Introduction
The American documentary film The Panama Deception was released in 1992. It presents the American invasion of Panama in 1989 from a very left-liberal viewpoint. It earned the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature despite being painstakingly researched and laying out the case against the U.S. official account plainly and powerfully. The invasion’s causes of death and damage, as well as its aftermath, are all described in the movie. The American armed forces’ activities are criticized in the film.
Additionally, it draws attention to suspected media bias in the U.S., demonstrating incidents that went unreported or were purposefully misreported, including a putative underestimation of the number of civilian casualties. The movie further argued that the invasion’s real goal was to prevent the retrocession of the Panama Canal Zone to Panama, as stipulated in the Torrijos-Carter Treaties, which was set to occur at the time. It was contrary to the official justification of Manuel Noriega’s removal from power following his indictment on charges of racketeering and drug trafficking in U.S. courts.
Historical Context and U.S.-Panama Relations
An interview with General Maxwell R. Thurman, commander of SOUTHCOM at the time of the attack, and conversation with American journalists and political scientists round out the film, a montage of historical and modern footage. The movie’s first section covers the relationship between Panama and the U.S.A. since the state’s creation in 1903 due to the U.S. gunboat policy (Sommers 395). According to the filmmakers, Theodore Roosevelt’s big stick foreign policy served as the backdrop for the creation of Panama as an act of American imperialist politics (Trent et al.). Trent and Kasper cast doubt on the invasion’s declared objectives in the movie’s second half.
The movie’s creators draw attention to the intimate relationship between Colombian drug trafficking and the United States, the CIA, Noriega’s backing for the Nicaraguan Contras, and the drug trade’s partial financing of the Contra war. The CIA valued Noriega’s knowledge more than his involvement in the cocaine trade. According to Sommers (395), the arrest of Noriega was merely a pretext. After 1989, the U.S. received more drugs exported from Panama.
The Hidden Motive: Undermining the Torrijos-Carter Agreements
The invasion’s true objective was to dismantle the Panamanian military. This was done to undercut the Torrijos-Carter Agreements of 1977, which guaranteed that Panama would acquire control of the canal at the end of 1999, but only if it could also protect the channel on its own, which it could not do without its armed forces (D’Haeseleer 1201). The writers also cast doubt on the Pentagon’s and U.S. media’s claim that many people died due to the combat and “400 major explosions”; in reality, thousands perished (D’Haeseleer 1198). The invasion went against international law. At Balboa Concentration Camp, captured PDF members were shot dead without a hearing as tanks drove over civilians in their automobiles.
Evidence of Experimental Weapons and Civilian Suffering
The movie mentions the alleged employment of experimental weapons, including rumored secret laser weapons and shows images of burned-down neighborhoods. They purported to be mass graves discovered after the American troops withdrew and depict some of the “20,000 refugees who escaped the fighting” (Trent et al. 3). The Panama Deception tells the accurate tale of the U.S. invasion of Panama in December 1989, including the circumstances that led up to it and the excessive force employed. It included “Panamanian and U.S. perspectives of the U.S. -Panamanian relationship” and the scale of the dead and destruction, as well as the disastrous fallout (Watson et al. 4).
Cinematic Techniques and Thematic Impact
The film effectively uses formal techniques and thematic content to convey the main problem. Frightening shots of protests, dead people, and mass destruction inspire horror, which is reflected in a more accurate report of the main idea of the film. Techniques such as cinematography, editing, lighting, and sound contributed to a complete immersion in what was happening. Thematic content helped in a more productive interpretation of events, just like formal methods, which focused on the previous struggles that people experienced.
The Panama Deception reveals the true motivations behind this widely denounced attack, offers a perspective on the invasion vastly different from that presented by U.S. media, and shows how the U.S. administration and the mainstream media hid information about this misstep in foreign policy. These tools give exceptional reliability and truthfulness to what is happening and give a unique insight into the problem of the American invasion of Panama in 1989. Providing real footage of the President’s speech and interviews with journalists and historical figures will also help strengthen this aspect.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the U.S. invasion of Panama under “Operation JU.S.t Cause” is documented in the movie Panama Deception during this time. With the help of various technical components, it provided a clearer understanding of what was happening at that time and the motivation and causes of this conflict. Moreover, the audience was presented with the authors’ arguments regarding the actual aim of the invasion. It emphasized that it was to impede the return of the Panama Canal Zone to Panama as per the Torrijos-Carter Treaties, which were scheduled to take effect around that time.
Works Cited
D’Haeseleer, Brian. “Paving the Way for Baghdad: The U.S. Invasion of Panama, 1989.” The International History Review 41.6 2019: 1194–1215. Web.
Sommers, Roseanna. “Experimental jurisprudence.” Science 373.6553 (2021): 394-395. Web.
Trent, Barbara, et al. “The Panama Deception.” IMDb, 1992, Web.
Watson, Bruce W., and Peter Tsouras. Operation JU.S.t Cause: The U.S. Intervention in Panama. Routledge, 2019.