El Chorrillo, Panama

A diablo rojo passing through El Chorrillo 

El Chorrillo (where Annie and I ate lunch one afternoon) is one of the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods in Panama.  The houses are in meager condition or abandoned, and there is a large number of homeless people that aimlessly walk the streets.  Over the past thirty years, it has struggled with gangs, drug trafficking, and high levels of violence. 

The former dictator of Panama, Manuel Noriega, kept his military headquarters in El Chorrillo.  Before becoming the military dictator, Noriega worked for the CIA as an informant on drug trafficking in Panama.  However, Noriega was secretly building a relationship with the infamous Medellin Cartel in Colombia and laundering drug money under the protection of the CIA.  He was responsible for numerous disappearances, widespread government corruption, and economic strife in Panama.

According to several accounts, the U.S. bombed El Chorrillo in an effort to capture Noriega after one of his men killed an unarmed U.S. Marine.  There is a record of over 442 bombings during the night of the invasion, and somewhere between 400 and 2,000 people dead.  The records of the attack are not very clear due to the government's efforts to diminish the severity of the event. 

Because of the bombings, thousands of people were misplaced or forced to rebuild their homes.  It seems as though El Chorrillo never fully recovered since the attacks in 1989.

As a side note, Noriega served 17 years of prison in the U.S. for drug trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering (Wikipedia.org). He was then transferred to a prison in Paris. Panama has currently requested his extradition to Panama to serve the remainder of his incarceration.