This study details the formation of a populist alliance by the Panamanian military in order to legitimize its leadership and restructure the rules of the political process. Along with the move for popular support, the Torrijos regime introduced an economic strategy based on export-oriented industrialization. The shift toward such policies by General Omar Torrijos Herrera, whose ideologies and political strategies were “neither the left nor the right,” bewildered and confused many in Panama and the United States, especially groups accustomed to having their vested interests coincide with those of the Panamanian military. The lessons drawn from this study illustrate an alternative to exclusionary and repressive military regimes in Central America.