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Liborio García's selection as ombudsman sets of protests
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Spaniards kidnapped in Darien come back after 77 days of captivity
Panama News Briefs

Many questions remain after Spaniards return to Panama
by Eric Jackson, mainly from other media

On April 7 Sergio and José Vicente Colastra knocked on the door of a friend's house in the Darien, 77 days after they had been taken away by armed masked men speaking in Colombian accents. The father and son and their relatives didn't care to speak to the press about their experience, and after questioning by police and psychological testing they were allowed to go on their way, with the Torrijos administration calling the affair a closed case.

The widely varying accounts that were published in the Panamanian press in many instances say more about the editorial slants and professional standards of the various news media than they do about the facts of this story. The following are some of the different versions that were reported:

·        The Colastras, the elder José Vicente who is a naturopath, were taken away by Colombia's leftist FARC guerrillas in order to treat a number of sick rebels, whose forces just across the border were stricken by a malaria outbreak;

·        Some bandoleros, ordinary Colombian criminals, kidnapped the Colastras with hopes of selling them to FARC, which would then extort a ransom from their family, but FARC wasn't buying; and

·        This was a kidnapping for ransom and a six-figure sum was paid to secure the Colastras' release.

It is reported that, despite the declarations from other parts of the government, prosecutors here are still investigating the case and in particular are interested in whether any of the Panamanians who were working on the construction of an alternative healing center in the El Guayabo community of Darien's Jaque district were accomplices in a kidnapping. No arrests or charges had been reported at the time that this story was written.

Why, at a time when the Torrijos administration is in general talking tough about crime, would there be a rush to declare that the affair was over?

Basically Martín Torrijos follows a traditional Panamanian policy of neutrality in Colombia's long-running internal violence. (This is a change from the policy of his predecessor, who made public declarations in support of the Colombian Army's efforts to suppress FARC and without saying much about it did a number of other things to allow the right-wing AUC paramilitary to operate freely in Panama.) If FARC did abduct the Colastras and the Panamanian government was able to catch, prosecute and jail one or more of those responsible, that could be taken as a sign that this country was siding against FARC and would set up the possibility of further armed actions in Panama aimed at freeing the person or persons who were jailed. Similar considerations have apparently been behind decisions by successive governments to go easy on people caught smuggling arms to FARC or the AUC through Panama.

The Colastra incident has revived international interest in the occasional spillover of Colombia's violence into Panama. The US and Canadian governments renewed their warnings to citizens about travel to parts of Panama adjacent to the Colombian border, and Panamanian police are more frequently preventing foreigners from traveling upriver from Yaviza or La Palma.

For most Panamanians and most foreigners residing or visiting here, however, this is a far-away concern. There are problems with crime in this country, particularly in certain areas. Slumming along Colon's Bamboo Lane, hiking to Colombia through the Darien Gap or looking to score drugs in the tenements of Panama City's Hollywood neighborhood are all stupid things to do, but Panama is in general a reasonably safe place to live and visit.

Still, the Colastra incident is a galling reminder that Panama's sovereignty is limited by the difficulty of policing our remote border areas. It's an embarrassment that politicians who are not particularly to blame would nevertheless like to put behind them as quickly as possible.