{"id":5675,"date":"2019-12-19T12:01:08","date_gmt":"2019-12-19T20:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/humanrights\/?p=5675"},"modified":"2020-01-08T15:48:29","modified_gmt":"2020-01-08T23:48:29","slug":"panama-files","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/humanrights\/2019\/12\/19\/panama-files\/","title":{"rendered":"The Panama Files: Journalists and Activists Mark 30 Years Since U.S. invasion"},"content":{"rendered":"

The UWCHR is excited to be part of the Panama Files<\/a> project, a multidisciplinary, multinational project to help recover historical memory of the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama and further human rights objectives.<\/p>\n

Since winter quarter of 2019, the UWCHR has been working with the Panamanian journalists\u2019 collective Concol\u00f3n<\/a> and a government commission<\/a> appointed to document\u2014for the first time\u2014the casualties of the invasion, which marks its thirty year anniversary today. Our part in this collaboration involves obtaining and analyzing U.S. government documents that shed light on these concerns, and sharing them with our partners in Panama. Earlier this week, the first tranche of these documents was made available to the public through the Panama Files<\/a> project.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As Sol Lauria Paz and Eliezer Budasoff commented in a recent article in El Pais<\/a>, the U.S. invasion has long been an uncomfortable topic in Panama; a series of governments have steered clear of engaging with this history, in part due to a desire to avoid antagonizing the U.S. government by bringing up the invasion. This was also facilitated by the stigmatization of the victims, most of whom were from poor, Afro-Panamanian neighborhoods like El Chorrillo in Panama City, which was flattened by U.S. forces. The number of civilians killed in the invasion remains unknown, with estimates ranging from hundreds to more than a thousand.<\/p>\n

The December 20, 1989 invasion was aimed at the removal of dictator Manuel Noriega, a former U.S. ally who had become increasingly ruthless during his time in power. \u201cOperation Just Cause\u201d involved 27,000 troops in an overwhelming display of force,<\/strong> using tactics which presaged future U.S. military operations including the invasions of Iraq. The operation was notable for its emphasis on control of media narratives through the use of embedded reporting and carefully prepared talking points, as revealed in the Panama Files documents. The U.S. military’s extensive documentation of the invasion, and preservation of resulting records, is also noteworthy in the context of ongoing work to uncover archives relating to U.S. military operations and assistance in Central America.<\/p>\n

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En estos momentos nos encontramos desclasificando y creando historias en base a los documentos que se encontraban en Estados Unidos. pic.twitter.com\/RM9K3UnS8l<\/a><\/p>\n

— Concol\u00f3n Panam\u00e1 (@ConcolonPanama) December 6, 2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n