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Are you visiting Panama in the dry season? You'll have to come back in a rainier month, say July or August, to see one of these orchids in bloom. But then there are also orchid species that flower in the dry season. The growing of both indigenous and exotic orchids is a popular pastime in Panama. Photo by Eric Jackson

A lot happened this past year, both on the isthmus and in the world. The Panama News didn't cover all of it, but then neither did the major corporate media, which on the international level don't pay much attention to this country and on the national level have editorial policies guided by partisan, economic or family loyalties that this publication does not share. Even though we, like all competitors big and small, did not cover everything that would interest anybody, over the year we presented a reasonable composite of what happened in our country and region, one that attracted a growing readership as well as several takeover offers which we could and did refuse.

For a more detailed record, you will want to look at our archives and other sources. For the highlights of 2004 in The Panama News, however, keep reading.

(Remember, when you click on a link to one of the highlighted stories, to come back to this page you should use the back button on your browser because the links on the pages you pull up will be to issues other than this one.)

This Ngobe girl lives in Palmira, in the Chiriqui highlands not far from where Mireya Moscoso intended to build a road that would have gone from Boquete to Cerro Punta, through the Volcan Baru National Park and conveniently past properties owned by Mireya Moscoso and her relatives. As 2004 began there was a great international hue and cry and an unprecedented Panamanian environmentalist mobilization, which was opposed by an "Astroturf" grass roots movement mainly staffed by employees of Mireya Moscoso and the few other landowners who would have benefited. In the end three Moscoso appointees in a row acted in their official capacity as head of the National Environmental Authority to reject the planned road. A few weeks after the election part of Mireya's pro-road "movement," accompanied by armed presidential guards, went on a tree-cutting rampage along the route of the proposed road. Just before leaving office, Moscoso pardoned the members of her goon squad. Photo by Carlos Guardia

The day they shot Remón
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_01_opinion_07.html

Scientist J. Craig Venter visits STRI
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_02/science_01.html

At the beach
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_02/outdoors_01.html

Colombian drug lord nabbed here
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_02/news_02.html

Cayuco racing season culminates on the weekend before Easter of every year, when the Ocean-to-Ocean Race is held. However, there are now several other events before that venerated tradition unfolds, so by February cayuco racing was well underway. Photo by Eric Jackson

Mireyistas rally
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_03/news_01.html

Nils Castro on Omar Torrijos
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_03/opinion_01.html

Guarding the Crossroads
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_03/business_01.html

Environmental impact statement for Volcan Baru road rejected
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_03/news_01.html

A few days after this photo was taken, this boy had his hair cut, put on his uniform and went back to school. (The Panamanian school year begins in March and ends in December.) The deplorable state of Panamanian public education turned out to be a major campaign theme in the runup to the May elections, but few candidates talked much about the dearth of decent public spaces for kids to play. Photo by Eric Jackson

Multiculturalism on the Colon bus
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_05/travel_01.html

Behind the scenes at the Ancon Theater
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_05/arts_03.html

Sossa vs the press
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_05/news_02.html

Presidential debate
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_06/news_04.html

The fiasco that was the Moscoso administration has given Panama's male chauvinists the opportunity to complain that it's an example of how women are not capable of governing. The standard response from most people who are neither Mireyistas nor sexists has been that Panama has a number of women capable of being good presidents, but unfortunately Mireya Moscoso is not one of them. The point is obliquely but effectively made by this University of Panama sculpture, which honors the memory of Clara González, a suffragette, human rights activist, attorney and the nation's first juvenile court judge. Photo by Eric Jackson

Sugar harvest in the Interior
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_08/dining_01.html

Ocean-to-Ocean cayuco race
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_08/sports_01.html

Panama City's urban parks: Ancon Hill
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_08/travel_01.html

History of digital photography
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_08/science_04.html

For observers of the Panamanian political scene, one interesting question of the moment is whether the strong support that Martín Torrijos received from younger voters en route to a 47 percent plurality in a four-way race will hold in future elections and thus radically alter the old electoral equations. It used to be that about one-third of Panamanians would vote PRD no matter what, the Arnulfistas had a solid 20 percent or so that could swell to a winning coalition with the right alliances in the right year, and around 20 percent tended to support a third option to the PRD and Arnulfistas. But last May's poll results could amount to what political scientists call a "realigning election," from which an enduring new majority emerged. Photo by Eric Jackson

Elections
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_09/news_01.html

Reporters Without Borders on the situation in Panama
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_09/opinion_07.html

Editorial: Time to rally behind the president-elect
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_09/editorial.html

Insect fear
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_10/travel_01.html

If you judged it just from Panama's Miss Universe contestants, the models who find work in Panamanian TV commercials or the women pictured in La Prensa's "Ellas" women's magazine, you would think that this country, less than 10 percent of whose population is white, is completely gaga about blondes. Other Panamanians, however, like the painter of this mural at the University of Panama's Harmodio Arias campus, have different standards of beauty. Photo by Eric Jackson

The day Colon's buses didn't run
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_11/travel_01.html

Japanese-Panamanian friendship concert
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_11/review_01.html

Mainstream reporting about Colombia
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_11/opinion_06.html

When American medicine came to Panama
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_12/science_01.html

The Panama Canal Authority is trying to close down the Pedro Miguel Yacht Club. Since the events of September 11, 2001 canal security has emerged as one of the key arguments asserted in favor of this move, but the authority was trying to oust the club before those attacks took place and the argument ought to be seen in the context of a drive by various well connected private interests to control the national marina scene. In any case, the ACP's hassles were no more effective than the July rains at keeping this crowd of Americans from converging on the Pedro Miguel Yacht Club to celebrate the Fourth of July. Photo by Karen Coffey

Constitutional debate
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_13/opinion_01.html

Eric's jam
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_13/dining_01.html

Panama vs Miami
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_14/travel_01.html

Boxing night at Figali
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_14/sports_01.html

Arnulfismo got its start in a 1920s group called Acción Comunal, whose members dressed up in Ku Klux Klan robes and advocated the expulsion of West Indian blacks and all persons of Asian or Middle Eastern descent from Panama. Thus, even though the sordid corruption and expensive frivolity of her administration may have mortally wounded the Arnulfista Party that takes its name from her late husband Arnulfo Arias, in this, one of the last photo-ops of Mireya's administration, she went back to her movement's ideological roots. More than 2,000 people were rounded up in sweeps through poor neighborhoods and roundups of illegal immigrants, but most of Mireya's proposed "get tough" anti-crime legislation was rejected by the Legislative Assembly. Photo courtesy of the Presidencia

ACP moves to evict primate sanctuary
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_15/outdoors_01.html

The Fundamental Issue
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_15/opinion_01.html

Human Rights Watch on Mireya's hard hand
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_15/opinion_08.html

Anona Kirkland turns 100
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_16/community_01.html

A fresh start for a new Panama? Martín Torrijos won the presidential sash by waging a cautious campaign centered around a cryptic "Sí se puede" (Yes you can) slogan, largely on the correct supposition that people were disenchanted with Mireya and her governing coalition and would for the most part turn to the PRD as the alternative. So far Torrijos has been as cautious a president as he was a candidate, but it seems that the notion of democracy as alternating opportunities to steal may be discarded by way of criminal prosecutions for the abuses of the prior regime. At least that's part of what many people expect from a president who pledged "zero corruption" during his campaign. In his inaugural address Torrijos talked tough about corruption and blasted Mireya Moscoso's last-minute pardons of several anti-Castro terrorists. Photo by René Espinosa, courtesy of the Presidencia

Martín Torrijos inaugural address
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_17/news_03.html

Rubén Blades in his new role
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_18/business_01.html

New government inherits a flawed overpass
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_18/business_03.html

CPJ on jailed Cuban journalists
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_18/opinion_04.html

This past October indigenous people from North and South America, some who came from as far away as Alaska or Tierra del Fuego, finished a relay race by meeting at the Bridge of the Americas and camping near the bridge for several days of ceremony and fellowship. Photo by Susan Little

Building for floods
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_19/Opinion_10.htm

Cretins, killers and kleptocrats
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_19/Opinion_06.htm

Kuna words coloring book
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_19/Humor_02.html

Running with the pack
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_20/review_01.html

Early in September an old wooden tenement building near the Don Bosco Basilica finally began to fall down, and the task of ordering the dangerous eyesore's final demolition fell upon the new Housing Minister, Balbina Herrera. The place was home to dozens of people, and also the locale to which for many years Panamanians had taken their rattan and wicker furniture to be refurbished. With a little help from city hall, the wicker workers set up temporary little shops across the street from their old premises. Photo by Eric Jackson

Panama City's patriotic parades
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_21/news_01.html

Continuing Banco Disa cases highlight weak rule of law
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_21/business_02.html

A neighborhood reacts to a shocking crime
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_22/community_01.html

Embera and Wounaan art
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_22/arts_01.html

Bonsai bougainvillea: As contributor Luis Menéndez points out, the art of bonsai is different down here because, unlike in temperate China and Japan where this sort of gardening originated and was perfected, our tropical climate and flora dictate different choices of plants, which require different sorts of care. Photo by Luis Menéndez

Isla Iguana Wildlife Refuge
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_23/travel_01.html

US and Panama cooperate and argue about cattle diseases
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_23/business_01.html

The late great jazzman Victor Boa
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_24/arts_01.html

Former National Bank of Panama CEO on the run
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_24/news_01.html

Actually, this newspaper's struggle with an Atlanta hoodlum has been nothing so nearly passive as just waiting. But of course, Tom McMurrain had the active support of former Vice-President Arturo Vallarino, former Bocas del Toro Mayor Eladio Robinson, former Bocas regional IPAT director Mauricio López, Attorney General José Antonio Sossa and prosecutor Julio Laffaurie. Given the lineup and anticipated changes in government, it thus became necessary to show some patience and hold off on any legal counteroffensives until conditions changed. Moreover, several events, mostly unexpected and mostly beyond this newspaper's control, intervened in this matter.

First, McMurrain's get-rich-quick teak and noni plantation scam collapsed at about the same time of his emailed extortion note and the publication of the four-part "Anatomy of a Scam." He tried to pick up the pieces of his real estate and commodities fraud by linking up with a British company to try to sell $100,000 Bocas del Toro tree houses to gullible foreigners who have never heard of our tropical termites, shallow-rooted trees or arboreal snakes. Through attorney Michael Pierce and would-be mediator Jesse Hall, McMurrain offered to drop the criminal defamation charges against this newspaper's editor in exchange for the erasure of all unflattering references, a deal that was rejected out of hand. It seems that McMurrain or his confederates had an information source within the Moscoso administration, as Pierce made that offer one last time on the eve of a surprising announcement --- Mireya had pardoned the editor, along with several anti-Castro terrorists, about 70 other journalists, a bunch of crooks from her administration and a few garden-variety criminals.

Then in mid-September Uncle Sam caught up with McMurrain, by way of an extradition request based on a massive indictment arising from a fraudulent pyramid scheme based on a chain of Georgia loan shark operations. The feds say McMurrain siphoned off millions from investors, including the startup money for a dot-com venture that went bust. Somewhere along the way McMurrain was spooked by the heat in Atlanta --- he told The Panama News that he had to leave Atlanta because of the black people there --- and he fled to Costa Rica, where he promoted a "new country" colonization scam until the local authorities obliged him to move on. It was unfortunate but not surprising that Panama took McMurrain in and allowed him to continue his criminal activities with impunity. McMurrain's downfall came about not because of Panamanian intervention, but because he wasn't a Panamanian citizen and he was wanted by US authorities bearing a valid arrest warrant. As the year ended McMurrain was awaiting trial in a US detention center but several of his accomplices were trying to revive San Cristobal Land Development, the corporate vehicle for his real estate and commodities frauds here. If convicted on all 160-odd counts against him, McMurrain could spend decades in prison.

So does that make it all a wash? Hardly.

This newspaper was the victim of an extortion attempt, a takeover strategy that goes way beyond McMurrain's email. The threat in this extortion scheme depended on the cooperation of the Public Ministry, which was given despite the fact that even the most cursory glance at the operation that McMurrain said was defamed in a couple of our 2003 articles should have revealed to prosecutor Julio Laffaurie and Attorney General José Antonio Sossa that what they were dealing with was a real estate and commodities fraud against which they should have taken action. Instead, whether out of hatred for the press, support for organized crime or some other perhaps unfathomable motive, they improperly sided with McMurrain and used abusive tactics in doing so.

McMurrain had the active support of the Public Ministry, but now that's under different management. It no longer seems to be such a quixotic exercise to seek justice for the state-sponsored extortion attempt that was launched against The Panama News. McMurrain is not likely to get out of US custody for many years, but a number of his accomplices are still here and The Panama News is ready to begin its legal counteroffensive.

The following are the 2004 highlights of the McMurrain story:

McMurrain's extortion note
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_06/letters_01.html

Anatomy of a Scam, part 1:
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_07/business_02.html

part 2:
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_08/business_01.html

part 3:
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_09/business_02.html

and part 4:
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_10/business_02.html

McMurrain arrested
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_18/news_04.html

Panama derives its name from an indigenous word that means "abundance of fish." That we have, but not like we used to. In 2004 the sale of Panamanian fishing licenses to foreign, mostly Asian, commercial fishing interests and severe poaching around Coiba Island became important political issues. Thus the Torrijos government may have reason to pay more attention to fishery policy matters than has been the case under previous administrations. This photo, taken by Eric Jackson at the Municipal Seafood Market on Avenida Balboa in Panama City, is also symbolic of the sometimes controversial relationship between Panama and Japan. The Japanese donated this facility to Panama, and allegedly in appreciation of Japanese aid but against the wishes of most Panamanians, the Moscoso administration generally sided with Japan in the International Whaling Commission. President Torrijos promised that his administration will be anti-whaling and that will disappoint the Japanese.



Also in this section:
Looking back at 2004
Gómez replaces Sossa, promises cleanup
Special legislative session on taxes, Seguro
Noriega wins in court, but torture victim vows to continue the battle
Panama News Briefs

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