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...
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