| Is the US going bananas? |  |
By John Freivalds
Published: TBD
Duluth News Tribune
Is the U.S. turning into a banana republic? That’s what column writer Melih Altınok wrote in the Daily Sabah. Many conservatives make the claim, too, even though few of them have lived in a third-world country.
I have. But rather than repeat what’s been written about such countries often derided as banana republics, let me tell you about my life as a Peace Corps volunteer in Panama — which, incidentally, produces a lot of Chiquita bananas.
Yes, Minnesota does seem a little chaotic right now, but we are a long way from being a banana republic.
For one, we have never had a situation where we had five proclaimed presidents in one year and twice had two at the same time. Nor have we regularly had a situation where people are arrested, thrown in jail, and beaten with no charges filed. Panama had it all one year: murders, guerrilla warfare, kidnappings, drug dealing and money laundering, several coups — even a beheading and, later, an invasion by the U.S. to protect the canal.
So far in Minnesota, no one of my neighbors has asked me to hide their guns under my floorboards for fear soldiers will seize them.
It was 1968 when I was in the Peace Corps in Panama, the same year Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. Panama had a presidential election. The military overthrew the elected president after 11 days in office. Since I announced I was for the elected president, supporters of the military coup figured I must be a communist and promptly marched me off to jail.
All the while, supporters of the ousted president were engaged in guerrilla warfare on both sides of the nearby Costa Rican border.
Jack Vaughan, former director of the Peace Corps and U.S. ambassador to Panama, described what happened next in his book, “Kill the Gringo.” “The infamous Manuel Noriega was in charge of the efforts to quell protest in the countryside,” he wrote. “He came across two volunteers, John and Susan Freivalds, and arrested them. Since the rural road had been washed out, it took Noriega’s goons two days to march the handcuffed John Freivalds twenty miles in the mud to a jail. Freivalds later said you don’t argue with a man wearing four hand grenades on his chest. When word reached me that the couple was being held incommunicado in a Panamanian jail, I was livid. There were no charges against them. We just wanted them out.”
A second book, “In the Time of Tyrants,” offered additional details: “Noriega requisitioned a horse for Mrs. Freivalds, but the gesture was less gentlemanly than it appears. He had her carry the squad automatic rifle in her lap and wear an army hat. If there were snipers about, she would draw their fire.”
Another book, “The Jolly Roger Club: A True Story of a Killer in Paradise,” was more graphic: “Annoyed Noriega asked Freivalds, ‘You had to be here for a bad purpose, you left a comfortable life to come here.’ John was locked up with some male political prisoners while his wife was in cells with a bunch of prostitutes. Noriega passed by and Freivalds asked, ‘Are we under arrest?’ ‘No,’ Noriega replied, ‘if you were under arrest, it would be much worse.’”
Many newspapers across the U.S. covered this whole tragedy. I still emotionally recall when we were being led from cell to cell not knowing what would happen to us in this rancid prison. Then a door opened and a tall CIA agent stood there. He looked at us and said, “You’re safe now.” He took over the prison, and I am forever grateful for having big government show up to rescue me — even if it was in a Chiquita banana-producing banana republic.
John Freivalds of Wayzata, Minnesota, is the author of six books and is the honorary consul of Latvia in Minnesota. His website is jfapress.com. He wrote this for the News Tribune.