Here comes the rain!

This issue's cover photo, taken from the Diablo Spinning Club one Sunday, is of a rainstorm sweeping over the Panama Canal from the east, seconds before it temporarily obliterated the Bridge of the Americas from view. Whether you take that symbolism as foreboding or reassuring is a matter of your point of view.

Without rainy season storms, there would be no Panama Canal, this country's ecotourist attractions wouldn't exist and our agricultural production would wither and die. On the other hand, we wouldn't have a problem with dengue fever, and maybe Hollywood producers would find the Sarigua Desert, which is Los Santos, a good place to make westerns.

As for me, I like rainy season. Maybe it's from my years as a Colon Boy, or maybe it's because during my adolescence in and around the Motor City that sad but catchy Temptations tune, "I wish it would rain," became permanently imprinted upon my psyche.Anyway, in the past couple of weeks there are two bits of news about the canal that can similarly be taken as good or bad, depending on the eye of the beholder.

Another shipload of nuclear waste is headed from Europe to Japan by way of the canal, and this time the usual Greenpeace protest is being joined by some prominent Panamanians who hadn't spoken up before, including former President Jorge Illueca.

Greenpeace tries so very hard not to sound apocalyptically crazy, and calmly points out that none of mankind's works are truly foolproof, as the nuclear industry claims its waste ship safety systems are. Now if somebody calls me crazy I won't argue, but my main fear is not that some fool on a plutonium-laden ship's bridge will make a catastrophically stupid move, but that some clever and well organized fanatics - bin Laden's boys, or someone as desperate and violent as them - will attack one of these ships in order to remove part of the cargo and thus improve their arsenal. It may not happen tomorrow or next year, but this material will be deadly for at least another quarter-million years, and there aren't any bigger fools than those who believe some company that promises that everything will be under control for all of that time. My argument is not only against the Panama Canal accepting nuclear waste shipments, but against nuclear power in general.

In another canal-related controversy with an environmental aspect, the larger of the two groups of rural residents who stand to be displaced by the canal watershed's westward expansion, the one that has taken a hard line against the project, recently sat down to talk with the canal administration. There, too, we more and more often hear establishment voices expressing doubts, generally on the basis that it would be difficult to amortize any investment in the canal's modernization without raising tolls beyond what the market would bear or subsidizing the project at the Panamanian people's expense.

I understand the residents' fears and agree that there would inevitably be environmental damage. I'm also very close to being convinced that, as presently contemplated, the canal modernization project wouldn't directly pay for itself. But then, that could also be said of one of the canal's more important competitors, the US interstate highway system. It seems to me that the American taxpayers have paid a lot for those roads and will continue to do so, and that all along the way people have been displaced, ecological niches have been damaged and there have been crooked deals with respect to construction contracts. Yet what would the American economy be like without the interstates? And what would Panama's economy be like if the Panama Canal were an obsolete relic like the Erie Canal? This country can't afford NOT to modernize the canal. The debate shouldn't be about whether to do it, but how to do it.

Anyway, if you want to find out why I was at the Diablo Spinning Club in the rain, go to the Outdoors section and check out the photo feature on a dorado fishing tournament.

Our News section includes a lot of stuff about Colombia this time, both because a paramilitary leader was arrested here and found to be running AUC air operations out of the Chame airport and because there have been serious developments in our neighbors' civil war since the last issue.

Also in the News section, I cover a presentation at the Panama Historical Society, by environmentalists, historic preservationists and city planners who want to save Isla Margarita, better known to some of you as the former Fort Randolph, from short-sighted waste.

The Balboa Union Church recently celebrated an anniversary, and that gave me a good reason to interview its pastor, Mildred Reitz. Read all about it in the Community section. Also in that section, you will find an homage to a woman who has done a lot to improve the lives of those Panamanians with various disabilities.

Since three weeks have passed since our last issue - there were five Fridays in June, and we publish on the second and fourth weekends of every month - our news and business briefs cover more ground than usual. Our opinion and letters sections also cover a lot of subjects this time around, and I trust that you will enjoy some of the things that come up when you push buttons not specifically mentioned herein.

Editor
Eric Jackson

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