Jackson, Decisions the gringo community must make

Many people who are dual citizens don’t like to advertise that fact. A lot of times it’s a matter of being a person with one foot in each nation, being mistrusted by people in both. But there are a lot of us Panagringo duals here, distributed along a 180° cultural spectrum from purely panameño to purely gringo.

Then there are the American expatriates, some of whom live in their insulated social bubbles, some of whom try to blend in with Panamanian society, and most existing in a continuum between these extremes.

We have all for various reasons chosen not to live in the United States, but we all bring something of Americana with us. How much? Well, that varies. Most of us have strong opinions about what’s going on back in the States, but it’s mostly the newcomers who insist on viewing and judging everything and everybody through an American lens, as if we were in Texas or Massachusetts.

I am not, and I do not pretend to be, a spokesman for the local gringo community. I’m just a guy who publishes an online newspaper. If all the Americans living here got together to elect a representative, it wouldn’t be me. I wouldn’t run for such an office in the first place.

Nor am I impressed by those among us who put on pompous airs. There is no organization that fully and truly represents Panama’s American community --- just like in the States, we are an amazingly fractious bunch. The people who suck up to Panamanian elites or US ambassadors in hopes of being anointed gringo community leaders tend to be the least representative of all.

Despite our differences there some things we Americans hold in common, and other things about which we ought to reach a consensus. Speaking as a Panamanian now, there are also decisions that Panama needs to make about the gringos.

For example, people will congregate where they will, but there are laws against housing discrimination in the USA and we should have them here. Gated residential communities that are only advertised in English, in which people are sold a dream of English-only American suburbia (but with lower food prices and cheap maids) can only stir up resentments against all of us. Recall that this has been tried here on a grand scale, and over several generations that social experiment incited violent passions that reached their peak in the deadly confrontations of January 1964 and only subsided with the 1977 Torrijos-Carter Treaties. The days of colonialism are over, and a ghetto scene isn’t such a hot idea either. These are things that Americans shouldn’t want and Panamanians shouldn’t tolerate.

That’s the easy question about the expat influx. Far more complicated are the subtleties of balancing the economic and social effects in places like Boquete and Bocas del Toro, which in turn are similar to the problems and benefits of gentrification in Colon and the Casco Viejo. How do we arrange things so that the arrival of relatively wealthy newcomers benefits long-time community residents rather than driving them out?

It’s easy enough to reject the land grabbing that went on under the Mireyista regime --- but which certainly did not start with that administration --- wherein the squatter rights of residents who had lived in places for many decades were trampled in favor of developers and speculators, usually with the assistance of corrupt public officials. Even when everything is done legally and properly, however, an uncontrolled influx of wealth distorts the market, disrupts established ways of life and creates social tensions. This is mostly a public policy problem to be resolved by Panama, but the problem for Americans is that even if the socially irresponsible speculators and the politicians they buy have the power to enforce “free market” policies at the expense of community interests, aligning the American community with these elements of Panamanian society is an unpopular and in the long run probably a costly thing to do.

For another example, it’s one thing for people of all nationalities to partake of Panama’s freewheeling economic life but something else for foreigners to use this country as a base of operations for international criminal activities. Even if we have an attorney general who protected the fraudulent “offshore asset protection guru” Marc Harris --- now a long-term resident of a US federal prison --- and went so far as to deputize Harris’s foreign thugs to make arrests here. Even if mayors and vice-presidents and provincial IPAT officials treated Bocas real estate fraudsters as leaders of our community.

Americans would be wise to shun the hustlers. They are not us, they are them. More to the point, the Panamanian government needs to throw such people out of the country.

My advice for Americans thinking of moving here? Learn Spanish. As much as you can, leave the bitter social divisions and the exclusionary attitudes of the place where you used to live behind you. Don’t be too quick to disrespect things that you don’t understand. Don’t be overly impressed by flashy displays of wealth or power. Be a positive force in your neighborhood, not so that people will look up to you as some sort of leader or savior, but for your own private sense of dignity.

We gringos have been here on the isthmus for more than 150 years. Not all of that history is the sort of thing of which we should be proud, but much of it is. We will be here for a long time to come, and the collective quality of our way of life here will in large part depend on whether we demonstrate that profound sense of decency in the American spirit, or on the contrary put that part of Americana which is base, superficial and unworthy on a pedestal where it does not belong. The distinction is one that must come from within ourselves and our community, rather than from alleged Panamanian friends who worship Disney World as the pinnacle of our culture.

We have decisions to make. There will be consequences for the values that we embrace or reject. Let us choose wisely.

Also in this section:
Leis, What our newly inaugurated officials should do
Jackson, Things that Panama's Americans must decide
What they're saying about the attacks on Kerry's military record
Giuliani, Thank God George W. Bush is our president
Aldredge & Kelley, Protests at the Republican National Convention
Thomas & Thomas, SouthCom's contortions to define its role
Human Rights Watch, The Guantanamo military tribunals
Vacca, The Greater Caribbean This Week
Bolivarians, About the pardons of Cuban terrorists
Bernal, Where is the University of Panama going?

opinion

Decisions we need to make