The Bush visit

US President George W. Bush came to Panama early on the evening of November 6 and left the following afternoon. His itinerary included meetings with Panamanian President Torrijos and other officials as well as a little sightseeing in the Casco Viejo, a visit to the American Cemetery and Memorial in Corozal, a baseball exhibition featuring Panama’s major league stars and the standard dignitary's appearance at the Miraflores Locks. Huge areas of the capital were cordoned off for two days, much to the annoyance of many drivers and residents, but the measures kept Bush from having to see either protest banners or supporters waving American flags.

The talks between Bush and Panamanian officials were held behind closed doors. At the press conference before a carefully selected group of reporters from the corporate mainstream there was only one noteworthy new development.

Though required by the Chemical Weapons Convention, it had been the policy of the Bush administration that the cleanup of chemical weapons left by US, British and Canadian forces on Isla San Jose in the Perlas Archipelago would no longer be discussed by the United States because Panama refused to accept a limitation of liability not provided for in that treaty. The US position has been that the issue of unexploded ordnance at firing ranges in the former Canal Zone was a "closed case" despite Panama's claims that the US government breached its duty to "remove all hazards" to the extent it was "practicable" under the Panama Canal Treaty. Bush did not concede anything on the substance of these issues, but said that, as the United States and Panama are long-time friends and the matters are of great concern to Panamanians; his government is now willing to discuss them.

On the US-Panamanian free trade talks, both Torrijos and Bush said that their two countries are close to an agreement. However, both governments have been saying this for a long time, but are unable to agree on key agricultural issues.

It seems that the Bush visit did not, in fact, excite many beyond the predictably excitable either way. The Panama News received a number of phone calls from people who lived in the areas that were cordoned off and were unhappy about the inconvenience. At the small protests we covered, the usual leftist and labor groups were joined by delegations of farmers who are wary of being forced out of business by a free trade agreement with the United States, young indigenous protesters who are concerned about intellectual property provisions of such a treaty making traditional knowledge of medicinal plants the property of multinational corporations and peace advocates, a number of them Americans.

In the weeks leading up to the visit, the op-ed pages of the daily newspapers were full of mostly critical columns about Bush and his policies, although there were a few favorable voices urging a free trade agreement, coming mainly from the business sector. In the Independence Day parade on Via España, student radicals from the Instituto Nacional desecrated the American flag, which drew hardly any response --- no cheers, no jeers --- from the crowd.

At the November 6 vigil in front of the Don Bosco basilica, The Panama News talked with the radical priest Conrado Sanjur about his and his followers' attitudes about US-Panamanian relations and about Americans in general.

Sanjur doesn't take a negative view of the influx of American retirees in recent years. To the extent that people are coming here for a lower cost of living, he understands that and considers it a reasonable move for many an American. To the extent that some of the Americans are coming here out of frustration with what's happening in the United States, Sanjur asserted that Bush's "policies in the United States are difficult, violent and affecting people both in his nation and internationally --- the way he dealt with Katrina shows his lack of concern and his willingness to abandon whole social sectors --- so it's not a surprise that people are discontented." About the effect that influxes of Americans into places like the Bocas islands and the Chiriqui highlands have on the locals, Sanjur, who heads the Panamanian Popular Human Rights Coordinator, said "we have been concerned about this for some time." It's not that people don't want American neighbors, but frequent complaints, usually by humble Ngobe farmers who have worked a piece of land for many years, inclued reports of corrupt public officials evicting them from their property and a foreign buyer appearing on the scene shortly thereafter.

So what's the biggest danger, according to Sanjur, in US-Panamanian relations? "Martín Torrijos!" the priest said. "This government, supposedly different, maintains the same submissive policy toward the United States. Everything the United States wants, Torrijos accepts."

That same day in El Panama America, a daily with a generally conservative editorial stance and a strong supporter of free trade with the United States, the front-page "El Pulso" editorial lauded the US economic model which Bush seeks to spread to Latin America as "although imperfect, without a doubt the most successful of all time, in its prolonged capacity to generate wealth and to redistribute it to reduce poverty."

José F. Ponce, left, is a dual US-Panamanian citizen and Casco Viejo neighborhood activist. Shortly before Bush came to town, he was visited by US Secret Service agents on a mission to remove him from the scene to avoid the possibility of a protest that Bush might see. So the American agents conducted Ponce and a friend to Gamboa and put them up in the Gamboa Rainforest Resort before Bush arrived.

Andrés Rodríguez, an art teacher at Colon's Colegio Abel Bravo and leader of FRENADESO, speaks at Parque Porras. A few FRENADESO members tried to make their way from the park to the US Embassy, were stopped at the police barricades on Avenida Justo Arosemena, and when they insisted 23 of their members were arrested and ultimately fined $10 for disorderly conduct and released.

Panama's up-and-coming generation of indigenous leaders are better educated and more internationally connected than their predecessors. A number of them showed up at the anti-Bush protests to show their support for US political prisoner Leonard Peltier, an American Indian Movement activists who has been incarcerated for more than 30 years for the deaths of two FBI agents on evidence that Amnesty International and other human rights groups have long since concluded was falsified by the FBI and federal prosecutors.

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