Jerusalem

by Willy Carrera Loza

Officials from the Housing Ministry (MIVI), accompanied by dozens of riot police and Ancon corregidor Enrique Rodríguez, have dislodged about 150 families who were squatting at Mocambo Abajo. They have been offered new lots in El Valle de San Francisco, adjacent to the community of Kuna Nega.

Thus concluded the drama of a community whose residents claim to have been living there for 50 years, and who say that raw greed led to their expulsion once the Corredor Norte was built next to their homes and real estate values increased.

A MIVI bulletin said that in the Kuna Nega area its Department of Construction?s surveying and construction crews are at work, platting lots for the displaced families and building the first houses, so that the families will have some sort of shelter. A press release by the state-owned Caja de Ahorros noted that the approximately 90 hectares of land from which the families were expelled is worth $12.5 million, and that it couldn?t be developed if the squatters were allowed to remain. The Caja said that each family would have the right to a 450-square-meter lot within a 10-hectare parcel donated by ARI, and that the financial institution would donate wood and zinc for the Mocambo Abajo residents to build new shacks to shelter themselves and their possessions.

However, Leonel Longa, the spokesman for the displaced families, said that the corregidor came suddenly and violently with bulldozers to raze the houses and destroy the residents? personal belongings within them, adding that riot police beat and arrested anyone who protested. Longa added that there is an unresolved lawsuit over possession of Mocambo Abajo pending before the Supreme Court, and also noted that there is a law and a well established custom that prevents evictions during the month of December.

Longa produced an old copy of the Gaceta Oficial and government planning documents that indicate that in 1977 the government of General Omar Torrijos expropriated the land under the Agrarian Reform law, because there were families living there and working the land. The land had belonged to businessman Carlos Patterson, who was paid compensation for the expropriation.

However, after the 1989 US invasion the Endara government ignored the residents and their claims, giving title to the land to the Caja de Ahorros, the Interoceanic Regional Authority (ARI), the University of Panama, the Shahani Group and the Díaz Quelqueju family, in a deal brokered by political activist Mario Galindo.

Ancon?s representante, Joaquín Vásquez, ARI administrator Alfredo Arias and other government officials, however, argue that the families who lived at Mocambo Abajo were invaders with no legal right to the land and who needed to move. Vásquez went further and called Longa and fellow Mocambo Abajo spokesman Noriel Aguilar common criminals, who pose as community leaders but make their money selling lots that they don?t own.

In response there have been many rumors of inside deals and family connections trumping the law in this case, and a coalition of the Catholic Caritas social justice group has issued a forthright condemnation of the eviction. (See page 14 for a Spanish-language version of the Caritas protest, or read it in English when the online edition of this issue of The Panama News is uploaded on the weekend of December 16-17.) When this newspaper tracked down the source of some of the most inflammatory allegations against politicians and prominent families to an American attorney, the lawyer made himself unavailable for comment.

The evicted families have appealed for help to legislator Marcos González, who went to the Mocambo Abajo to witness the ouster and to plead for justice for families who had in many cases lived there for years. "It?s just impossible that from one night to the next morning the authorities can come and evict us," former Mocambo Abajo resident Rosa Jaén told González. "Now we don?t have a place to live, much less money to rent a house."

Residents and their supporters note that the lots near Kuna Nega are crowded together and lack water or sanitatary services. Moreover, the area is contaminated by leftovers from decades-old US military exercises.

González said that he would bring the matter before the Legislative Assembly in search of a solution for the affected families.