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Andrés Rodríguez, the art teacher at Colon's Colegio Abel Bravo who heads the FRENADESSO coalition that staged a strike and protests against the Torrijos administration's Social Security Fund reforms, must have been sending mixed signals. The June 23 march from Parque Porras to the Presidencia took on a family theme, but the black balloons and other symbols give it something of a funereal feeling. But actually the strike was holding together, the Catholic Church was supporting key FRENADESSO demands, more middle class groups were joining in the protests against the unpopular law with each passing day, and despite threats of strikebreaking against the SUNTRACS construction workers union, President Torrijos would back down and suspend the law within less than 48 hours. But at the time Rodríguez didn't know that.

Death march, or celebration of impending victory?

photos by Joel Inwood

As with the other protests against the Social Security Fund (CSS) reforms, people joined in as the marchers made their way along Avenida Central toward the Legislative Palace and beyond.

Why the Disney images? Because shortly before this protest march it was revealed that during the Pérez Balladares administration Martín Torrijos and his family were sent on a trip to Disney World at public expense, through the presidential secret fund. (This, despite a Panamanian culture in which few people understand what it means when gringos call something "Mickey Mouse.")

Black flag as in mourning, not as an expression of anarchism. Panama hasn't much of an anarchist movement, even if the politicians like to accuse anyone who protests against what they do of trying to create anarchy.

A number of the organizations at the center of the protest movement suffered severely under the 21-year dictatorship. In fact the November 29th National Liberation Movement (MLN-29 and its student affiliate FER-29) takes its name from the day in 1969 when its founder Floyd Britton died at the Coiba penal colony.

Ah, but Noriega they associated with pineapples, not Ronald McDonald. The "Pineapple Face" epithet against General Noriega had to do with his chronic severe acne. The McDonald's epithet against President Torrijos is because, other than a few months as vice minister of government and justice during the Pérez Balladares administration and several years thereafter as the leader of the Democratic Revolutionary Party, and now as President of Panama, the only gainful employment the president had to prepare himself for his current responsibilities was managing a McDonald's franchise.

And what did this young man learn on this day? Nothing in school --- his teachers were on the picket lines, and in this march. But on the streets, he learned something about the principles of organized labor, above all to support his dad's striking union. The radicalization of a younger generation during the course of this strike promises to be a factor in Panamanian politics for some time to come.

Is it retro to wear silver shoes and protest to a disco beat? Not really. It's just one more little symbol of how broadly the strike movement's influence spread throughout Panamanian society.

So the cops might be ready to beat heads and make arrests? During the strike some 1,500 protesters were jailed, at least seven people were shot and several more protesters were run down by vehicles driven by PRD members with government jobs. But this was this woman's way of letting the men behind the shields know that she wasn't feeling intimidated by that. Be that as it may, the concern that a violent incident could cause a social explosion with unpredictable consequences was growing on all sides. For example, in front of the University of Panama a few student militants returned the cops' fire with a homemade rocket launcher, and while the anti-strike media played the images up in order to spread fear, others who supported the strike realized that were the police to return fire with their AK-47s or Uzis a piece of corrugated zinc wouldn't avert a tragedy.

The strikers were all fired up, to the point that the next day news media that were hostile to the protests had to admit that the strike was growing rather than diminishing, and the Catholic Church stepped in to ask Torrijos to suspend the law and invite FRENADESSO to negotiations, and to ask the protesters to end street blockages and fights with police.