The Panama Deception (1992)

User Rating:

7.7/10   

Director:

Barbara Trent

Writer:

David Kasper (writer)

Release Date:

31 July 1992 (USA)

Genre:

Documentary | History | War

Tagline:

Exposing The Cover Up!

Plot:

A film about the true reasons for the 1989 US invasion of Panama and big media complicity in these activities.

Plot Keywords:

Panama | Invasion | Media | Abuse Of Power | Violence

Awards:

Won Oscar.

Cast

Elizabeth Montgomery	...	Herself (Narrator) (voice)
Abraham Alvarez	...	English Voice-over (voice)
Carlos Cantú	...	English Voice-over (voice) (as Carlos Cantu)
Diviana Ingravallo	...	English Voice-over (voice)
Alma Martínez	...	English Voice-over (voice) (as Alma Martinez)
Lou Diamond Phillips	...	English Voice-over (voice)
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Ashton Bancroft	...	Himself (president, Refugee Committee)
Manuel Becker	...	Himself (Panamanian cameraman)
Larry Birns	...	Himself (Council on Hemispheric Affairs)
Esmeralda Brown	...	Herself (UN Methodist Office)
Humberto Brown	...	Himself (former Panamanian diplomat)
Eugene Carroll	...	Himself (Center for Defense Information) (as Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll)
Julio Cesar Guerra	...	Himself (Panamanian photojournalist)
Ramsey Clark	...	Himself
Jeff Cohen	...	Himself (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting)
Isabel Corro	...	Herself (Association of the Dead of December 20th)
Jose De Jesus Martinez	...	Himself (author, professor)
Roberto Durán	...	Himself (as Roberto Duran)
Guillermo Ford	...	Himself (Vice-President of Panama) (also archive footage)
Gavrielle Gemma	...	Herself (director, Independent Commission of Inquiry)
Balbina Herrera de Periñan	...	Herself (Panamanian National Assembly)
Mark Hertsgaard	...	Himself (author, journalist)
Alejandro James Jr.	...	Himself (US Agency for International Development)
Robert Knight	...	Himself (investigative journalist)
Peter Kornbluh	...	Himself (senior analyst, National Security Archive)
David MacMichael	...	Himself (former CIA analyst)
Robert Matthews	...	Himself (New York University) (as Prof. Robert Matthews)
Olga Mejia	...	Herself (National Human Rights Commission)
Jose Morin	...	Himself (Center for Constitutional Rights)
Rafael Olivardia	...	Himself (community leader, El Chorrio)
Michael Parenti	...	Himself (author, professor)
Charles Rangel	...	Himself (as Rep. Charles Rangel)
Peter Dale Scott	...	Himself (author, professor)
Cecilio Simon	...	Himself (University of Panama) (as Prof. Cecilio Simon)
Maxwell Thurman	...	Himself (commander, US Army, Southern Command) (as Gen. Maxwell Thurman)
Valerie Van Isler	...	Herself (international journalist)
Doug Vaughan	...	Himself (investigative journalist)
Sabina Virgo	...	Herself (US national labour organizer)
Pete Williams	...	Himself (Pentagon Spokesperson)

Runtime:

91 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Australia:M

Movie Connections:

Features "CBS Evening News with Dan Rather" (1981)

Soundtrack:

Till I Go Down

El engaño Panamá

Aesthetically I do not value "The Panama Deception" very highly. Most of the time it looks poorly made; even the image quality of the footage Barbara Trent shot in Panamá looks poor. The reason that it works for me as a Panamanian, and that it may have considerable value for a foreign viewer, is that it is quite honest when it analyses the so-called "Operation Just Cause" to destroy Panamanian armed forces, under the guise of an international raid on Manuel Antonio Noriega, in the name of democracy. Nobody believes this today –and it is not hard to do so in retrospective, when one thinks of El Salvador or Nicaragua, –just to name a couple of Latin American countries where self-determination was violated by American troops. I could be biased because it deals with one of the lowest points in the Panamá-USA relations, from a point of view that leaves little space for doubting what it denounces: on one hand, it offers motives for the Panamanian invasion, that sound more credible than the rhetoric arguments of American or Panamanian officials, and on the other it shows how irresponsibly the US media treated the fact. Besides, in the final analysis, what Trent seems to be more concerned for, is the empowerment (as the name of her organization) of the American people, through the acknowledgement of what their governments have done in the last two centuries, taking the invasion of Panamá as a case in point. Panamanians all have different opinions about what happened, about the data and inferences the film offers, as many Americans also do; and I believe this is what makes this documentary work. In the case of my fellow countrymen, it is also a starting point to research the effects of a hyper-violent moment of our national history, when suddenly the notion (and our perception) of a "state" vanished, and we lived moments of total social, economic and political chaos with protagonists of all social classes, as the film graphically shows.