"Are we with the PRD?" the woman on the bullhorn asked. "No!" responded the crowd. Likewise with the Arnulfistas and Alberto Vallarino. "Ni los gringos, ni el gringuero" --- neither the Americans, nor the American enclave. Thus proclaimed the Panamanian left at its annual January 9 march, to commemorate the events of January 9-11, 1964, which left 27 people dead, more than 500 injured and marked the beginning of the end of the old Canal Zone.

Though earlier in the day there was a brief scuffle with police when protesters attempted to block traffic in front of the US Embassy, and there was shoving and shouting when an activist attempted to spray-paint slogans on Arnulfista headquarters on Avenida Peru, this crowd, maybe a thousand strong, was neither violent nor out to harm gringos. They were "La Izquierda Callejera" --- the Street Left --- reiterating one of their historic positions, and demonstrating their strengths and weaknesses of the moment.

There were no banners or leaflets bearing the name "Izquiera Callejera." Officially, this was a protest headed by the National Movement for Sovereignty (MONADESO), an umbrella organization headed by the radical priest Conrado Sanjur, under which an alphabet soup of several dozen distinct groups take shelter.

It would be easy to dismiss these folks as a wild and crazy fringe, but that would be some lazy political analysis. If they so desired, this constellation of groups could go into electoral politics tomorrow and, despite unfavorable election laws, grab the balance of power in the Legislative Assembly to be elected in May of 2004.

However, the leading thinkers of this current in Panamanian society would rather avoid the disputes about which candidates and which factions get which spots on the slate, and which arcane ideological points get emphasized in the platform. Despite certain unfavorable circumstances that didn't apply a few years ago, the Street Left is growing, changing and finding ways around old obstacles. There's still time for a shift in tactics, but a political judgment has been made to avoid trading this modest progress for all the traps and temptations of electoral politics, even if the left could instantly eclipse MOLIRENA, the Partido Popular and the rest of the small parties as the voters' preferred alternative to the Arnulfistas and the PRD.

Worldwide, the left has its pantheons of individuals, with variations from tendency to tendency. Marx and Lenin have their hallowed places in most of the Panamanian Street Left's halls of fame, and their mugs figured on some of the University People's Bloc (BPU) flags. The banners of Josef Stalin, Leon Trotsky and Chairman Mao were not held high at the Day of the Martyrs march, but there were an awful lot of Che Guevara t-shirts.

The left also has its shifting line-up of important social classes, the working class of course and its actual or theoretical allies of the moment. The chants on this day cited, in order, the workers, the farmers, indigenous communities and the students. A few years ago, indigenous people didn't figure in the chants, the left hadn't much to show for its few rural organizing efforts and the movement was dominated by quarreling campus factions.

There are still rival factions on campus, but the Street Left is ever more working class in its composition. The biggest contingents in this day's march were from the labor unions, most notably but by no means exclusively from the SUNTRACS construction workers' syndicate. Rural organizing efforts showed up in a huge "La ACP Miente" --- The Panama Canal Authority Lies --- banner carried by a contingent of farmers who stand to lose their land if the Panama Canal Authority proceeds with plans to build new dams and flood the Western Watershed.

Before the march the various groups gathered in Parque Porras, with PAT (Thought and Transformative Action, a student group) gathering with their black-and-blue banners around the statue, the BPU with their orthodox communist symbols on the walkway equidistant from the statue and Avenida Peru, with the Revolutionary Student Front (FER-29) mingling with their elders closer to the street. A sound truck with lots of SUNTRACS flags milling about it was the center of pre-march activity, the place at which police and march organizers exchanged information.

At about 4:30 a union official began the march, explaining into the sound truck's microphone that "39 years ago, young people with dignity and patriotism raised our flag and asserted Panama's sovereignty," and on this day fitting homage would be paid. As the march got underway, briefly trapping a few buses in the crowd, the chants began. "This country's not for sale" set the tone.

The crowd, primarily composed of working people, grew a bit as people getting off from their jobs hurried to join in at various points. A construction crew, dirty from a day's work and bearing SUNTRACS regalia, joined in on Avenida Central. There were parents, and grandparents, with their children. Attorney Rafael Rodríguez was part of a sprinkling of professionals in the march, with doctors and architects and especially teachers and university professors present.

There wasn't a lot of cheering or spontaneous joining from the sidelines, as was the case, for example, when the left marched up the same street in 2001 to challenge the government over the rise in city bus fares from 15¢ to a quarter, or in last year's protests against corruption. When the march got to the Avenida Central pedestrian mall, a meat on a stick vendor hardly looked up, a man selling sunglasses scurried to get his table of wares out of the banners' way and a third vendor pointed to the protesters and said "This is a good business."

As the crowd turned off of the peatonal and headed toward the Instituto Nacional, a lot of women in their office uniforms had joined the march and there were more cops, in khaki uniforms rather than riot armor, along the route.

There was a pause at the Instituto Nacional for speeches. A student from the Instituto Nacional recited the received legend about the heroism and sacrifice of an earlier generation. Teacher Melva Reyes expounded on national sovereignty, arguing that the New Horizons US military construction program represents an unacceptable return of US troops as far as MONADESO is concerned. (Though there have been any good polls about this in recent months, for many years most Panamanians have been willing to host American military forces here, under "proper conditions" that typically include sufficient economic rewards. About one-third of Panamanians have always been against a US military presence as a matter of principle.)

Reyes also opined that sovereignty is an economic as well as a military question. Arguing that defending Panama's national interests includes opposing utility rate hikes that benefits foreign-based corporations and harm our economy, she was particularly vehement about demands by the likes of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund that this country privatize more of its public institutions. Decrying what she called a foreign-inspired assault on Panamanian public education, the teacher argued that "the only thing that the IMF and the World Bank want is for our kids to have just a basic education."

Concluding the speeches in front of the Instituto Nacional, labor leader Carlos Saldaña noted changing circumstances. "Now, we don't have American guards in the Canal Zone," he explained, but in addition to the New Horizons construction teams, he alleged, the US military has people monitoring Panama's border with Colombia. "We can't permit this presence," Saldaña argued. "Thirty-nine years later, it's important for the Panamanian people to know that the struggle never ended."

The march resumed, toward the cemetery at the end of the street. The gate was locked, but after a few minutes the cop inside had obtained a key and let people in. People made their way toward the back, to the small, unpretentious grave of Ascanio Arosemena.

Arosemena was a high school student who had not participated in the march to Balboa High, who was downtown on his way to the movies when violence broke out along the Fourth of July Avenue --- now the Avenida de los Martires --- on January 9, 1964. The Canal Zone Police opened fire, Arosemena stepped forward to help one of the wounded, then he himself was shot through the aorta and was the first Panamanian to die in the disturbances. "This student represented the purest, clearest example of dignity," Father Sanjur said at the graveside. "This must be remembered by every Panamanian, so that we can be a sovereign and prosperous nation."

Labor leader Luis Carlos Moreno noted that Panamanians aged in their late 40s and older all remember where they were when the trouble broke out in 1964, and recalled that the spirit of national unity was the most striking sign of the times. "Ascanio Arosemena, like so many other ordinary people on the streets, answered the call to the flag."

Tomás Méndez hailed the reversion of the Canal Zone as one of the fruits of the 1964 Martyrs' sacrifice, but said that the struggle for sovereignty continues into a second phase, one of consolidation in the face of foreign economic pressures. He pointed at Panama's economic elite as an adversary in the current situation, and the destruction of the PRD-Arnulfista bipartisan political paradigm as a key contemporary challenge.

The speeches concluded with remarks by Dionys Domínguez, the president of the Coordinadora Campesina en Contra de los Embalses --- the Farmers' Coordinator Against the Dams --- which opposes the flooding of the canal's Western Watershed. "Neo-liberal groups manipulate this country," he complained, accusing the Panama Canal Authority of giving foreign and domestic economic concerns priority over the national interest. He called forth memories of the past to invigorate his side of a political struggle that will come to a head later this year, when the Moscoso administration announces its decision on the canal's expansion. "The Martyrs they killed, but the ideal of humanity that they upheld has never died," he proclaimed.

The year's Day of the Martyrs observance ended with the singing of Panama's national anthem, El Himno Istmeño, as the sun was going down.

Earlier in the day the Arnulfista dignitaries and the Panama Canal administration turned out for the dedication of a monument to the Martyrs built at the site of the old Balboa High flagpole. Given the Dr. Arnulfo Arias was one of the few physicians in Panama City who did not head for an emergency room to assist the hundreds of wounded, that he considered the Martyrs a bunch of thug, and that he got thrashed by the Liberal candidate in the presidential election later that year precisely because of that attitude, nothing that Mireya or any member of her entourage said about the events of January 1964 was taken very seriously.

Also earlier that day, Foreign Minister Harmodio Arias, making one of his first announcements in his new posts, gave word of the arrival of US military construction teams, which will be building roads, bridges, schools and health clinics in Ngobe country for the next few months. That it didn't occur to him that this was the wrong day to make such an announcement was a sign of two things. First, in the current paradigm of Panamanian politics, US military presence is not a major issue. Second, the Moscoso administration mocks things that many other Panamanians hold sacred.