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Omar Torrijos

Military leader of Panama from 1968 to 1981

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 15, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

Omar Efraín Torrijos Herrera was a Panamanian military officer, politician, and revolutionary who was the military leader of Panama, as well as the Commander of the Panamanian National Guard from 1968 to his death in 1981. Torrijos was never officially the president of Panama, but instead held self-imposed and all-encompassing titles, including "Maximum Leader of the Panamanian Revolution". Torrijos took power in a coup d'état and instituted a number of social reforms.

Editorial summary

“Omar Torrijos” enters the record as military leader of Panama from 1968 to 1981. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Omar, Torrijos and Military can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1968, 1981—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Omar, Torrijos and Military.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Omar Torrijos” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Omar, Torrijos and Military provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1968 and 1981.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Omar Torrijos” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.