01 Jan Opinion – No Night Is Eternal: Panama, Venezuela, and the Judgment of History
By,
Arnulfo Arias Olivares, contributor. Attorney, businessman, and Alternate Congressman of Panama
Recently, the 36th anniversary of the invasion of Panama by the United States Army was commemorated. An operation intended to completely dismantle the Defense Forces as the operational arm of the then-dictatorship.
The way in which the operation was carried out was neither the most surgical nor the most precise. Many lives, guilty and innocent alike, were lost that day; national commerce was devastated; and the collective trauma has been unprecedented. All to remove a single man. Instead of a root canal to treat the diseased tooth, the gangrene was amputated with a hacksaw, taking along a healthy piece of society as well. We recovered, yes, but the shadow of those times must never be forgotten.
At that time, we lived within a sick society, one in which psychopathic elements had become institutionalized within a military and police body. True torturers, collectively evil and socially ruthless, were part of the daily life of Panamanians. Riot police carried thick, heavy hoses with which they repressed demonstrators, aiming to cause harm without leaving marks; they fired shotguns loaded with pigeon-hunting cartridges, the infamous pellets, leaving bodies riddled like sieves; they detained protesters in foul-smelling dungeons and, there, in the infamous Modelo prison, implemented all kinds of torture against so-called seditionists.
There are painful accounts of people forced to drink seawater instead of potable water; others who, as punishment, were submerged up to their necks in the prison’s septic tanks. Evil was blind obedience, and blind obedience was evil among those supposed soldiers, trained like dogs to inflict harm on civilians.
None of this belongs solely to Panama’s past. Today, hundreds of kilometers to the east, another country lives, in the present tense, a prolonged and systematic version of that same darkness. Venezuela is going through what Panama once experienced: the moment when violence ceases to be excess and becomes method; when repression stops being reaction and becomes doctrine.
There are also citizens who, by conviction, fear, or opportunism, have become executors of abuse against their own compatriots. They have attacked peaceful demonstrations demanding democracy; they have imprisoned, tortured, and destroyed lives in the name of obedience disguised as loyalty. There are opponents who did not leave detention centers alive; there are families still waiting for remains, explanations, or definitive silences. The mechanism is the same: dehumanize first, punish afterward, erase finally.
Panama knew the faces of those men when they were still in authority. Venezuela knows them today: active, uniformed, protected by the power they wield. But the question is the same for both nations, separated only by historical time: what happens when the dictatorship falls and the executioners remain?
Life and death level all things. Those Panamanian torturers, numbering in the thousands, are now around 65 years old or older. They walk among us, innocent only in appearance, bent by years and gray hair. Many will carry, I hope, the blow of conscience from the accusing finger that hovers over them each night. Those who feel no remorse whatsoever must, in the few years they have left, make peace with that final leveler that distinguishes neither rank nor excuse.
Venezuela has not yet reached that point. There, history has not closed the chapter. Those responsible still command, still punish, still believe impunity is perpetual. But the day will come. It always does. And when it comes, Venezuela will face the same moral dilemma that Panama resolved with time and silence: how to reintegrate those who made the pain of others a profession? Who is capable of redemption? Who can leave the darkness behind, and who merely waits for a new opportunity to exercise it?
It is important to understand that the damage caused does not disappear with the passage of years or with a change of regime. It remains permanently recorded in the notebooks of history. Many of those men are no longer remembered by name, but by function. They have been forgotten more than forgiven. And perhaps that is the harshest form of judgment.
Many families choose to erase from their genealogy those ancestors who distinguished themselves in nothing other than crime, violence, or vice. Some cover the faces in family portraits that bring no pride to display. Mark Twain, obsessed with knowing his lineage, spent a fortune discovering it and an even greater one trying to erase what he found. But nations, like people, do not move forward by denying their past, but by understanding it.
Acknowledging those deplorable pages is not an exercise in self-flagellation, but a warning. Panama learned, at an enormous cost, how far human beings can go when given power without limits. Venezuela is learning it now, in real time, with fresh blood and open wounds.
Today, in Panama, those actors of collective evil are no longer authorities. They are shadows, museum pieces, rusted weapons displayed in a historical showcase. They were instruments of evil one day. Venezuela still lives alongside its own, active ones. But there too, sooner rather than later, they will pass from executioners to uncomfortable memories.
History does not absolve. It only waits. And when the moment arrives, it demands accountability, even if in silence. A humble old farmer once told me something very wise: “The fruit that is ripe, falls.”l momento, exige cuentas, aunque sea en silencio. Un humilde y viejo campesino me dijo algo muy sabio alguna vez: “El fruto que es maduro cae”.
Las opiniones expresadas en este artículo son propias del autor y no necesariamente las del Miami Strategic Intelligence Institute (MSI²).