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The provisional junta moved swiftly to consolidate government control. Several hundred actual or potential political

leaders were arrested on charges of corruption or subversion. Others went into voluntary or imposed exile, and property

owners were threatened with expropriation. The National Assembly and all political parties were disbanded, and the

University of Panama was closed for several months while its faculty and student body were purged. The

communications media were brought under control through censorship, intervention in management, or expropriation.

Pinilla, who assumed the title of president, had declared that his government was provisional and that free elections were

to be scheduled. In January 1969, however, power actually rested in the hands of Omar Torrijos and Boris Mart nez,

commander and chief of staff, respectively, of the Guard. In early March, a speech by Martinez promising agrarian

reform and other measures radical enough to alarm landowners and entrepreneurs provoked a coup within the coup.

Torrijos assumed full control, and Martinez and three of his supporters in the military government were exiled.

Torrijos stated that “there would be less impulsiveness” in government without Martinez. Torrijos did not denounce the

proposed reforms, but he assured Panamanian and United States investors that their interests were not threatened.

Torrijos, now a brigadier general, became even more firmly entrenched in power after thwarting a coup attempted by

Colonels Amado Sanjur, Luis Q. Nentzen Franco, and Ramiro Silvera in December 1969. While Torrijos was in

Mexico, the three colonels declared him deposed. Torrijos rushed back to Panama, gathered supporters at the garrison in

David, and marched triumphantly into the capital. The colonels followed earlier competitors of Torrijos into exile.

Because the governing junta (Colonel Pinilla and his deputy, Colonel Urrutia) had not opposed the abortive coup,

Torrijos replaced them with two civilians, Demetrio B. Lakas, an engineer well liked among businessmen, and Arturo

Sucre, a lawyer and former director of the national lottery. Lakas was designated “provisional president,” and Sucre was

appointed his deputy.

In late 1969 a close associate of Torrijos announced the formation of the New Panama Movement. This movement was

originally intended to organize peasants, workers, and other social groups and was patterned after that of Mexico’s

Institutional Revolutionary Party. No organizational structure was established, however, and by 1971 the idea had been

abandoned. The government party was revived under a different name, the Democratic Revolutionary Party (Partido

Revolucionario Democr tico–PRD) in the late 1970s.

A sweeping cabinet reorganization and comments of high-ranking officials in 1971 por

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