As owner and operator of the Canal Company, the U.S. government has blindly allowed the Canal Zone to turn into a pretty fair imitation of a colony, complete with a colonial mentality. In the Zone, discrimination against Panamanians has existed since the beginning, backed up by wage differentials, special privileges for Americans and all the paraphernalia of extra-territoriality. Isolated and pampered, permitted to stay on as settlers instead of being rotated back to the states, the few thousand Zonians developed a misplaced sense of patriotism which made them roundly disliked and which -- as expressed by the high school kids and their flag -- touched off the latest anti-American demonstrations.

In 1960, after a series of riots in Panama, President Eisenhower ordered that Panama's flag should fly side by side with the Stars and Stripes at the U.S. Canal Zone building. President Kennedy later extended the order to the rest of the enclave. Since the chief objections to this broadened directive came from American students, with parental encouragement, zone officials ordered that, as of Jan. 1, no flags should be flown in front of schools. Outraged, Zonian teenagers saw the empty flagpoles as a challenge not to be ignored.

On Jan. 7 and 8, amid rising tensions, students at Balboa High School ran up a U.S. flag. On the third day, demonstrating Panamanian students entered the school grounds and sang their national anthem, but the Balboa students blocked them from raising their flag. there was a scuffle -- and the Panamanians retreated in outrage, claiming that their flag had been ripped by the Zonians.

James Jenkins, 17-year-old senior at Balboa High:
"I guess you could say I'm the guy that started this whole thing. I'm sort of the ringleader. I circulated the petition to keep our flag flying. Then me and the others raised the flag. The school authorities left it up because they knew we'd walk out."

On January 9, 1964, at 4:50 PM, around 200 male and female students exited the Instituto Nacional heading to the Balboa High School to hoist the Panamanian flag. During the walk, students stopped singing the national anthem to pay respect to the sick at the Gorgas Hospital. Two police cars headed the peaceful manifestation.

Guevara Paz and Francisco Diaz made a deal with the Zonian officials to accept a six-student delegation, among them the Instituto Nacional flag bearer, and a classmate who was carrying a banner which read: "Panama is sovereign in the Canal Zone". The delegation arrived close to the flagpole area to sing the national anthem and raise the Panamanian flag at the Balboa High School, where mainly zonian students attended.

On the balconies and at the entrance of the high school was a hostile crowd of aproximately 2000 zonians. Suddenly, the six-student delegation from the Instituto Nacional was surrounded by hundreds of students and adult zonians.

What really occured?
The Instituto Nacional flag bearer named Carranza describes it as follows:
"They slowly gathered around us. One shouted, then another one, then everybody. They started pushing us, and tried to take away the flag violently, while they insulted us".

The feeling of patriotism fogged the "Instituto Nacional" students eyes when a policeman from the "Canal Zone" ripped apart the Panamanian flag by using a stick. During the commotion, multiple hands pulled and tore the flag.

In the middle of "raining sticks", the students ran to protect the flag.

Somebody pointed at the United States flag on top of the Administration building, with the intention of getting back at the offense, however, zonian patrol cars and police had already taken their weapons out, and from the civil population homes, guns were already showing.

The massacre
On the way back, Guillermo Guevara Paz and Rogelio Hilton, president of the association for the senior class at the Instituto Nacional, and classmates destroyed a construction scaffolding from the Gorgas Hospital and threw it on the streets in an attempt to deter the ferocity of their followers.

They started hearing similar noises to firecrackers, but since it was not the 4th of July, the US independence holiday, they realized they were gun shots. They did not come from police patrols, but from the houses next to the Episcopal church, where numerous adult zonians were.

It was around 6:30 pm when they crossed the "4th of July" avenue and arrived at the "Calle J" bus stop. News spread along the city and canal zone limits.

Hundreds of students and people, indignant about the offense to the Panamanian flag, started throwing rocks at the students and adult zonians.

The first wounded began to appear; Ascanio Arosemena's shoulders were bloody from all the wounded he had carried, but a bullet from a caliber-22 rifle made him the first martyr.