About the young president

Cuba, October 9, 1941. Havana It is, at that time, a city of light, but the neon lights of casinos and cabarets. Comparable to what Las Vegas would be today, but mixed.

The President of Panama, Arnulfo Arias Madrid, Only 40 years old and elected only a year before, he decides to go on an incognito trip and briefly visit that city of sin, not realizing that his opponents, who were already many, are closely following him.

Extremely popular and charismatic in his country, in Cuba it would go unnoticed, he thought. Nevertheless, today there is a photo of him, as well as of other personalities, in the lobby of the same old hotel where he decided to stay, hoping for a little anonymity. He couldn’t be behind the scenes, as much as he sometimes wanted to.

In Panama, the rumor about the antics of the young president spread, and then it became news that was relentlessly propagated, within easy reach of the announcers and printers of the engineering newspapers of the time. All this, no doubt, to the great annoyance of his older brother, Harmodio, sober to a minimum. Present he was absent without the necessary permission from the legislature. The perfect condition was created to remove him from power without hitting him, in the formal sense of the word; it was actually a a technical coup, carefully designed to achieve the seizure of legitimate power without violencewhich the voters bequeathed to him thanks to his exceptional popularity.

The political experience of the then rotten school knew that such a young president would, sooner or later, make a tactical mistake, and the opponents knew how to take advantage of it.

A few days after the coup d’état, and knowing that he had been stripped of his status as president, Arnulfo He told a newspaper in Havana that, as far as he personally is concerned, he will definitely retire from politics and devote himself to the professional activity of a doctor. I think he made that comment in the heat of disappointment.

His people, his constituents, did not respond in the way he expected; there were no mass protests or social uprisings of any kind. What I didn’t know was that class a politician with proven experience Until then, he had carefully planned the chess move, and that the coup would never have happened without the support of the Panamanian army and the secret agreement of the US government.

The evidence for this is the statements of those at that time Secretary of State, Henry Simpson, which states that for the United States the exit from Arnulfo Arias was considered a big relief, “because of his pro-Nazi tendencies”. The reality, more fundamentally, was different.

It was part of that pebble of power, sometimes moved by invisible hands that can never be seen. As soon as the vice president Ricardo Adolfo De la Guardia takes power, expansion of military bases on Canal Zone on Panamanian soil. NOW He did not share the popular enthusiasm for a young, revolutionary president, willing to defend the Panamanian cause and, above all, this call to awaken the enthusiasm of the socially dormant classes, under the effects of the deep narcotic of ignorance.

Considering that in 1940 almost 40% of the population suffered from illiteracy, the tide of collective enthusiasm was very tame, and the axis of political power at that time rather remained so. In such an environment an evil force could thrive and manipulative as well as good and disinterested; like wheat and tares.