Danger signs

The place pictured above isn't dangerous. It may very well be endangered. What you're looking at is one of the better places to go for West Indian cuisine in Panama City, the Centolla's Place restaurant at the Los Pueblitos city park on Ancon Hill.

Like all other Panamanian businesses that depend at least in part upon tourists for their clientele, this restaurant may suffer from a general decline in tourism after the September 11 attacks on US passenger airliners, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Even before those events, the doldrums in the US economy had a lot of people wondering if Panama's tourism would be affected. Now it's looking like the upcoming tourist season will be a disappointment, and the only question is to what extent --- but if people like you realize that Panama won't be crowded and there will be some good deals available, then it may not be so bad after all. See our Travel section for a photo story about it.

There are two other major causes for concern in recent days.

In Colon there has been a week of rioting, almost immediately following the party machine's claims that Mireya won that province's internal Arnulfista elections by a 10,400 to 75 margin. More disruptions in Colon aren't all that unusual a story, but what was different and worrisome is that a group of masked militants went around destroying government vehicles with molotov cocktails. Panama's not a particularly warlike society, but such actions have in many other times and places been the beginnings of guerrilla movements. The following day the government rounded up leaders of Colon's labor and unemployed movements, apparently without a shred of evidence linking them to the attacks, and that set off more protests. Then the government said it was banning all protests in Colon, save the ones for which they give permission. These repressive measures were then the proximate cause of a week of street battles in which more than 200 people were arrested.

Colon's troubles were exacerbated by pronouncements from on high, first from Mireya Moscoso to the effect that her administration wasn't going to just hand out money to people without getting work in return, and later from her underlings to the effect that unemployed people in Colon don't want to work. The latter was as cheap as cheap shots come. Colon's unemployed workers do want to work. On the other hand, it's at the top levels of the Moscoso administration that you will find plenty of people drawing big paychecks in exchange for doing very little.

Moreover, Colon is not the only part of Panama beset by civil disturbances at the moment. As you will notice in our news and business briefs, the banana producing area of Chiriqui is inflamed and they even had a confrontation between police and local youths in sleepy little Chitre.

The Moscoso administration isn't in a mood to tolerate peaceful criticism either. She had the entire staff of the Cascara News, a printed spinoff from the TVN comedy show, arrested for criminal defamation, publishing an unregistered newspaper and attacking the state, when they published a comedy tabloid whose cover lampooned the president and the government and justice minister in bed. Bad taste it may have been, but when satirists are thrown in jail for crimes against the state the situation is as desperate for the president as when Noriega felt compelled to treat those who called him 'cara de piña' as major criminals. Scandals are closing in on the president and her minister of government and justice, people are wondering if Mireya Moscoso will be able to finish out her term, and the inner circle are lashing out in more directions than they would be if they were thinking rationally.

The pathetic Sindicato de Periodistas (an alleged labor union for journalists that has no contract to represent any journalists before any Panamanian medium) and the Colegio de Periodistas (a holdout for the Noriega-era idea that journalists ought to be licensed by the government and required to pay dues to bureaucracies) applauded the arrests. From France, however, Reporters Without Borders protested, even though those arrested are not, strictly speaking, journalists. Read all about it in the Opinion section, but the gist of it is that unlike the so-called journalists' groups that support Winnie Spadafora's proposed anti-press law, most reputable journalists realize that if comedians can be jailed for satire, those who report the facts are also at risk.

Our Opinion, Editorial and Letters section this time are, as you might expect, full of discussion about the war in which the United States and its allies find themselves. I personally think that this is a situation in which war is justified, but The Panama News is also a forum for people who disagree with me. This time in the Opinion section we reprint a classic from yesteryear, Mark Twain's posthumous 'The War Prayer,' as a sobering reminder of the full enormity of what is underway. The charge d'affaires of the US Embassy here, Frederick Becker, also weighs in the same section, and we reprint the Dalai Lama's thoughts about the situation as well

We have a larger-than-usual Business section this time. It ranges from advice for American expatriates through a regional environmental law initiative to Panamanian advertising wars. The business and economy briefs may, as they often are, be the heart of this paper's coverage about what's important and current in Panama. Rest assured, however, that the biggest story is the aftermath of the September 11 events, and an already horrible Panamanian economy is at least in the short term suffering another cruel blow.

Amidst all the bad news, there are rays of hope. One of those is spotlighted in the Outdoors section --- we can expect some improvements at the Summit Zoo.

By the time that the next issue appears, several Panamanians will have made it to Major League Baseball's post-season. Sadly, for this Tigers fan, one of them will not be Detroit infielder Jose Macias. But next year.

As we went to press it seemed that the New York Yankees' Mariano Rivera and Ramiro Mendoza, Cleveland's Einar Diaz and Oakland's Olmedo Saenz would make it to the post-season. Also in October, due to a postponement forced by attacks on the United States, Pedro Alcazar will be defending his WBO super-flyweight crown. Go to the Sports section for the latest details.

The new war has also forced a postponement at the Theatre Guild of Ancon, as his employer The Dallas Morning News has sent Tod Robberson, one of the actors in the guild's new show, to the Middle East. However, the show appears to be going on, but just a month or so late. Read the latest details in the Arts section.