Heroes, saints and angels…
That’s the name of Emily Zhukov’s upcoming sculpture
show at the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, from which this issue’s cover
picture is taken. For a couple more sneak previews, check out our Arts
section.
Coincidentally, it was also the theme of a discussion I had
the other day with Janet Levi, whose art graced the cover of the last issue.
She was talking about her late friend, General Omar Torrijos, in the context
of a conversation about who would make the cut if someone wanted to do an
honest and even-handed children’s book about the dozen or so greatest
Panamanians. Despite some unflattering things that have been said about the
general of late, and some of his well-known bad habits, Janet believes, like
many Panamanians, that Torrijos was Panama’s greatest hero of the 20th
century. She would also put his great rival, Dr. Arnulfo Arias, on the short
list of Panamanian heroes, despite the fact that he was a racist and a Nazi
sympathizer, neither of which Janet could be accused of being.
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It’s like that with heroes, she noted. We all have feet
of clay, and the people who don’t dare to do great things for fear that
they might be exposed as imperfect tend to become neither heroes nor saints.
But meanwhile, Thomas Jefferson had slaves (one of whom was his mistress)
and built a great nation; Abraham Lincoln was a slick corporate lawyer and
a slippery politician who saved that great nation; Arnulfo Arias was a friend
of Hitler and Mussolini who created Panama’s social security system and
gave Panamanian women the vote; and Omar Torrijos was a CIA informer and a
minor league tyrant who got the canal and the Canal Zone for Panama.
And now, despite the obstructions of our Attorney General and
largely thanks to a doberman named Eagle, Panama is finding where the bodies
of the former dictatorship’s victims are buried. Attorney General Sossa
repeatedly tried to call off the investigation and to otherwise block the
Truth Commission, and now he’s telling the families of the disappeared
that his office won’t do the DNA tests that will identify the remains.
It’s an ugly display.
And meanwhile, Torrijistas are of different minds about the
investigation. Some see it as a one-sided smear of their hero - and President
Moscoso did indeed set up the investigation to be one-sided - but others want
the truth to be known, and figure that some day after the Arnulfistas are
out of power the rest of the awful truth can be investigated and exposed to
the light of public scrutiny.
Do the abuses of the Torrijos era reflect badly on the general’s
son Martín, who is the frontrunner for the PRD nomination and the presidency?
Not really. Martín is not Omar, any more than Mireya Moscoso is her
late husband Arnulfo Arias. Martín Torrijos needs to run on his own
merits, and his critics need to point out his weaknesses, not his father’s.
Whoever wins the Arnulfista nomination will be burdened by
the Moscoso administration’s horrible reputation, which in part was earned
by rampant nepotism, corruption and inefficiency, and is in part the product
of hard economic times that are not the president’s fault. However, the
next Arnulfista standard bearer will not be Mireya, and should not be judged
as if he or she is.
Life is not black and white, even for the color blind. I hope
that The Panama News sheds light on the gray areas, and illuminates the march
of events in Panama with the full spectrum of the rainbow.
In this issue the lead story in our News
section is of a cultural nature, about the recent book fair at ATLAPA.
In the long run, the big turnout by folks with little to spend on books bodes
well for Panama’s economic development.
The lead Business section story
is from the Conservation Media Center, about Kuna tourism. Here, too, reality
has its ambiguities and praiseworthy causes their down sides.
Our Opinion section features
what we hope is the first of many military analysis columns. We range far
and wide in geographical focus and subject matter this time.
There are many other goodies to be found in these and other
sections, but not all the news is good. That’s the way things go when
a newspaper makes an honest effort to call things as it sees them.
