From Perkins Interview

Audio, video and text of this interview is found at
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/05/149254
A sample:
AMY GOODMAN: Let's talk about Latin America and its leaders, like Jaime Roldos. Talk about him and his significance. You wrote about him in your first book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

JOHN PERKINS: Yeah, Jaime Roldos was an amazing man. After many years of military dictators in Ecuador, US puppet dictators, there was a democratic election, and one man, Jaime Roldos, ran on a platform that said Ecuadorian resources ought to be used to help the Ecuadorian people, and specifically oil, which at that time was just coming in. This was in the late '70s.

And I was sent to Ecuador, and I was also sent at the same time to Panama to work with Omar Torrijos, to bring these men around, to corrupt them, basically, to change their minds. You know, in the case of Jaime Roldos, he won the election by a landslide, and now he started to put into action his policy, his promises, and was going to tax the oil companies. If they weren't willing to give much more of their profits back to the Ecuadorian people, then he threatened to nationalize them.

So I was sent down, along with other economic hit men -- I played a fairly minor role in that case and a major one in Panama with Torrijos -- but we were sent into these countries to get these men to change their policies, to go against their own campaign promises. And basically what you do is you tell them, "Look, you know, if you play our game, I can make you and your family very wealthy. I can make sure that you get very rich. If you don't play our game, if you follow your campaign promises, you may go the way of Allende in Chile or Arbenz in Guatemala or Lumumba in the Congo" On and on, we can list all these presidents that we've either overthrown or assassinated because they didn't play our game.

But Jaime would not come around, Jaime Roldos. He stayed uncorruptible, as did Omar Torrijos. And both of these -- and from an economic hit man perspective, this was very disturbing, because not only did I know I was likely to fail at my job, but I knew that if I failed, something dire was going to happen: the jackals would come in, and they would either overthrow these men or assassinate them. And in both cases, these men were assassinated, I have no doubt. They died in airplane crashes two months apart from each other in 1981 -- single plane; their own private planes crashed.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain more what happened with Omar Torrijos.

JOHN PERKINS: Well, Omar, again, was very stalwartly standing up to the United States, demanding that the Panama Canal should be owned by Panamanians. And I spent a lot of time with Torrijos, and I liked him very, very much as an individual. He was extremely charismatic, extremely courageous and very nationalistic about wanting to get the best for his people. And I couldn't corrupt him. I tried everything I could possibly do to bring him around. And as I was failing, I was also very concernedthat something would happen to him. And sure enough -- it was interesting that Jaime Roldos's plane crashed in May, and Torrijos said -- got his family together and said, "I'm probably next, but I'm ready to go. We've now got the Canal turned over." He had signed a treaty with Jimmy Carter to get the Canal in Panamanian hands. He said, "I've accomplished my job, and I'm ready to go now." And he had a dream about being in a plane that hit a mountain. And within two months after it happened to Roldos, it happened to Torrijos.

And it's been interesting, Amy, that since I wrote the book, Confessions, Marta Roldos, who's Jaime's daughter, has come to the United States to meet with me, and I just spent time with her in Ecuador. She is now a member of parliament in Ecuador, just elected, and she married Omar Torrijos's nephew. And it's really interesting to hear their stories about what was going on -- she was seventeen at the time her parents -- her mother was also in the plane that her father died in; the two of them died in that plane -- and then to hear her talk about how her husband, Omar's nephew, was in that meeting when the family was called together and Omar said, "I'm probably next, but I'm ready to go. I've done my job. I've done what I could do for my people. So I'm ready to go, if that's what has to happen."

[from Jerry Markatos
Carolina Interfaith Task force
Connecting the Americas
Balance & Accuracy in Journalism]