community

El Millon is the hilltop that, in the 19th century, was a farm owned by an American, a Mr. Perry. From that ownership, El Millon and the adjacent areas, across Via España and down toward Marbella and up Via España until it turns into Avenida Central and heads into San Miguel, derive the name Perejil, the hispanicized pronunciation of Perry’s Hill. The neighborhood is next door to, and downhill from, Panama City’s ritzy La Cresta neighborhood. It’s the upper end, in more ways than one, of the capital’s hardscrabble corregimiento of Calidonia.

Perry’s Hill is topped by one of the city’s most rigorous and prestigious schools, the Jesuits’ Colegio Javier. A half-century ago, this was an upper-middle-class enclave of professionals and business owners, but in recent decades it has slipped a few notches on the social and economic scale.

Still, El Millon is a bastion of the capital’s hard-pressed middle class and home to a fair number of government workers. It has a substantial Muslim population, most of which traces ancestry to the Indian subcontinent, a lot of families who choose to live there because they want their kids to go to Colegio Javier, a small but noticeable gay and lesbian element and about a half-dozen Gringos in residence. Most of its businesses are owned by Asians, primarily Chinese but also a few Hindus and Muslims. Among the newer residents are a number of university students.

Though some people in La Cresta may be terrified of the place, El Millon is not a high crime area. People in this neighborhood are unused to things that might catch the attention of few other than those directly involved and the gory tabloid press a mile away. And so it was that when, late in the afternoon of November 13, a robber entered the Mini-Super Sol Dorado on El Millon’s Calle Tercera that grocer Luis Chan and his wife and daughters operate, and in the course of his crime shot Mr. Chan in the chest, this was a shocking thing to the neighbors.

The Chans’ neighbors did not shut their doors and windows and cower in fear. A number of them came out of their homes and apartments, observed the young man running from the scene of the crime toward the slums of Curundu, and provided descriptions and other information to the police, who arrived promptly. The Panama News will not attribute infallibility to any human being or institution, nor will we attack the principle of innocent until proven guilty, but with the neighbors' help the police quickly detained a suspect. At first blush, and subject to testing in a court of law, it seems that the cops got their man.

Mr. Chan survived the attack and members of his family told this reporter --- whose office is about a half-dozen doors down from the scene of the crime, and who is a frequent customer at the Mini-Super Sol Dorado --- that they think he will pull through. However, as we uploaded this issue he was still hospitalized.

On paper, the area has a neighborhood watch group, knows as the Vecinos Vigilantes. However, there had not been a meeting for at least a couple of years. Be that as it may, enough of the residents spontaneously reacted as a neighborhood watch group ought to react, which made it easier for the police to do their job in this case.

The crime jolted a number of the residents into action. A meeting was scheduled at the Junta Comunal, a few doors toward Via España from the Chans’ business, for the following Monday night.

It was standing room only in the lobby of the Junta Comunal that night, with a number of people left standing outside. The police, headed by Major P. Ramos, were there. Calidonia’s youthful PRD representante Ramón Ashby Chial, re-elected to a new term this past May and the resident of an apartment across Calle Primera from The Panama News office, was there with the corregidor. There were no identity politics conspicuously on display, but the main elements of the neighborhood all had some representation in the crowd.

As the meeting started, several middle-aged women began to voice their complaints about slow responses to police calls, and to demand that a public stairway at the end of Calle Primera and the beginning of Calle Tercera be closed.

Things got fairly chaotic. It wasn’t that anybody was particularly belligerent, but by and large Panamanians are not “joiners.” There is a prevailing attitude that politics is a job for the politicians. People who came of age during the 22-year dictatorship carry this emotional baggage of fears, that they might be misled into trouble, that they might be deceived into parting with their money or energy for somebody else’s personal benefit. There is an undercurrent of mistrust between the young adults who came of age in democratic times and are more open to new ideas and the more skeptical older generation.

Most notably, it was a room full of people without skills or experience at running or participating in a meeting, at times a collection of individuals trying to shout out their points of view all at once.

As one might expect at any neighborhood gathering of people concerned about crime, there was a generalized fear and loathing of the “piedreros” --- literally, crackheads, but to some in the crowd expanded to mean any indigent from outside the neighborhood, and the garbage pickers, most of them black, who make their rounds of barrels and dumpsters throughout the city and then come through the neighborhood on their way to the scrap metal buyers on Avenida Siete, the street at the bottom of the stairway that some wanted closed, and in fact the stairway to which the robber fled after shooting Luis Chan.

The important local geographical fact about Avenida Siete, a street that runs at an oblique angle from the point where Via España bends and becomes Avenida Central near the Novey hardware store, is that its intersection with Avenida Nacional is the only pedestrian outlet for anyone who wants to walk, or run, from Perejil to the miserable tenements of Curundu, which are home to many an actual piedrero in the strict sense of the word.

That street, and the stairway in question, also forms the route by which many Perejil residents walk to and from jobs at government offices in the former Canal Zone part of Curundu, or at the Hospital Santa Fe or other establishments. It’s the natural pedestrian choke point for the whole area, and to the extent that crime is a problem, a logical place to put a little police post.

Which, in fact, is what Ramón Ashby did a few years ago. The little hut was erected in some parking spaces owned by a local business, which shared the premises as part of a condominium with residents in upstairs apartments and some other businesses.

However, the budget to provide water and electricity for the police post was cut, and one of the owners of one of the properties at the condominium objected to the building, complaining that she had not been consulted. So the police post, past which any criminal fleeing on foot from Perejil to Curundu would either have to pass or avoid by scaling walls and fences, has been closed.

Ashby explained the problem, and a small neighborhood delegation was organized to visit the Ministry of Government and Justice, of which the National Police are a part, to see about getting the police post reopened.

Meanwhile, one businesswoman complained that it took too long for the police to come for a shoplifter, and another complained about the odor of marijuana smoke from a certain apartment, and another complained of a dysfunctional 104 police emergency phone number, and so on --- all at once.

Major Ramos tried to calm things. People didn’t particularly want to hear how much worse it is down the street in San Miguel. They were demanding immediate solutions to a long train of annoyances, real or perceived.

“We’re not here for an argument,” Ramos pleaded. “We’re here to figure out how to make things better.” He promised greater police attention to the area, which in the days following was visible for all who cared to see it. And the logical suggestion arose that the area needed to revitalize its neighborhood watch group. A meeting was scheduled for the following Thursday, on Calle Primera in front of the building where the representante lives.

A slightly different crowd, and a little bit bigger one, showed up for the neighborhood watch meeting. Ashby couldn’t be there due to other municipal business. The crowd was a little bit older, with most of the human connective tissue that makes El Millon a neighborhood --- the lady who takes the injured stray cats to the vet, the woman who organizes the Catholic kids’ Christmas caroling, one of the men we see driving the Muslim boys to Friday prayers at the mosque, and so on --- in attendance. Members of the Calidonia junta comunal who live in other parts of the corregimiento showed up.

People came to this meeting to act rather than complain, and Major Ramos was running the show.

This time, when the major noted the frequency with which his colleagues have been killed on the job, and talked about parts of his beat where robberies happen all the time, murders are common and there are people who make their living selling crack, nobody interrupted him. An overhead projector was set up and a transparency of the robbery and theft log from the first half of October was displayed. Yes, Perejil had some thefts and a robbery in those weeks, but relatively little compared to the rest of the police patrol area.

What ought to be the concerns of El Millon, according to Major Ramos? Kids getting into drugs and alcohol. Domestic violence. Parents who expect the schools, the churches, the police or anybody other than themselves to teach their children decent values. He exhorted parents to take an interest in their kids, to know what they’re doing, to make sure that they are off the streets when the curfew hour rolls around, to make sure they study.

The major reminded people that it’s also illegal for adults to drink alcoholic beverages on the street, and that every person aged 18 or older must by law carry his or her cedula when out of the house.

There was an update on the little police post. Some of the residents of the Avenida Siete condominium expressed disgust with the lady who complained, and said that they want the police around, especially at night. Promises were not made, but after the meeting Major Ramos said he’s optimistic about the little building going back into use.

Problems with the 104 emergency number and dispatching system were acknowledged, and cops passed out flyers with the numbers of the local precinct station.

Major Ramos noted that, given the antiquated state of police communications, the acquisition of a simple cell phone would do a lot to increase the efficiency of the patrols he oversees. A young man suggested that a collection be taken right then for that purpose, but many of his elders were cool to the suggestion. One man, slightly better dressed than most of the others and identifying himself as a PRD activist in the legislative circuit, argued that it’s up to the representante, not the residents, to get the police patrol their cell phone. The woman who organizes the Christmas carolers thought that it would be rude to take a public collection that might embarrass the people who didn’t happen to have any money to spare at the moment. In the end, no collection was taken.

It was suggested that those buildings without names or numbers shown out front identify themselves with signs visible from the street, so that police responding to calls can more surely and quickly get to where they are needed.

Though nobody seemed very eager to have himself or herself appointed as a community leader, it was generally agreed that there ought to be more neighborhood meetings of this sort.

Such was El Millon’s organized response to an outrage to which the residents were unaccustomed. On a smaller and more personal level, there were those who attended the Friday afternoon mass at the Don Bosco Basilica, where the priest prayed for Luis Chan’s quick and complete recovery, and the steady stream of customers who asked Mrs. Chan and her daughters about her husband’s and their father’s condition, and offered their sympathy.

One reaction that this reporter never heard in El Millon --- but something that he almost always encountered as a young wardheeler in a small city in the Great Lakes Rust Belt whenever violent crime raised its ugly head --- was anybody saying that he or she intended to move out to get away from the problem. It’s one of the salient differences between the American and Panamanian urban cultures.

It seems that the people in this corner of Panama City are not disposed to be driven from their homes by maleantes, nor to surrender to barbarism anytime soon.

Also in this section:
City neighborhood reacts to a crime
Minnesota National Guard helps Arraijan school
AIDS awareness
Edna Cordova

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