Or in any case, they soon will be. I went down to the Diablo boat launch the other day to take a few pictures of the preparations that are being made for cayuco racing season, which this year will include four events. The first race of the year will take place between the publications of this issue and the next one, on February 15 off the Amador Causeway.
This being dry season, many of the nation’s more important sports activities are underway.
Our national junior baseball tournament has been especially close and we’ve had a bumper crop of new talent. (One of the outstanding new kids in the tournament, Panama Metro shortstop Kevin Ramos, is being courted by the Detroit Tigers organization. As a lifelong Tigers fan who grieved for the team through last year’s awful season, I take this, along with owner Mike Illich’s purchase of the services of Ivan Rodríguez in the free agent market, as a sign of hope.)
The PGA tour has been on the isthmus. Our under-23 soccer team was in Mexico in search of a spot in the Athens Olympics, which, alas, they didn’t win. Kids are sliding down the hill at the Canal Administration Building on pieces of cardboard. Other kids are perfecting their skateboard moves on the nations, streets, sidewalks and other paved surfaces. Boxer Miguel Callist is training hard for a title shot that keeps appearing and disappearing like a mirage. The big billfish are hitting at Piñas Bay. Surf’s up at Isla Grande. Coming soon will be an international cricket tournament. The nation’s organized mountain bikers are gearing up for one of their main events. The canal’s best linehandlers are working out for the annual linehandlers’ competition.
Meanwhile, photographer Carlos Guardia went with his wife and son and a bunch of folks from ANCON for some treks around the Chiriqui Highlands, and his graphic essay accompanies a report on the road controversy by Eco-Exchange’s Katia Murillo in our Outdoors section. Click here to get Carlos’s panoramic views of what the argument is all about. Our lead News story is also about a series of events related to President Moscoso’s plans to build a road through the Volcan Baru National Park --- and past properties owned by herself and her relatives --- that I’d call mind-boggling, except that it’s par for the course --- and anyway, my mind seems to have been boggled all along. (Maybe that’s why whenever I attend a press conference featuring ANCON’s Lider Sucre these days, my thoughts drift, if but momentarily, to Rocky and Bullwinkle, and more particularly to Boris and Natasha’s supervisor.)
North American TV viewers are getting another dose of the Perlas Islands with the All-Star Survivor competition, and meanwhile the first Survivor show shot down here is finally making it to our national television screens. Is it really true that someone who wears glasses couldn’t figure out how to start a fire without matches or a lighter?
The main spectator sport down here at the moment is, however, electoral politics. The campaign leading up to the May 2 vote dominates our News and Opinion sections. I took my camera to a truly massive José Miguel Alemán rally and a much smaller but far more spirited Martín Torrijos gathering the following day. The final list of candidates is in. The Opinions include PRD stalwart Nils Castro expounding on an aspect of the Omar Torrijos legacy, Liberal Nacional legislative candidate Bob Arango’s argument in favor of his election --- something that, whether he knows it or not, reveals a way of thinking among the Panamanian political class that you may or may not admire --- and my column about this country’s annoying minor parties. Our Spanish Opiniones section, which last time featured a long speech by front-runner Martín Torrijos, this time has a long and detailed presentation by Guillermo Endara --- who seems to be closing the gap between himself and Torrijos --- on his positions on the issues that he believes are important for Panama. The campaign even gets into the Fun section, where the similarities in the propaganda styles of José Miguel Alemán and a cult leader of yesteryear are noted.
The US election season also plays in our Opinion and Letters pages. Willy Gutman does his take on the contenders for the Democratic nomination, we feature a John Kerry speech about special interest politics, and this issue’s letters include a number of arguments about how Howard Dean rather than John Kerry is the man to run the special interests out of power in Washington.
It does seem that Kerry is the ever more likely Democratic nominee, so now we see the anonymous Republican chain emails attacking his record as a decorated hero and high-profile opponent of the Vietnam War. Also circulating on the Internet are GOP trashes of Wesley Clark’s military record.
However, this is not the 2000 election campaign, wherein the Republicans endlessly circulated and re-circulated a libelous screed about Hillary Clinton, Bill Lan Lee and an early 1970s Black Panthers trial, and Al Gore supporters quixotically aimed most of their online wrath at Ralph Nader. This year on the Internet and on the record in other media, Democrats are attacking George W. Bush’s military record and the White House is crying foul.
Bush avoided Vietnam by getting into a special rich kids’ unit of the Texas Air National Guard, and neglected to report for duty the last year of his hitch with that outfit. My man Michael Moore uses the word “deserter” and others say “AWOL,” but I think that these terms, to which are attached certain legal significances, are inappropriate. In Bush’s unit, being the son of the then CIA director meant that W had leave to do whatever he damned well pleased. But if using the wrong words about what Bush did back then may be objectionable, raising the subject should not be.
Despite that, I sure hope that the US campaign doesn’t revolve around such arguments. Of far more relevance to the American electorate should be George W. Bush’s military record as commander in chief. It is properly the subject of review and criticism, as should be the military records of Kerry and Clark and what all the candidates have to say about the invasion of Iraq and the course of America’s confrontation with Al-Qaeda. But much more important those weighty matters --- and I would expect the arguments upon which the election will turn --- are the bread-and-butter economic issues.
Over in the Business section, although I could have treated it as a news, travel or community feature, I report on Charlie Morris’s discussion about Panama Canal security at his recent book presentation at Excedra Books. (I will review his book itself in a future issue.) Morris, a retired US Army colonel who headed the canal’s security force for many years, talked about the entire history of canal defense to an audience that included his successor and many of his former colleagues. The main focus of our Business section piece is the question of canal security after the events of September 11, 2001. Why Business? Because many of the things that have been done to enhance canal security affect some of the nation’s key tourism, recreation and real estate assets, and these costly security measures have by and large not been part of the Panamanian public discourse.
In this issue’s Community section we get to see US Ambassador Linda E. Watt in action, at the very successful American Fair that was recently held on the grounds of the ambassador’s residence. A larger-than-usual Review section gets into music, morning TV talk, the Internet and science fiction. I found myself unintentionally in a position to report on the state of the Transistmica for our Travel section. If you want to know what fossil mammal teeth might have to say about ancient Panama’s vegetation, turn to the Science section.
It’s the time of year when a lot of people are visiting Panama and one of my editorial aims is to show those of you who are not down here some of the reasons why this is so, and to help those of you already on the isthmus or who are about to arrive to plan your activities.
I hope that you will find my efforts, and those of our contributors, worthy. Enjoy.
