Most ads are interactive -- click on them to visit the folks who make The Panama News possible

editorial

Was her death an accident, a suicide, a case of negligent homicide or an outright murder? These facts about the death of Vanessa Márquez, a 19-year-old mother of a young child employed as a prostitute for the Plaza Paitilla Inn's orgy business, are unlikely to ever be answered with the certainty that could stand up in a credible court verdict.

But one thing that may be determined beyond a reasonable doubt is whether the thoroughly corrupt and discredited Panamanian justice system can be made to work in this egregious instance.

Suspended PTJ deputy director Erick Bravo is entitled to the presumption of innocence like anyone else suspected of a crime. However, if it turns out that he did what his boss said he did and the ultimate question before the courts turns out to be whether he gets his job back, then it will be a gross miscarriage of justice. If he did it and the final issue boils down to how many years Bravo will be sent to prison for obstructing justice, there may be some hope.

However, this case has implications that go way beyond the particulars of the PTJ cover-up and the state of Panamanian justice in general.

What kind of society are we? Which values prevail among us? What sort of face do we present to the rest of the world? These are the larger questions in play.

What we are dealing with here are the decadent values of a class of young, politically connected professionals, social climbing wannabe rabiblancos. This class of people was for the most part raised with maids cleaning up their messes behind them, educated to receive diplomas whose reputations exceed their qualities, and installed in jobs at which they are grossly overpaid for the work they do and the skills they apply to their work. They are used to impunity for their wrongful acts. They think they can use their money and connections to get out of anything.

More to the point, such Panamanians habitually use people whom they consider their inferiors and throw them away, whether they be maids, prostitutes or employees of their regular businesses.

Vanessa Márquez died on the job while employed by such people, and rather than show the slightest concern for the little boy she left behind, the immediate responses of these men were blanket denials and an attempt to eliminate proofs of their business and sexual relationship with the young woman.

("Oh no," we can imagine lawyers for the men who participated in the event at the Plaza Paitilla Inn protesting, "she was an independent contractor, not an employee." And that would be a perfect illustration of the point we make.)

As the labor protests against changes to Seguro Social get increasingly bitter and disruptive, understand how they will be connected to the Vanessa Márquez case. What was done to this young prostitute is symbolic of a great part of Panamanian labor relations in general. That's why, in addition to the economically quantifiable huge gulf between rich and poor in this country, there is hardly any real labor-management dialogue here. Although there are honorable exceptions, the norm in Panama is class hostility that ranges from concealed seething resentment to violence in the streets.

If the class violence gets spectacular enough, as it occasionally does, the mainstream North American or European-based media who generally don't cover Panama may buy the local video footage of a masked student radical connecting on the bomb --- a direct molotov cocktail hit on a truckload of riot cops, our educational system's equivalent of an amazing and decisive touchdown pass in a crucial American football game. The corporate mainstream may even send in reporters who know zip about Panama to give us generally shallow and sensationalistic stories that  miss the point that we're dealing with real people with the full range of human faults, virtues and aspirations, who have been molded by certain cultural norms and economic circumstances unfamiliar to the readers and viewers back home.

To the extent that the Vanessa Márquez case becomes known abroad, it is sure to attract a certain sort of business to our shores --- men attracted by this country's legal prostitution and relatively inexpensive whores.

The Panama News does not advocate the prohibition of prostitution, an act whose main effects would be to encourage corruption in our police forces and to fill our prisons with women who have few other options.

But that said, it ought to be recognized that prostitution is an ugly business, one that the government's IPAT tourism bureau should do nothing to encourage.

This is not to say that IPAT director Rubén Blades has done this --- as best we can tell, he has not --- but to recognize that in earlier phases of IPAT's existence the institution did explicitly promote sex tourism and to suggest that the Plaza Paitilla Inn may not be the sort of place to which the government ought to direct foreign visitors.

The trouble with the profit system has always been that it was highly unprofitable to most people.

Neither with the left nor the right --- we’re working with two hands.

Only people with grants for listening to the natives listen to the natives. Any natives at all. And even then they don’t get the idioms.