Proud to be an American?

Do you remember Panama? Small country in Central America, an acne-ridden ex-dictator, a canal? The United States invaded Panama in 1989, destroying the small nation's infrastructure, killing a significant portion of its civilians and leaving it to waste away. Do you remember that? It provided some highly visceral Christmastime television.

In any event, you were supposed to have forgotten it. Friday night at an 8 p.m. Page Auditorium screening, however, you finally have a chance to recall our glorious victory. The Panama Deception, a full-length documentary produced by the Chapel Hill-based Empowerment Project, relives this mini-war in all of its wretchedness, corruption, imperialism and, yes, deception. Director Barbara Trent and writer/editor David Kasper take you on a Latin holiday that rewrites history and tosses Bush Administration foreign policy into the sewer.

Trent and Kasper uncover the insignificance of Manuel Noriega to this operation. Not unlike Saddam Hussein, Noriega received rather hefty handouts during the Reagan administration. Of course Noriega was no angel, but his detention and indictment on drug charges in the United States could never justify a military invasion. That fact seemed lost on many Americans. Not Trent and Kasper. They weave through the gut-wrenching history of the Panama Canal and our unjust stranglehold on it. The United States was scheduled to cede the Canal and vacate all Panamanian military bases by the year 2000. The Carter administration directive may now go up in smoke.

Almost as extraordinary as the deceptive politics Trent and Kasper reveal are the wickedly brutal military tactics. US military forces in Panama, we are told, used excessive amounts of force testing out weaponry that had been previously unused (ostensibly, one might guess, for Desert Storm). Mass graves of Panamanian civilians were dug to prevent a global community backlash to an already unapproved invasion. Finally, the filmmakers detail the installation of an unpopular shadow government, inaugurated shortly after American forces hit shore. And, of course, the destroyed Panama City neighborhoods earmarked to receive financial compensation were left high and dry by the American "liberators."

Trent won the Academy Award for Documentary for The Panama Deception. God knows how. The film's subversiveness jars the viewer from frame one to the credits. Not typical Academy fodder. Stylistically, Trent and Kasper, create a filmic landscape quite similar to Coverup: Behind the Iran Contra Affair, the Empowerment Project's 1988 award winner. Narration and editing is paranoid, information-laden, and ultimately disturbing. Trent and Kasper hold shots of brutality and interviews with distraught Panamanians an extra few seconds to force the viewer to confront American upheaval. Couple this strategy with a Sting song and occasionally the film seems a tad bit contrived.

This sense of melodrama, though, is actually heightened by the sheer implausibility of The Panama Deception. Despite the tremendous research reputation of the Empowerment Project's members, few will buy the facts they uncover. In short, the US government is corrupt, very corrupt, more so than most will ever choose to believe. The Panama Deception dares to tell the truth about contemporary American colonization. The brave and the free should not miss this screening.