The Martyrs of 1964 - Notes

1.  Doyle v Fleming, 219 F Supp 277 (D CZ 1963), p. 277.
2.  Engineering News-Record, January 16, 1964, p. 17.
3. Life, January 24, 1964, p.27.
4.  As for the long-term effects of such road-building projects, there are a lot of environmentalists who in retrospect would have preferred the study to the road, because the extension of rural roads provided a major impetus to the destruction of much of Panama's rain forest.
5.  Farland was also not that popular with either his superiors at the State Department or with the CIA.  Departing from the norms, upon his return Farland was debriefed by neither Secretary of State Dean Rusk or CIA Chief John A. McCone.  After the CIA had been taken by surprise by the January 1964 events, Farland said that the agency had been out of control in Panama, more concerned with building a Canal Zone empire than in knowing what was happening in Panama.
6.  L. B. Johnson, The Vantage Point: perspectives of the presidency, 1963-1969 (Holt, Rinehart & Winston 1971), p 180.
7.  Panama American, January 14, 1964, p. 1.
8.  Star & Herald, January 14, 1964, p. 1.
9.  See, e.g., Panama American, January 23, 1964, p. 1.
10.  La Hora Panama, January 10, 1964, p. 1.
11.  Panama American, January 14, 1964, p. 1.
12. La Republica, (Bogota, Colombia), January 20, 1964.
13.  See J. Dubois, Danger Over Panama, Bobbs-Merrill (Indianapolis-NY 1964), or for a more succinct dose of sensationalism, his "Red Plan In Panama Told," Chicago Tribune, January 13, 1964.  The gist of Mr. Dubois's paranoid fantasy was that the flag riots were a diversion that Fidel Castro created in order to distract attention from his main plot to take over Venezuela.
14.  H. & M. Knapp, Red, White and Blue Paradise: The American Canal Zone in Panama (Harcourt, Brace & Jovanovich, NY 1984).  The Knapps cited their Panamanian maid as authority for this allegation!
15.  The United Press International ran one such photo that, among other places, appeared in US News and World Report, March 30, 1964, p. 48.
16.  Dubois, Danger Over Panama, op. cit., pp. 308-309.
17.  In later years, the standard accusation made in patriotic Day of the Martyrs speeches was that the unarmed Martyrs had been brutally shot down by the Americans while demonstrating their love of country.  Discussion of all of the various circumstances in which the Martyrs died was highly impolitic and generally not done, either in such speeches or in the Panamanian press.
18.  Panama American, January 15, 1964, p. 10, quoting Captain Gaddis Wall.
19.  Dubois, Danger Over Panama, op. cit., p. 270.
20.  Panama American, January 15, 1964, p. 10.
21.  NYT, January 13, 1964, p. 14.
22.  In the wee hours of the morning of January 10, 1964, Deputy King prophetically concluded an address about the previous hours' events as follow: Panamanian people cannot continue to be massacred.  Panama has no arms with which to face the blondes of the Canal Zone.  But the Panamanian people wrote today the most beautiful page in our history, because they showed the North Americans that before the force of the bullets, the force of reason will triumph.  And tomorrow, or the day after, only one flag will fly in the Canal Zone.  It will be the Panamanian flag! Dubois, Danger Over Panama, op. cit., p. 295.
23.  US presentation to the OAS investigators, quoted in Memorandum in Support of Claim In the Matter of The National Board of the Young Men's Christian Associations; The Sojourners Lodge Masonic Temple; and The Commerce and Industry Insurance Company, before The Office of the Judge Advocate General, Department of the Army, p. 4.  See footnote 87 and accompanying text for the later developments of this case in the courts. Many thanks to my brother-in-law, First Sergeant George Klein, US Army (retired), who later worked for the Industrial Division of the Panama Canal Commission and who is an officer of the Sojourners Lodge, for letting me use the lodge's file in this case.
24.  Panama American, January 15, 1964, p. 10.
25.  "This bullet must have come either from a rifle fired by a United States soldier against orders or from some unknown sniper."  International Commission of Jurists, Report on the Events in Panama, January 9-12, 1964, ¶ 75.
26. Marcos Gregorio McGrath, the son of a Zonian father and a much-married Panamanian socialite who founded the Inter-American Women's Club, was known as Mark Gregory McGrath in his younger days. The 1964 events put an obstacle in McGrath's career - the Vatican would thereafter find it impolitic to appoint a Zonian cardinal from Panama, especially one like McGrath, who spoke accented Spanish. For his part, after the early 60s McGrath stopped using the English version of his name and never again spoke English in public. Though for a while he was seen as tilting toward the Church's liberation theology wing, toward the end of his career McGrath identified himself as an enthusiastic supporter of the most violent act in Panamanian-American relations, the December 1989 US invasion.
27.  Jorden, op. cit., p. 49.  Jorden also alleges that there were witnesses who claimed that one of the people who died in the Pan Am building was a looter who was carrying away a safe, who was in turn robbed and killed by another looter.
28.  La Hora Panama, January 11, 1964, p. 1.
29.  Annual Historical Summary, United States Army Forces Southern Command, v. 2, routinely declassified after 12 years on December 31, 1970;  U.S. Army Control of Riots and Civil Disturbances in Panama 9-16 January 1964, which was excluded from the routine declassification schedule but declassified sometime in the 1980s.  Both of these documents are available from the Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, Washington DC.
30.  Panama Canal Company/Canal Zone Government report for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1964, p. 126.
31.  Times of London, January 11, 1964, p. 8.
32.  Years later, the wounded Panamanians and the families of the Martyrs were partly compensated with formerly Panama Canal Company housing when, pursuant to the 1977 Carter-Torrijos treaties, it was turned over to Panama.
33.  State Journal (Lansing, Michigan), January 15, 1964, p. 1.
34.  NYT, January 11, 1964, p. 22.
35.  Washington Post, January 14, 1964, p. A16.
36.  Chicago Tribune, January 13, 1964, p. 7.
37.  NYT, January 11, 1964, p. 4.
38. For Commanders: This Changing World, January 24, 1964, p. 4.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid., p. 3.
41.  Aldridge v United States, 470 F2d 1365 (Ct of Claims 1973).
42.  National Board of Young Men's Christian Associations v United States, 395 US 85 (1969).  Justice Hugo Black, joined by Justice William O. Douglas, dissented, disputing the majority's claim that the Army was in the buildings to protect their owners' property.  The United States Court of Claims, whose decision against the building owners had been appealed to the high court, had avoided the Supreme Court's legal fictions about intended beneficiaries and flatly ruled that "destruction of private property in battle or by enemy forces is not compensable."
43.  International Commission of Jurists, Report on the Events in Panama, January 9-12, 1964, ¶ 114.

CZBrats
June 20, 1999