What you see
above is sunset over a Darien beach, and of course the old adage
has it that “red sky by morning, sailor take warning; red
sky by night, sailor’s delight.” So is it red enough?
As the sun sets
on 2003, let us hope that there are good omens in the sky.
Especially for the community where reader Dick Getty captured
this scene on his digital camera, the Embera beachfront village
of Playa de Muerto, whose residents have gone into the
tourism business. As you will see in our Travel section, they
don’t offer casinos, nightclubs or a neon-lit shopping
district, but you can get an Embera-style lobster dinner there,
the beach and jungle are pretty much in their natural states and
this part of the Darien, though remote, is also at a safe
distance from the Colombian war zone.
Let us also hope
that the red sky bodes well for The Panama News, which is
celebrating its ninth birthday and will begin its tenth year of
publication with the next issue.
It is, of
course, Christmas season, and two days after the legendary
2003rd anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ, the Jews will
finish celebrating Hanukkah, the legendary reconstruction of the
temple in Jerusalem. (Setting aside all the arguments based upon
faith, and all of the later histories and circumstantial
evidence upholding the truth underlying the two respective
religious accounts, we can see that the Jews have more solid
archaeological proof. They call it the Wailing Wall. But then
you’d expect that a reborn nation that builds a great
temple would leave behind more brick and mortar traces than a
carpenter who revolutionizes that same nation by preaching peace
and forgiveness.)
Now it so
happens that while on a photo-taking excursion to the Mayor’s Christmas Parade, I stumbled upon the
truth of another December legend. That’s right --- in this
issue we “out” Santa Claus! Everyone knows about his
seasonal job, but you’ll have to go to the first page of
our Community section and scroll down to about the middle of the
page to find out what he does the rest of the year.
Also on the same
subject, a reader tells Sparky the Wonder Dog of a strange sighting.
In the Review
section, the Theatre Guild of Ancon’s second presentation
of the season, a Christmas magic show oriented toward kids, is duly reported. The
Arts page looks forward to a Panama Oeste New Year’s
tradition, the muñecos that you will see more frequently by the
side of the road as midnight on December 31 approaches.
I also happen to
have a birthday coming between this issue and the next, on which
occasion I’ll reach the buzzardly old age of 51. Perhaps I
will spend it in the pavón style, circling around on a
thermal, sniffing for something gross to eat. Or maybe not.
Not all of the
anniversaries we celebrate this season are happy ones. I write
these words, for example, on the 14th anniversary of the 1989 US
invasion, an event that one will see differently depending on
such factors as partisan affiliation, whether one owned a
business that was looted in the aftermath, whether one lived in
El Chorrillo and so on. Raúl Leis takes a look at one aspect of that
event in our Opinion section.
For me, one of
the saddest things of all about the way that the hated Noriega
dictatorship ended is to hear so many Panamanians say that this
country couldn’t solve that problem, and so had to depend
on the Americans to do it. The senseless destruction of El
Chorrillo may have been the most terrible symbol of what it
means for one nation to depend on another to solve problems that
it should solve for itself, but really, isn’t Panama’s
current political mess another major proof of the same thing?
Because Panamanians didn’t end the dictatorship, the job
was left unfinished and we live under the dictatorship’s
constitution, which in so many ways institutionalizes the
corruption and political games that the current regime has
carried to such nauseating extremes.
Nine days after
this centennial year ends, and just after our next issue
appears, it will be the 40th anniversary of another
controversial event, the Day of the Martyrs that spelled the
beginning of the end for the old Canal Zone. During this past
year Panamanians began to talk and think about this
country’s history, which is good, but we also found out
that most people really don’t know very much about the
subject, which is downright inconvenient when a nation confronts
the task of disentangling itself from an institutional mess.
And yes, the
mostly insincere, mostly self-interested naysayers do have a
point when they argue that a new constitution can’t set
things right if the people expect corruption and vote for people
who uphold this expectation. Which obliquely gets to the point
of my opinion column.
Also in the
Opinion section, Willy Gutman is back with his thoughts after the capture
of Saddam Hussein, General Wesley Clark discusses a non-military issue, and
Norman Girvan discusses a summit that took place here in
Panama. Leading our Spanish Opinion section, we see ANCON’s latest move in the battle to stop
the road through the cloud forest park, with the text of their
latest lawsuit appended.
The news this
time around is dominated by a tragedy that took place in San Miguelito while I was
getting drenched at Panama City’s Christmas parade. The
lost lives of three little boys were grievous enough, but the
surrounding circumstances give pause for some national soul
searching. The story leads our News section and is the subject
of this issue’s Editorial.
Leading the
Spanish section we have a far more upbeat little story, about
the success of this year’s 20-30 Club telethon. The Club Activo 20-30 is composed
of people in their 20s and 30s, mostly from the professional
classes, who do what they can --- which is considerable --- to
see that the funds are there for programs that ensure that needy
Panamanian kids don’t get thrown away like their
counterparts in some of the neighboring countries do.
Our Community
pages also take a couple of glances at what has happened to the
Zonian community. Silvio Sirias, a Nicaraguan-American from LA
who teaches at Florida State University - Panama, looks at the younger generation of those who stay. We also have
a guest article from Dothan, Alabama, where part of the Zonian diaspora has
put down roots.
This is a large
edition of The Panama News, maybe for a small readership ---
people spend less time with the Internet during the holidays ---
but YOU are here, and I hope that you find this issue worthy.
Enjoy.
