Today in Manhunting History -- May 10, 1989: Bloody Panama

Heading into Panama's May 1989 presidential election, polls indicated that the opposition to strongman General Manuel Noriega would win the contest by a two-to-one margin.  Fearful of defeat, Noriega ordered the Panama Defense Forces and his personal paramilitary organization, the "Dignity Battalions," to seize the ballot boxes, close select polling stations, and intimidate the opposition and its supporters.  Despite this massive fraud, exit polls conducted by the Catholic Church showed 55.1 percent for the opposition candidate, Guillermo Endara, and 39.5 percent for Noriega's proxy candidate, Carlos Duque.  Noreiga quickly cancelled the elections and installed another crony, Francisco Rodriguez, as president.

On May 10, the cheated opposition candidates organized a rally to protest the stolen election near Noriega's military headquarters, La Comandancia.  Thousands of demonstrators honked car horns and chanted "Down with the pineapple," in Spanish, a reference to Noriega's pockmarked face.  In response, Noriega unleashed his paramilitary thugs on the protestors.  As the march proceeded down the Via Espana in Panama City, men wearing red T-shirts inscribed "Dignity Battalions" descended upon the crowd, furiously swinging steel pipes, tire irons, and planks with jutting nails.  Endara was quickly knocked unconscious, lying in the street bleeding from a gash in his head.  The bodyguard of vice-presidential candidate Guillermo "Billy" Ford was shot dead.  Ford himself staggered desperately along the sidewalk, his white shirt drenched in his bodyguard's blood, hounded by Noriega's goons at every step.  Television cameras captured the horrifying, indelible images of the patrician, white-haired Ford being struck by one fist after another, a look of sheer terror in his eyes as a lead pipe was raised against him.

For many Americans, this would be the symbol that defined Manuel Noriega's Panama, and formed the backdrop for Operation Just Cause six months later.