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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JULY 6, 1984
Jackson's risky odyssey... [ began in ] Panama City on Saturday,
June 23. Jackson toured the Panama Canal and charged that its
construction and the U.S. administration of the Canal Zone had
brought "shame, hurt, pain, denial, disgrace and economic
exploitation" to Panamanians. The U.S. role in Panama, said he,
embodied "the worst dimension of American segregation and South
African apartheid."
On Sunday, Jackson went from criticizing U.S. policy to meddling
in it. He met for four hours in his Panama Hilton hotel suite
with Ruben Zamora and three other representatives of rebel groups
that are fighting the U.S.-backed government of El Salvador....
Castro, in olive-drab fatigues and puffing on a cigar, greeted
Jackson with a warm handshake, but not the traditional abrazo, at
Havana's Jose Marti Airport. "He said he wanted to embrace me,"
Jackson explained later. "But it was a kind of historic moment,
and both of us wanted to deal with substance and not get side
tracked by symbolism."
The Cuban Marxist and the American Baptist minister talked for
more than eight hours on Tuesday in Castro's Palace of the Re
volution. "There was � � of common understanding," Jackson re
ported. "He's in the Third World, and I have a Third World ex
perience growfng .!!E in America...� lot of experf"ence in sufferTng
and . exploitation. We identify with� lot of the same people in
Africa and Central America."
Jackson's success [in gaining the release of political prisoners
in Cuba] seemed to prompt him to make his gibes at U.S. policy
even more pointed when he arrived in Managua. He found himself
ideologically at home among the Sandinistas, claiming his soli
darity with "� mothers of the heroes and martyrs who have�
for the revolution." Jackson met Tomas Borge and Sergio Ramirez
Mercado of the ruling junta and spoke harshly of what he saw as
U.S. policy: "Now, even after the revolution has triumphed, you
have to defend your sovereignty and integrity against those who
would invade your borders, mine your harbors or ports,
destabilize your economy and assassinate your citizens."
The Farrakhan episode, interestingly enough, erupted while Jackson was on
his six-nation junket. So fearful of losing Jackson's huge constituency,
the Democratic Party leaders, including Walter Mondale, all heaved a big
sigh of relief when Jackson, in Managua at the time, finally called
Farrakhan's anti-Semitic remarks "reprehensible and morally indefensible."
But clearly, his critics maintain, his heart wasn't in it. He had to make
the statement in order to preserve his position within the Democratic
Party.
There is one big reason behind Jackson's ventures into private foreign
policy--he would like to be, as he recently told reporters, Secretary of
State in a Democratic administration.
Jackson's emergence in U.S. foreign affairs is somewhat analagous to the
role that Andrew Young, now mayor of Atlanta, Georgia played as U.S. ambas-