Rule of the Whitetails

All OAS efforts at quiet mediation had failed. Nor would any U.S. gesture of conciliation shake Panama's deter mination for a showdown over the canal. And so last week, the OAS unhappily voted 16-1, Chile alone dissenting, to invoke the Rio pact and formally investigate Panama's charge of U.S. aggression during last month's Canal Zone riots.

The Panamanian leaders standing so inflexibly against the U.S. are not the usual run of Latin American leftists and rabid ultranationalists. President Roberto F. Chiari, his most influential ministers and all major candidates in the May 10 presidential elections are members of a deeply entrenched elite that has ruled Panama since it proclaimed independence from Colombia in 1903. They are wealthy, well educated, antiCommunist, vigorously competing among themselves for power--and finding the widely resented canal treaty an ideal target to call attention away from their own position.

In politics, as in everything Panamanian, some two dozen families have the last hurrah. Since 1903, all 37 Presidents have come from the elite ranks. Through intermarriage and partnerships, they control the banks and businesses, sugar mills and coffee fincas, newspapers and radio stations. They are the employers and landlords who count: less than 1% of the country's landowners hold half of the privately owned land, most of it the choice acreage. In the bitter slang of the streets, Panamanians call them rabiblancos, meaning whitetails.*

Neat But Not Gaudy. The whitetails send their sons to Harvard and Oxford, fly off on regular visits to Paris and New York. Their suburban Panama City homes may be relatively modest by U.S. millionaire standards, but they have vacation retreats in the mountains and cruise the Gulf of Panama aboard their private yachts. Yet in the strict sense, they are not oligarchs. They are less formal than the dynastic families of Peru and Colombia, probably not as rich, certainly not as snobbish.

Though a few families claim conquistadors as forebears, others rose up from the land only two generations ago. To their credit, most wealthy Panamanians normally reinvest their profit at home, instead of socking it away in U.S and Swiss banks.

President Chiari himself is one of

Panama's richest men; he donates his $22,000-a-year presidential salary to the Panamanian Red Cross. His major source of wealth is the family's dairy farm and sugar plantations. Chiari's Blue Star dairy supplies most of Panama's milk, and the sugar plantations give him. a near monopoly on that commodity. (Price of sugar in Panama: 110 per lb., v. 60 in the Canal Zone.) Chiari's father was one of the leaders in Panama's fight for independence from Colombia, soon after built up a fortune in cattle and sugar. When the family fell on hard times during the Depression '30s, Roberto worked on a Panama Canal ferry. But shrewd real estate deals and other investments have rebuilt the family fortune, until today the Chiaris are millionaires many times over.

Shrimp & Goose Step. Of all the family trees, none cast longer shadows than those of the two unrelated Arias clans--64 entries in the Panama City telephone book. At the head of one family, old and aristocratic, is Ricardo ("Dickie") Arias, who lost to Chiari in the 1960 election. The second Arias group owes its prominence to the late Harmodio Arias, a poor country boy who built a successful law firm, expanded into cattle, shrimp fishing and publishing (four newspapers), then became President (1932-36). His son Gilberto, twice served as Finance Minister; Son Roberto, was Panama's Ambassador to Britain (1955-58), but is better known for other excursions. In 1959, with his wife, British Ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn, he was accused of smuggling arms aboard his yacht in a musical-comedy invasion of Panama from Cuba.

The politician in the family is Arnulfo Arias, 64, Harmodio's younger brother and a Harvard-educated coffee planter. By all accounts, he is the man to beat in the May 10 election. Twice elected

President (1939, 1949) and twice deposed (1941, 1951), Arnulfo is a fiery speaker with a record of totalitarian flirtations, including Nazi sympathies during World War II. He had high school students goose-stepping in the streets of Panama City until his fellow whitetails rose up to throw him out. He now campaigns on a platform of friendship with the U.S. (but "justice" on the canal) and preaches land reform for Panama's havenots.

Cousins & Nephews. Alarmed by Arnulfo's radical talk, Panama's ruling elite would like to stop him, but cannot agree on how. President Chiari, who is barred from running again, has thrown his weight behind Marco Robles, 58, a second cousin, for President. Arnulfo's own family has put its money and newspaper support behind Juan de Arco Galindo, 53, a wealthy Georgia Tech trained engineer. On the ticket as Vice President: Gilberto Arias, Arnulfo's nephew.

No matter who wins, Panamanians can be sure of one thing: the whitetails will be wearing the white ties and tails.

* After a fairly rare Central American game bird whose meat is white.

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