The photo you see above was taken in Colon, where I spent part of a weekend with some Zonians who came back to Panama for a visit. Like many former Canal Zone residents, these folks went to see their old houses, in this case in the old Colon city neighborhood of New Cristobal, now part of a changing Barrio Norte. This issue's Travel section includes photographic glimpses of Colon that in most cases don't jibe with the stereotypes.

It's not that the wretched slums and serious social problems are mythical. All of the bad things you have heard about Colon are likely to be built around grains of truth. However, the Monday morning riot of which I was warned didn't take place, and had it happened like Colon's frequent civil disturbances, it would have at most amounted to a minor inconvenience.

On the 19th I took a cab from Cristobal to Rainbow City to catch the under-17 soccer teams of Panama and Costa Rica battling for a ticket to the next round of world championship play. The cops were on hand, watching carefully for any sign that gang violence might erupt. However, this was a community and family event and the crowd behaved perfectly. We went home disappointed, however. The game was a tie, which eliminated Panama because Costa Rica had a bigger positive goal difference for the tournament. Read all about it in the Sports section. Afterwards space in cabs and taxis was hard to come by, but a large part of the crowd walked back to the city and I went with them, returning to Cristobal on foot. For much of the way I walked with a group of about a dozen teenage boys who were decked out in their hip hop regalia. I was not mugged or annoyed in any way.

However, this centennial year tourist season has just taken a serious international publicity defeat because of some very unwelcome visitors to Panama. The right wing AUC death squad, which works as an officially denied but very real auxiliary of the Colombian Army, invaded Panama that same weekend, assassinating four Kuna leaders in the Darien villages of Paya and Pucuro, burning down several houses in those communities and abducting three Americans. The Americans were released in Colombia several days later, after AUC leader Carlos Castaño issued a press release claiming some right to abduct people "for their own safety" while engaged in murder and arson. President Moscoso, Police Chief Barés and the nation's prosecutors were OH SO CONCERNED --- but not enough to move them to charge Castaño with murder, arson or kidnapping for the attack. The incident is reported in our News section and commented upon in the Editorial.

Putting it all into perspective for those of you who may be interested in visiting us this year but don't know Panama's geography and social structure well, what happened in Paya and Pucuro was another in a long train of abuses along the remote jungle border with Colombia. "Remote" in that it's difficult to get there and unless you have a very good reason, you shouldn't go there. I do recommend that tourists visit Colon, but I would advise against wandering along Cash Alley with an expensive camera slung around your neck. Except for fishing trips to Piñas Bay, I do not recommend tourism in the Darien beyond Yaviza. You will not be abducted by terrorists while visiting Panama on a cruise ship, or traveling in the Interior or seeing the sights of the Panama-Colon metro area. If you were planning to come down here for Carnival, do so. However, use a little common sense about where you go, what you carry and how you behave. The same would apply for a visit to New York City, another major tourist destination with an exaggerated reputation for violent crime.

Our Letters section this time includes a sample of the sort of emails that I frequently receive. A reader wants to know if the Chinese will block the Panama Canal to stop the US Navy from responding to an emergency in Korea. The number of such letters I receive is a sign that Reverend Sun Myung Moon has done an effective job of brainwashing. Despite what you may read in Reverend Moon's Washington Times, Insight magazine or Tiempos del Mundo, there are no Chinese troops in Panama, and China has nothing to do with the running of the Panama Canal. So do you believe that humanity's bloodline was tainted by a sexual liaison between Eve and Satan, that Jesus Christ screwed up his divine mission by getting crucified before fathering children, and that Reverend Moon is the "Third Adam," whose job is to purify mankind's blood? Then you worship a "god" that lies, a man who, like Carlos Castaño, would destroy Panama's tourism industry just for the hell of it.

The other big story in the News section is Panama's political season getting off to an early and boisterous start. You may have noticed that my estimate of the presidential possibilities in an earlier Opinion column was rendered moot within a few days by the withdrawal of banker Alberto Vallarino from the race. Now we are facing the prospect of four or more presidential candidates in the May 2004 general elections, and there will surely be a lot more surprises before all is said and done.

This issue's Outdoors page didn't take me far afield. I was a little early for a Tuesday noon science lecture at the Smithsonian in Ancon, and turned my camera on the latest orchid blooms in the courtyard garden there. The lecture on marine ecosystems is reported in our Science and Technology section.

People who visit here, or who communicate with me by email, often make certain assumptions about how a guy with a law degree and an editing job lives. One of these notions is that I just get in my car and drive here and there. HAH! I kid you not in my periodic appeals for support for this newspaper. I can't afford a car, and if I had money to buy one, I'd spend it on something else. It's often a struggle just to pay rent for the office, develop photos and maintain access to the Internet, and we survive largely upon creditors' forbearance. Which means that I usually get to and from Colon by bus. They show movies on the Panama-Colon express buses, and since the last issue I have seen Hannibal Lecter eating a guy's brain and Latiffah in the role of vampire queen while making my way between the Atlantic and Pacific sides. The next time it might be an Israeli action thriller, an independent African-American film, something from the British movie industry or a pirated Hollywood blockbuster.

Anyway, I'll leave the movie reviews to Jason Mical for the moment. My contributions to this issue's Review section are the usual Cool Internet Sites and my take on Panamanian television news. The weak economy has taken a heavy toll on all of the commercial media, but meanwhile the public educational channel has recruited some of the laid-off talent for its news team and the Catholic channel has blossomed into something worth watching.

According to our usual schedule, we publish on the second and fourth "complete weekend" of each month, a weekend being "complete" if it has a Friday, Saturday and Sunday within a given month. As January has five Fridays, we'd normally have a three-week hiatus between this and the next issue. However, this year February has only three complete weekends, and that would leave us with only one February issue with Carnival approaching. Moreover, the usual production schedule would prevent me from catching the boxing action at Colon's Panama Al Brown Arena on February 15. Thus new issues of The Panama News will appear in two weeks' time, on February 9, and again on February 23, then we'll take a break until March 16.

Enjoy.

Eric Jackson
the editor