editorial

Mireya Moscoso has been in Washington meeting with George W. Bush, and sketchy details of various agreements are beginning to filter out. One great problem with any democratic consideration of the Moscoso administration's foreign policy is the secrecy in which much of it is shrouded, and thus any debate must be conducted on the basis of incomplete information, especially when it comes to Panama's relationship with Plan Colombia. Plus, a lot of President Moscoso's agreements with President Bush appear to be about procedure, for example that we will proceed bilaterally to negotiate a free trade deal.

There is a regional process that when Bill Clinton was president of the United States set a target of a Free Trade Area of the Americas by 2005. Progress toward that goal has been stalled by domestic political objections in most countries throughout the Americas, and by the determination of the United States government not to lose control of the process.

In the face of this, Mireya Moscoso appears to be willing to accept any deal that Uncle Sam may offer, so long as any organization arising from hemispheric economic integration locates its offices in Panama. Most notably and regrettably, she has negotiated toward free trade with the United States as part of a bloc with the Central American countries, and may now continue the process bilaterally. In either case, that is to say, she has chosen to negotiate from a position of weakness when better options were and are available.

Panama is historically not Central American. Our indigenous nations trace their ancestry to central Colombia and the Amazon Basin rather than to the Mayan and Mexican civilizations as is the case with Central America's first nations. We were neither part of the Captaincy General of Guatemala nor the United Provinces of Central America. Our Spanish colonial era was spent as part of the Andean region. We are a Bolivarian republic and like the other countries of this group but unlike the Central American banana republics we have a substantial industrial sector (the Panama Canal). Panamanians, despite the problems in our educational system, are on the whole much better educated that the people of any Central American country except possibly Costa Rica. In our role as an international trade and distribution hub South America plays a much greater role than does Central America. Despite Panama's weak economy, our standard of living is higher than that in the Central American countries.

Because Central America is a politically and economically weak agricultural backwater, it is not in a good position to negotiate trade agreements with the United States.

At the moment, our neighbors in the Andean Pact are also not in a good position to negotiate, because all of them are torn by war (Colombia) or serious political strife (Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia).

The important Latin American leadership in free trade talks with the United States is coming from the largest and most advanced South American economies in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile. Chile has tried but been blocked by US domestic politics in separate talks to join NAFTA. Led by Brazil and Argentina, the MERCOSUR bloc is moving to pose a southern counterproposal to the sort of regional economic union in narrow US corporate interests that the Bush administration will offer Latin America.

The government of Panama should be working to get the best possible deal for Panamanians, but such an agreement is very unlikely if we start out by aligning ourselves with the most economically underdeveloped, socially backward and politically corrupt part of Latin America. We should join with our South American trade partners, not the Central American banana republics, to come up with a common Latin American bargaining position on the subject of free trade with the United States.

It is harder to release a nation from servitude than to enslave a free nation.

Simón Bolívar

We should beware of all those who plaster the landscape with large portraits of themselves.

Margaret Atwood

You have to leave room in life to dream.

Buffy Sainte-Marie

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