I’m in Panama with the ruler and his writer friend

Graham Greene makes his third appearance in my list (see here and here for his previous entries) with this strange biography/travel book Getting to Know the General. I have obviously picked this up somewhere in my ongoing quest to read all of this author’s works but I can’t now remember when or where. The book revolves around the friendship between the author and the President of Panama in the 1970s General Omar Torrijos Herrera.

The author received an invitation to meet the General at the time of the negotiation of the independence of the country from America which was conducted by Henry Kissinger and Jimmy Carter. The General was a recent head of state, having overthrown the previous rulers who had established a family dynasty, and the negotiations were fraught. Until the current President of the USA made threats to annex Panama I had not been aware of the history of the country but the areas of concern in the treaty raised by the General in this book seem now to be those which the current US administration is using to advance their own claims, as he feared. This actually makes the book quite relevant to today in a way that I hadn’t expected.

Most of the book, however, is about the author’s deep friendship with the General and with his assistant Sergeant Chuchu. He visited the country over a period of five years and travelled extensively, learning about the people and the environment. He also used the visits as an opportunity to connect with revolutionaries in Costa Rica and in Nicaragua whose efforts he supported.

When I started reading this book I hadn’t expected to enjoy it because I am not particularly interested in the past politics of Central American states but I found myself captured by the author’s descriptions of the people he meets and the places he visited. The deep sadness of the author in hearing of the General’s death in an aeroplane crash is well conveyed. As part of the narrative the author shows how he would use the people and events of his visits in a book, which he sadly never wrote, and I found the insight into his writing process to be fascinating.

This book is such an oddity that it’s difficult to recommend it but I did think that I gained value from reading it. I shall pass it on to the Oxfam Bookshop and hopefully it will find another fan of this author or of travel writing who may enjoy it.