I longed for a rum punch, but the Basque didn’t even know what a rum punch was and when his barman was