Gimme shelter

At the end of April and the beginning of May, Panama City saw its most disruptive street protests in years. Unlike the street battles over Labor Code changes that took place during the Pérez Balladares administration, these disturbances caused no deaths. However, they did wreak havoc on the city and its economy for a week, which made them more prolonged and persistent than anything since the 1989 US invasion and its immediate aftermath. The issue at hand was a 67 percent increase in bus fares, but that was just the immediate point in a laundry list of student and labor grievances. Our illustrated cover story on the April 30 to May 4 disturbances can be found in this issue's News section.

I was tear gassed twice, and I didn't even get to riot. As a matter of fact, I wasn't even covering the riots, but just trying to go about my business, when I ventured into the stinging clouds. Said business included the moving of this business from Via Argentina to more modest digs in Perejil. After more than five years in the old location, I got to re-learn the joys and subtleties of things like transferring phone and electric utilities from one place to another and getting recyclers to make office calls in the midst of street battles. Suffice to say that neither the phones nor the electricity have been transferred, and our move out of the old location, though now completed, was delayed several days. We are working our way around these costly inconveniences, but I must say that it really hurts to be unable to give you our new phone number and it's a pain having to collect the email via somebody else's computer.

We're not the only business that's suffering, and now we hear from on high that dark forces ––– foreign ones ––– are at work to destabilize the Panamanian economy. Winnie Spadafora claims that he has evidence ––– which he won't divulge ––– of a foreign embassy passing out money to radical construction workers and schoolkids to encourage the disruptions. So where is that embassy? I think that it exists entirely in the Minister of Government and Justice's mind.

Anyway, despite the tear gas and weird rumors, there was much more to Panama these past couple of weeks. That's reflected in our Review section, wherein Roxanna Cain's book review touches the true crime genre, and on our Arts page, which takes a look at the Theatre Guild of Ancon and its latest production.

On this issue's Travel page, you can see Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa's alleged role as "Gatekeeper of the Panama Canal" from another angle. China policy will get increased attention later this month, when Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian visits Panama. Beijing will no doubt find a way to express its displeasure, but Taiwan's an old friend that Panama won't and shouldn't abandon under pressure from one of the world's great powers.

The Opinion section is full and far-flung as usual. There are divergent views by a former diplomat and a nun about the qualifications of John Negroponte, George W. Bush's nominee to represent the United States at the United Nations, which shed a few oblique rays of light upon the recent election that deprived the US of a seat on the world body's human rights commission. From the right we have opposition to the OECD and its blacklist, while from the left the Brazilian radical priest Frei Betto takes stock of consumption as a religion of sorts.

The restaurant reviewed on this issue's Dining Out page is the Meson del Prado on Tumba Muerto and our Community section honors some bright young students from Colon. The lead story in the Business section is about a campaign to eliminate one of Panama's more common tools of racial discrimination, the requirement of a photograph with a job application.

Also in this issue, we inaugurate our new Classified ads section. From these humble beginnings we hope to generate a little bit of income and one more reason for people to read The Panama News Online.