Above we get a glimpse of today’s Panama Canal Railway, successor to the Panama Railroad that was completed on January 28, 1855. That railroad project, the first to link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans anywhere, also marked the establishment of three of Panama’s ethnic communities, the Americans, the Chinese and the West Indians.
The Panama Historical Society marked the occasion with a round-trip train ride and day trip to Colon, and that has been the occasion for the publication of our most graphic issue of The Panama News to date. The railroad anniversary and PHS are just one of the stories herein to come from that excursion, the others being a photographic visit to the oldest Protestant church on the Meso-American mainland, the Anglican place of worship across from the Hotel Washington, Christ Church by the Sea; a travel section thing on Fort San Lorenzo; and a little photo feature on Colon bus art.
I also managed to get out to Cocle province to visit the annual Girl Scout Camp and duly record some of the improvements to their campground since last I visited a couple of years ago. (This campground is available for scout groups from other countries to rent, by the way.) Also while in the Penonome area I took notice of a bit of Panamanian folk architecture and the government’s campaign to keep hantavirus and the rodent vectors that carry it under control.
The start of Panama’s cayuco racing season was the stuff of another illustrated feature. As was our visit to the recently opened Panama Vacation Quarters, whose business model is to create and fill a niche in the national tourism market.
But of course, this issue is being produced during Carnival and as I am about to head for the Darien, which interruptions will cause part of this issue to be uploaded a little earlier than usual and another part later. (You won’t get my Carnival pictures until the next issue. Even when maintaining sanity is not an option, there comes a point when an editor must set a deadline. But this lets those of you who took cool Carnival pics of your own extra time to send them in to be published in The Panama News.)
The most fun bit of reporting I did this time was not a suitable occasion for photography. The Japanese government is promoting its cultural ties with this region during the whole of this year, and as a part of it brought the brilliant Fujii sisters to the Teatro Nacional to play variations on the classics with piano and flute. It was a truly wonderful concert.
Of course, not everything in the news is fun. Closest to home, one of the most unfun things affecting The Panama News at the moment is the hospitalization of artist Janet Levi, whose Kuna Words coloring book is serialized in our fun section. Janet has been fighting a long illness and all of her family, friends and colleagues are pulling for her victory in this battle.
Also, it’s never a lot of fun when taxes go up. The recent tax increase leads our business section, and the somewhat related end of Martín Torrijos’s honeymoon with public opinion is the lead news story this time. In the Spanish news section, we publish the entire text of the new tax law, which is surely the most massive document that this newspaper has ever run and which will take a bit longer than usual for you to download. As one might expect under the circumstances, taxes are also a big theme in this issue’s letters to the editor.
Even less fun for taxpayers is the obligation to pay for the corrupt acts of former public officials. The Panamanian government has just lost an arbitration, to the tune of $32 million, because Mireya Moscoso’s hoodlum regime took the contract to build a new bus terminal for Colon away from a French company and gave it to members of the Mireyista inner circle and their relatives.
A little farther afield, in fellow Bolivarian republics and among our opinion pages, Venezuela remains a hot topic. From Venezuela’s English-language VHeadline we have Carlos Herrera’s take on what looks to him like the subsidence of a crisis between the governments in Caracas and Bogota, and from the Committee to Protect Journalists we have a protest about the Chávez government’s prosecution of an opposition journalist. Neither of those situations are very much fun.
I fear that Herrera’s optimism may be premature. Venezuela and Colombia may be arguing principles of national sovereignty, the former crying foul over Colombia’s kidnapping of a FARC leader in Caracas, the latter crying foul over Venezuela harboring the guy in the first place. But the methodology has to be of great concern to Hugo Chávez. Álvaro Uribe didn’t send in his own kidnappers, but hired members of the Venezuelan security forces to do the job. Bogota’s message --- and I suspect Washington’s --- was that not only is Colombia currently harboring the leader of the failed US-backed 2002 coup against Chávez, but it’s also subverting the Venezuelan forces and setting the stage for another coup attempt. Thus Chávez has not only been shoring up his international support in various ways, he’s also arming and training militias and reserves to resist new efforts to overthrow Venezuelan democracy.
I fear that the CPJ’s concern may be too one-sided. Columnist Patricia Poleo obtained some leaked information from the confidential case file in the investigation of prosecutor Danilo Anderson’s assassination and she’s being charged with violating secrecy.
Danilo Anderson was investigating the organizers and instigators of the 2002 coup that Poleo and her father’s newspaper supported when he was murdered. Poleo’s leaks were a rather transparent exercise in yellow journalism, a self-serving pro-coup spin that threw mud at the late Anderson by taking a part of a murder case file in which various possible motives were examined and presenting it as “proof” that the man was engaged in mafia activities.
I wish that Venezuelan authorities would cease and desist from hassling reporters about leaks and sources, just as I wish the same when US authorities do these things to American reporters. To put it crudely, it would be a great stride forward for Venezuelan democracy if Hugo Chávez would learn how to say “you asshole!” rather than call the cops when the opposition press publishes trashy disinformation.
And the Committee to Protect Journalists needs to examine its standards and biases as well. The CPJ did not support me when I was prosecuted on bogus criminal defamation charges brought by a now incarcerated American racketeer who was supported by Panamanian politicians and who used those legal proceedings as a lever in an extortion attempt aimed at forcing me to sell The Panama News to him. Yet when they pick and choose which Latin American journalists to support, they routinely back the most obnoxious and least truthful elements of the Venezuelan press.
Ms. Poleo’s legal defense merits support because all journalists should stand united against prosecutions aimed at forcing colleagues to divulge confidential sources. However, we should also readily call yellow journalism by its proper name and identify its purveyors as such.
I think that the CPJ would do well to become more sensitive to such subtleties, and to adopt a more broad-minded view of the threats to freedom of the press in our region.
The bottom line about Venezuela is that even though the overwhelming results of last year’s recall vote ought to have decided who runs the country until the next elections, powerful forces within that country and abroad refuse to accept the verdict and their continued assaults on Venezuelan democracy are provoking counter-measures that infringe freedoms that ought to be defended. It’s not a very happy situation, and giving unqualified support to the coup supporters is not the way to improve things.
But why do I sit in front of a computer pondering such unpleasantries when, after all, it’s Carnival?
Most of all, because if I took Carnival off to party, this issue --- with its good and bad news --- wouldn’t get done. Plus I like what I do. (It helps to have a dark sense of humor in the face of awful events, and an appreciation of life’s simple pleasures.)
Besides, I have already done a bit of Carnival celebrating, and will do more. Which is one convenient excuse why parts of this issue will be uploaded later than scheduled. (A likely story --- but it's my story and I'm sticking to it!)
If you are here in Panama for the party, have a good time, don’t make a drunken nuisance of yourself and take care that you don’t become an unfortunate statistic.
And enjoy.
