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Business & Economy Briefs
 

Blades plays variations on old themes at tourism forum

by Eric Jackson

Long ago, this reporter was involved as a participant in several roles in controversies over development in a hardscrabble little Rust Belt city, and as an observer and occasionally a reporter of similar issues in nearby communities. There was in those times and places a certain syndrome observable among many Chamber of Commerce types, wherein the people and resources on hand are denigrated in favor of a stereotypical batch of millionaires from elsewhere upon whom hopes of an area’s economic and cultural revival are posited. Sometimes parts of the strategies advanced by those suffering from this syndrome prosper, and old warehouse and factory districts become gentrified --- but usually things don’t turn out the way that the Chamber of Commerce predicted because the upscale new residents don’t think and behave like the stereotype predicted they would. Usually, however, the hordes of free-spending rich new customers never arrived, or came, took one cursory look and left unimpressed, and in the wake of another failed urban revival scheme a new batch of movers and shakers arose within local business circles and with them comes a new set of allied politicians. And then the cycle started all over again.

Why this extraneous lead paragraph on a story about the annual tourism forum put on by Panama’s local American Chamber of Commerce? Because this time around, as much by what was not said and by what has been done in another context by other institutions represented at the forum, we were treated to an example of Rust Belt idiocy by people who ought to know better.

Let us not blame AMCHAM or the forum’s organizer, Nancy Hanna --- the lady who runs the one private Panamanian English-language Panama-oriented website that consistently attracts more visitors than The Panama News --- for the dismaying news. They just provided the stage from which word of the unfortunate malady was manifested, and that’s a worthy public service in and of itself. Moreover, there were some shining moments and presentations of very useful information in the course of the afternoon’s proceedings at the Hotel Miramar.

Understand that, largely but not only due to the role played by Valle Escondido developer Sam Taliaferro in the previous two fora of this series, the buzzword used to be “residential tourism.” According to that concept, foreign retirees, some of them wealthy by anyone’s standard and almost all of them upscale in comparison to Panamanian norms, would move their households here, do business with the locals, visit the tourist attractions that Panama has to offer, and moreover bring in their friends and relatives to visit, who then multiply the benefits to local businesses. And particularly in Boquete, the Bocas del Toro archipelago, the beach and mountain communities of Panama Oeste and Cocle, and Panama City’s Casco Viejo neighborhood, this process is at work, bringing many benefits and a few problems for the nation’s economy.

The forum’s principal speaker, however, didn’t talk about “residential tourism.” He spoke about wealthy foreigners establishing a second home in Panama, and a set of government policies oriented toward making that happen. It’s a big difference and if it could be called subtle then one would do well to bear in mind that this particular speaker, IPAT director and tourism minister Rubén Blades, is internationally renowned for his brilliance in the subtleties that are central to artistic creation and interpretation.

So why pay attention to what wasn’t said? Because Blades is a member of a cabinet that sent proposed law to the legislature that would subject many of the foreigners who have sold their homes abroad and relocated their households to Bocas del Toro to summary dispossession. He was a party to the breaking of promises made by the government that he serves to foreigners who had in good faith paid substantial amounts of money to people who in good faith had rights of possession in land that was thereby transferred. By these actions the government he serves has done much to trash the concept of “residential tourism,” now replaced with talk of attracting people to establish second homes here. Sure, the proposed law is likely to be amended and then litigated, such that the dispossessions to which it opens the way may never actually happen. But the message has been sent.

That message is that the foreign retirees whom Panama has attracted are not valued, that they’re generally not rich and stupid enough to yield the desired amount of fleece, so it’s OK to cheat them and lie to them and mainly just ignore them in favor of that small group of the international ultra-rich upon whom the government is now apparently pinning its hopes.

Might Blades now claim that the message that he and his colleagues in the cabinet sent has been misinterpreted, that the change in his rhetorical emphasis is unrelated to the insular properties legislation that he held forth as progress before the AMCHAM forum? If he does it would be unfair --- pleading a cabinet meeting, he left right after his talk and thus did not stay for the question and answer session, which leaves only the words of his presentation and the deeds of the government he serves as the bases for fair interpretation of his intentions.

Recall that last year’s AMCHAM forum was the first public speech that Blades gave as a public servant. This time he reviewed the goals he expounded before the organization a little more than a year earlier, quite frankly and forthrightly. On a number of points, for example the taking of a province-by-province audit of available tourism resources, he noted that budget cutbacks have delayed the progress for which he had hoped. He also noted that for most of the past year a legal rumble over rights to ad contracts, property rights to slogans and images and so forth kept Panama’s international advertising campaign off the air and out of print.

The promotional campaign, Blades said, is “underway, finally,” and it’s “not only directed abroad.

Blades told tales of untangling intra-governmental knots and getting various sectors of Panamanian tourism to start working in tandem to complement each other rather than setting themselves up as mutual enemies. He lauded the value of the dozens of University of Panama theses and dissertations on tourism issues, and efforts to bring former gangsters into the mainstream of the national tourism industry. He said that progress is being made to sort out the debilitating turf battles over the tourism transportation business via pending legislation. He expressed IPAT’s long-standing intention to get the ATLAPA convention center off of its hands and to move the institute’s offices elsewhere. He said that the government has a five-year plan to establish a privately led Carnival commission. None of these things were news to those who have been paying attention to the tourism business, but the priority that Blades placed upon them was indicative of his concerns and thus newsworthy in its own right.

The IPAT director did, however, bring some interesting and encouraging news to the forum. He said that IPAT was acquiring the rights to the abandoned San Carlos tourism center (a municipal effort that went by the wayside a few years back when new local authorities were elected) and that this would serve to reopen that bit of beachfront to tourism mainly of the national variety. He talked about a joint effort with the Ministry of Agricultural Development to shift farmers who are being displaced by global competition to re-orient their efforts toward “rural tourism” and toward organic farming for the benefit of cruise ship passengers and other foreigners who demand chemical-free food. He said that the government plans to turn Panama City’s Avenida Central from the current bastion of small enterprise and low-budget shopping option for the masses into an upscale tourist trap with cafes, boutiques and theaters. He told of a project to build traditional Interior-style farm houses to accommodate tourists in the Las Minas and Ocu area. He said that IPAT aims to set up a “special office to serve jubilados and pensionados who have a second residence” in Panama. He said there’s a “maritime tourism strategy” in the works, which will create additional places along both coasts where power boats can refuel.

Blades also noted with pride that IPAT is about to unveil a new organizational chart. If he plays the public relations right, it could be just the thing that could get Panama featured in Dilbert.