Military Show

Fort San Lorenzo, a ruined Spanish post high above the Canal Zone's Caribbean coast, was bright with brass one morning last week. To the strains of music from a military band some 500 senior officers from the U.S. and 18 Latin American countries munched doughnuts and sipped coffee, admired each other's uniforms (578 generals' and admirals' stars, in all), and kept a weather eye out to sea. Then from along the beach below, the shriek of jet planes and blast of simulated atomic bombs drowned out the music. As the planes carried out their make-believe destruction, nine waves of landing craft chugged toward the beach, bringing 3,500 U.S. Marines. Operation Carib-Ex was under way.

A joint air, sea and land maneuver, Carib-Ex pulled together 17,000 men, 200 planes and 30 ships, making it the biggest U.S. military show in Latin America since the 1930s. As the landing force knifed inland, a swarm of helicopters deposited another Marine assault force near the vital Gatun Locks. Two days later 1,000 paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division floated down to take strategic ground on the Pacific side of the Isthmus.

As a training maneuver. Carib-Ex's theoretical goal was to drive an aggressor force out of the Canal Zone. But the show's main purpose was to build good will by impressing the Latin generals with the quick punch that the U.S. could bring to their .aid in the event of real aggression anywhere in the hemisphere. Mindful of this role, the U.S. extended full military honors to the visitors, and Admiral Arthur Radford, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, flew down to play host.

One man the U.S. may have particularly wanted to impress was President Ernesto de la Guardia of Panama, currently pondering a U.S. request for Nike antiaircraft missile sites in his country. So far he has asked for more concessions (primarily, a greatly increased share of Canal receipts) than the U.S. is willing to pay. De la Guardia beamed at the smooth-running exercises last week and assured a press conference that continued U.S. operation of the Canal was "not even an issue here." But he said nothing about lowering his price on the Nike bases.

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