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opinion

Also in this section:
Reporters Without Borders, Attack on news reporting in Panama
Human Rights Watch, Bring Fujimori to justice
Armington, Japan loses face over support for Fujimori
Hagel, US policy in the Middle East
Lerner, Good news from Israel
Carpio, Surviving nature in the Greater Caribbean
Sirias, Brazil's slums and Colon's
Jackson, Panama's wannabe Prince Johns
Bernal, The Colegio de Abogados and the University of Panama administration
Leis, The perversion of reggae

Wannabe Prince Johns

by Eric Jackson

Me, I'm just a poor boy from across the far south land

And I've traveled many days to reach this place to make my stand

Against the thieving dukes and abbots and the gentry of the land...

Greenwood, a traditional English class warfare anthem

Not long after the Norman Conquest, the Plantagenet kings of England sought to centralize power and possessions in their own hands by weakening old feudal prerogatives.

The deer and wild boars that roamed the commonly held forests were fair game for any skilled enough to hunt them and bring them down in Anglo-Saxon times, but then the royals claimed exclusive rights for themselves and their guests. The real conflicts over this appropriation of that which had been a public asset later became, with the rise of English nationalism, one of the basic premises of the Robin Hood legend.

The Plantagenet family also asserted exclusive claims to the fish in the rivers, which had also previously been fair game for all netters and anglers, by building a series of fish weirs on the waterways of the realm. That attempt at royal privatization was less successful. When the knights stood up to King John on the  plain at Runnymede in 1215 and obliged him to sign the Magna Carta, one of the sections that the hated monarch --- the Prince John of Robin Hood lore --- was forced to subscribe provided that “Henceforth all the weirs in the Thames and the Medway, and throughout all England, save on the sea-coast, shall be done away with entirely.”

But the assault on feudal rights and privileges, and even more ancient public rights in assets held in the name of the crown, the church, the nobility or the towns for the common use of all, continued unabated, and in fact strengthened with the rise of the capitalist mercantile class and rural gentry. The process became known to the Common Law as inclosure. When common pastures were inclosed, families whose way of life for time immemorial had been to graze their cattle on public property were now prohibited to continue their ancient economy on the now privatized lands. When common forests were inclosed, the people living around them lost their customary right to warm their hearths with fuel collected from the now private woods.

There were tremendous social dislocations. Displaced Englishmen became sea dogs and colonizers, because the ways of life in which they had been raised were abolished by that form of privatization known as inclosure and they had nothing else to do.

Inclosure was a very old process, running from early in the 12th century and more or less becoming complete by early in the 19th century. Don't let anyone tell you that the privatization of public land and natural resources is something new.

And let us recognize that one of the most salient features of Martín Torrijos's “Patria Nueva” program is as old as Prince John claiming dibs on the deer in Sherwood Forest.

Law 132 --- the one about tourism development concessions on coastal and island lands --- is, at the bottom line, about the private concession of beaches and islands that have heretofore been public properties, open to all. It's nothing more than a modern-day Inclosure Act.

So, too, is the proliferation of concessions for private “mini-hydroelectric projects.” These are hardly ever about actually generating electricity, because from an economic point of view they are rarely viable for that purpose. However, they allow private parties to appropriate rivers, damming them to create lakes around which to build residential developments, siphoning off what had been public surface water resources to sell as private commodities.

So why would the traditional ballad characterize the dukes, abbots and landed gentry who reaped the benefits of inclosure as thieves? Because they took grazing rights, firewood collecting privileges, opportunities to hunt and fish and so on from the commoners and paid nothing in return.

Just like those with bogus little hydroelectric concessions don't intend to pay those downstream property owners for the rivers they are taking away. Just like those who seek Law 132 concessions don't intend to pay a dime to those who will no longer be able to enjoy what are now public beaches, or to fishing families who will no longer be able to live and work where they have for many years.

“New country?” New ideas? Hardly. What we're dealing with here is something that's so profoundly reactionary that they were protesting against it in Merrie Olde England 700 years ago.