No doubt, the model for this mural at the University of Panama’s Curundu campus --- the former Curundu Middle School --- would not be able to find work in Panama’s modeling, advertising or television industries. Those institutions of this country’s less than 10 percent white minority have different standards than our national university’s art students’ and mine.
It’s like that across much of Latin America. In Venezuela, which is going to have a presidential recall election sometime in August, they have this blonde beauty queen industry, and when both the Chávez supporters and the opposition are marching in Caracas, many an observer has noted that the former are the brunettes and the latter the blondes.
But although we don’t have to look far to see the ugliness of racism here in Panama, we also don’t have to look far to see beauty, whether in the people, in the plants or in the culture. Panama’s beauty is so vast that it’s both a tourist attraction and an export commodity --- for examples of the latter, consider Mariano Rivera’s fastballs and Gabriela Sosa’s cinematic creations.
This isn’t a particularly “touristy” issue, but if you look at it, we have begun to expand our services for visitors. The expanded gallery and museum guide and a more comprehensive calendar will surely be a help for certain sorts of tourists to plan their trips to Panama.
Our travel page, though, is Skip Berger’s appreciation of the day the buses didn’t run in Colon. The bus strike failed to win any relief from high fuel prices and was not very effective in the capital, but on the Atlantic side and in the Interior the bus drivers did stay off the job.
Panama is The Crossroads of the World, so it is said, and this issue wanders far afield, particularly in our outdoors pages. So what do whale watching in Mexico and a change in Iceland’s whaling policies have to do with us? In July the International Whaling Commission meets in Italy, and Panama, which has no whaling and just the beginnings of whale watching tourism, and we are a key swing vote for Japan’s move to expand whaling. Last year Mireya’s government voted with the Japanese, Norwegians and other pro-whaling nations, and it was an issue in the May 2 election. When the new Torrijos administration takes office, Panama’s will become a solid anti-whaling vote if promises are kept.
That may disappoint the government of Japan, but our friendship ought to be able to survive such a disagreement. One aspect of those good relations, by the way, is covered in our review section.
The Torrijos administration will also face the persistent question of Panama’s China policy, and this is the subject of this issue’s editorial. We have a massive opinion section this time, because there were many good and important things to choose among, and in an online publication we don’t have the space restrictions inherent in a print newspaper, so I included 10 items instead of the usual six or seven, and three of these are the transcripts of long speeches by Al Gore, George W. Bush and Julian Bond. Looking at this country, Raúl Leis comments on the state of Panamanian criminal justice, I state my views on one proposed constitutional change and Pastor Durán airs a split among the folks who block our streets from time to time.
The street blockade is part of Panamanian political culture, annoying as it may be. But on one recent day it went way beyond a hassle and became Exhibit B or C or X of a wave of criminality that has shocked the nation.
The morning began with my usual newspaper buying errand, at which I met two of the cops from our neighborhood sub-station. They were somber indeed, as a colleague had been slain the day before, less than half a mile from The Panama News office. Police Captain Alejandro Vargas worked in Transito in Colon, but he had a day off and was visiting with relatives when a Curundu street gang tried to rob him of his service revolver. He killed one of his attackers and wounded another, but was himself shot and killed. Captain Vargas was the second Panamanian cop killed by maleantes in two weeks.
Later in the day the kids at Artes y Oficios, the vocational high school across the street from the University of Panama, blocked the street to protest the lack of materials for their shop classes. When the riot police moved in things got quickly chaotic and ordinary hoodlums who had nothing to do with the school joined in. One of the Catholic Church’s monsigniors was stabbed in the leg and robbed. A gas station was robbed. A bunch of drivers who were just caught in the traffic jam had their car windows smashed out. Several dozen students and non-students were arrested, and seven of those detained now face some serious time for armed robbery.
Meanwhile over at the Instituto Nacional the students were blocking the Avenida de los Martires because their principal had been removed by the education minister and the kids really despise the assistant principal who stepped in. Over there one of the neighbors went out onto his balcony with a rifle and began firing warning shots at the students.
Not far from these two riot scenes, the farmers who don’t want to be displaced in a canal expansion plan that floods the Western Watershed --- the Coordinador Campesino en Contra de los Embalses (Farmers’ Coordinator Against the Dams in English) --- were conducting a peaceful protest in front of the Legislative Assembly. But they, too, were affected by violence, as one of their activists claims that he had been kidnapped, beaten unconscious and left for dead a couple of days before.
So what did the president do or say?
Nothing of substance. She was busy with her end-of-administration shopping binges, which have recently taken her to three continents. And the government didn’t even bother to lower the flags to half-staff for Captain Vargas.
So there is a perception that we’re getting drenched in an unusual and intolerable storm of criminality, and the only silver lining in that dark cloud is that Mireya will be gone in a few months and then we will see a new leader whom everybody hopes will show a bit more concern and a bit more common human decency, and take reasonable steps to restore public order.
And despite all the annoyances, there is genuine optimism. One symptom is that I have to work harder on the calendar, because there are more cultural events happening, because the economy is picking up a bit and people are beginning to invest because they expect even better times ahead. I think that the continued growth of The Panama News is another indicator.
So yes, despite the undeniable ugliness, there is plenty of beauty to celebrate down here.
Enjoy.
