The author starts off with Panamanian independence, and concludes with the rejection of the Filos-Hines treaty that would have granted the United States more extensive military bases. Thomas Pearcy seeks to explain the advent of military rule in Panama that ended with the arrest of Manuel Noriega in 1989 following the invasion of Panama by United States. Pearcy provides a conventional political history, but also delves into allied issues that provide the context for political developments. This includes a sophisticated demographic analysis as well as an in-depth examination of Panama's economy.

Pearcy says the 1947 Filos-Hines treaty debacle more than proves that Panamanians momentarily broke away from an authoritarian past dominated by elite and foreign interests and built a representative coalition that successfully lobbied for the rejection of the treaty. Panamanians themselves did not take advantage of this historic breach and soon the ragtag coalition fell apart. Pearcy provides an institutional analysis of the National Police describing it as "the social institutionalist approach", and describes how this military-type police force was created to protect a fragile political elite within the changing political economy fuelled by the Canal, and the migration of diverse peoples.

The author says the National Police, which was created in 1905 after the disbanding the army in 1904, evolved from a "band of armed partisan supporters" to being the interlocutor of Panamanian politics by the end of the Forties. Though Pearcy pens down the chronology of this rise, his main thrust is on the Thirties and Forties. It was in January 1931 that the country saw its first coup and the taking over of power by the Accion Comunal. This moderate group, which could not last long enough, used "the police to substitute for their own inability to form a united front capable of governing the nation". The police was used to curb the growing disenchantment of the working class and the middle class. President Ricardo Alfaro drafted his own men into the National Police. Harmodio Arias followed in his footsteps by incorporating his Guardia Civica into the police. Juan Demostenes Arosemena, the successor of Arias, focussed on weapons and training.

Arnulfo Arias, the brother of Harmodio Arias, became President in 1940 after the National Police had ensured that the election would be uncontested. His motto, says Pearcy, was "solo Dios sobre nosotros" ("we answer only to God"). Arias led Panama's assertion of its sovereignty and independence. He whipped up an anti-American frenzy and carved out a National Secret Police from the existing force. He launched a witch-hunt against the Black and Jewish populations and sought to disenfranchise them. His actions did not find support from the kingmakers of his country. The National Police, led by Jose Remon, overthrew him within a year.

Meanwhile the Second World War ended and the United States was seeking to expand its military presence in the region. The US ambassador Frank Hines and the Panama foreign minister Francisco Filos signed a treaty in December 1947. This treaty, which sought to authorise the presence of US troops in Panama bases, triggered widespread protests throughout the country. The treaty was defeated in the National Assembly barely two weeks later.

The times were becoming turbulent. The working class and the middle class were increasingly resorting to agitations. Nationalistic fervour was on the rise. Student demonstrations were dealt with brutally and Remon, the chief of the National Police, justified his barbaric high-handedness saying that the protestors were doing so at the bidding of the Soviet Union. Legislators, however, yielded and blocked the treaty. The US withdrew from Panama.

Remon took full advantage of the political turbulence and chaos. He first made and disposed of presidents at random for four years before finally assuming the office of President himself in 1952. The National Police (read, Remon) was no longer the kingmaker of Panama - he was the almighty king himself.

The title of the book can be slightly misleading since Pearcy looks at the police, not the military. He also uses the terms "police" and "military" interchangeably. Though he does briefly talk about the National Police's rise to power through Remon's leadership, Pearcy makes no mention of the transition of this police force into the National Guard by Remon. Pearcy also compares Panama's police force with other selected Latin American police forces in 1945, and shows that Panama ranked at the top in numbers of police officers per capita.

Pearcy is on a trifle slippery ground when he tries to examine when the National Police the last word in Panamanian politics? He mentions two points in time: the end of the Generation of '31 when the National Police led by Jose Remon overthrew the Arias government and after the 1947 Filos-Hines Treaty debate. He opts for the latter.

During a speech in the Senate, Adam Sunraider, a racist New England senator, is shot down by an assassin. He asks for A.Z. Hickman, a black minister, to attend his bedside. Out of this visit emerges the story of these two men, seemingly different on the surface. This is the story of the black south and the ministry of Reverend Hickman and his son, Bliss, the prodigy preacher. After many years, A.Z. Hickman tells Bliss (Adam Sunraider) the story of how he came to be born and how this event forever changed Hickman's outlook on life.

Juneteenth was the turning point for slaves in the South because this was when the Emancipation Proclamation reached them and set them free. The commemoration of this date changes Bliss's life forever, too. As a result of the things that happened at the meeting, Bliss realises that he can pass for white and becomes a Jewish movie man, then a New England senator.

This book is a real eye opener for Generation Xers because they grew up in the time frame after the Civil Rights movement had initiated integration of the races. This book illustrates what an underclass minorities were before this and how tough life could be for them. A.Z. Hickman is illustrative of many African-American leaders who promoted a better life for their people. Perhaps young people who read this book will understand how far things have come for this group and how society is still in transformation to
learn to accept them.
 

Reviewed by James Marcus

Invisible Man, which Ralph Ellison published in 1952, was one of the great debuts in contemporary literature. Alternating phantasmagoria with rock-ribbed realism, it delved into the blackest (and whitest!) corners of the American psyche, and quickly attained the status of legend. Ellison's follow-up, however, seemed truly bedevilled--not only by its monumental predecessor, but by fate itself. First, a large section of the novel went up in flames when the author's house burned in 1967. Then he spent decades reconstructing, revising, and expanding his initial vision. When Ellison died in 1994, he left behind some 2,000 pages of manuscript. Yet this mythical mountain of prose was clearly unfinished, far too sketchy and disjointed to publish. Apparently Ellison's second novel would never appear.

Or would it? Ellison's literary executor, John Callahan, has now quarried a smaller, more coherent work from all that raw material. Gone are the epic proportions that Ellison so clearly envisioned. Instead, Juneteenth revolves around just two characters: Adam Sunraider, a white, race-baiting New England senator, and Alonzo "Daddy" Hickman, a black Baptist minister who turns out to have a paradoxical (and paternal) relationship to his opposite number. As the book opens, Sunraider is delivering a typically bigoted peroration on the Senate floor when he's peppered by an assassin's bullets. Mortally wounded, he summons the elderly Hickman to his bedside. There the two commence a journey into their shared past, which (unlike the rest of 1950s America) represents a true model of racial integration.

Adam, we discover, was born Bliss, and raised by Hickman in the bosom of the black community. What's more, this rabble-rouser was being groomed as a boy minister. ("I tell you, Bliss," says Hickman, "you're going to make a fine preacher and you're starting at just the right age. You're just a little over six and Jesus Christ himself didn't start until he was twelve.") The portion of Juneteenth that covers Bliss's ecclesiastical education--perhaps a third of the entire book--is as electrifying as anything in Invisible Man. Ellison juggles the multiple ironies of race and religion with effortless brilliance, and his delight in Hickman's house-wrecking rhetoric is contagious:

Bliss, I've heard you cutting some fancy didoes on the radio, but son, Eatmore was romping and rampaging and walking through Jerusalem just like John! Oh, but wasn't he romping! Maybe you were too young to get it all, but that night that mister was ten thousand misters and his voice was pure gold.

In comparison, though, the rest of the novel seems like pretty slim pickings. For one thing, much of the plot--including Bliss's transformation from pint-sized preacher to United States senator--is absent. For another, Ellison's confinement of the two top-billed players to a hospital room makes for an awfully static narrative. Granted, he intended their dialogue to exist "on a borderline between the folk poetry and religious rhetoric" (or so he wrote in his notes). But this is a dicey recipe for a novel, and Juneteenth veers between naturalism and hallucination much less effectively than its predecessor did.

None of this is to assail Ellison's artistry, which remains on ample display. The problem is that Callahan's splice job--which well may be the best one possible--remains weak at the seams. So should readers give Juneteenth a miss? The answer would still have to be no. The best parts are as powerful and necessary as anything in our literature, evoking Daddy Hickman's own brand of verbal enchantment. "I was talking like I always talk," he recalls at one point, "in the same old down-home voice, that is, in the beloved idiom... [and] I preached those five thousand folks into silence." Ellison, too, is capable of preaching the reader into silence--and that's not something we can afford to overlook. © Amazon.com