Get Back
I can't seem to get the video link to work from FOX's website, but it has the most amusing segment on Manuel Noriega, former president and all around knucklehead of my adopted Panama.
I never quite understood the specifics of how we justified snatching him in the first place, but snatch him we did, and very few Panamanians want him back. A couple of weeks ago I was in a famous gringo bar in David and was poking fun at one of the bartenders about Noriega wanting to come home. Wrong move- as he intimated that were any number of Panamanians to get their hands on him they'd chop him in little pieces and feed him to the dogs.
My Spanish not being all that swift I caught bits of 'he killed my brother' flying around, though whether it was a friend like a brother, or his actual brother, I couldn't tell. The other day I was at Amigos discussing a local landowner (gossiping quite frankly) and he was accused of being a Noriega supporter. This is not a very well liked person. The gist of it was that were Manuel to come back to Panama everyone expects him to eventually insinuate himself back into the power structure.
Which brings me back to the FOX video. In it his current lawyer said he could "guarantee" that Noriega would do no such thing. I laughed out loud at either his naiveté or the outright whopper, as were Noriega to come 'home' to enjoy his grandchildren there exists a network of his 'death eaters' (small as it may be) ready to resume their place in the hot Panama sun. If what the bartender told me is true, there's also a group ready with machetes to make sure that doesn't happen.
Let's hope so.
