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Readers' concerns about Panama, the United States and Colombia

Gringo graves in Corozal

I was shocked to read this article, and very much concerned about the grave of our daughter, Deborah Kaye Boland, who was buried in Corozal on August 5, 1957.

Can you enlighten us with a more detailed report, and/or an indication of who to contact concerning this practice, as I am sure many Zonians would likewise be interested. I do not know if the section that she is in (Section P, Row 18, grave 7-A) is under the US, or RdeP control. We have received no notification of any kind concerning fees to be paid, but I'm sure that they would not have the information to contact us.

I would certainly appreciate any information on this matter that you can provide for us.

Donald Boland
Durham, North Carolina

Gringo graves in Corozal?

Those graves you showed at Corozal are not those of Americans, but of Panamanians. The American part of the cemetery is maintained separately and guaranteed by treaty.

name withheld
Panama

Maintenance fees on graves

My father was buried in Monte de Esperanza in 1992 and I was never informed  about any maintenance fees. I live in the USA so I do not know if anyone even tried to contact me. Can you provide me with information on these fees and a telephone number so I can contact someone to see if I can make payments, provided the body has not been moved? Thank you very much.

May God continue to bless you and yours.

Joan

Would grandparents' grave still exist?

My grandfather was born in Barbados and worked on the Panama Canal and he and my grandmother were buried in the Canal Zone. My father joined the Army and became an American citizen. I grew up here in New York and have visited Panama, but never went to my grandparents' grave. Would it still be there? I never knew that you have to pay rent to cemeteries down there.

name withheld

Corozal Cemetery

I've just been presented with the article you wrote regarding the desecration of a number of gravesites at Corozal Cemetery. My father Captain John T. Barrett was buried there in 1964. This news is shocking to myself as well as my Mother and four sisters. Years ago my Mother decided to leave my Father interred there with the assurances that the cemetary would be cared for and stay under US control.

We obviously have many questions:

What graves were dug up?

What part of the cemetery remains in US control?

What is going on there now?

Why were we never re-contacted?

Who can we contact?

Anything else you can add or shed light on we would appreciate.

Matthew Barrett
Jacksonville, Florida

Editor's note: The Corozal Cemetery was a segregated Canal Zone institution, but in the old scheme of things the division between Americans and non-Americans was never so clear-cut for two main reasons: first, there were more mixed marriages than is commonly known; and second, because a lot of West Indian canal or military employees and their families later emigrated to the United States or otherwise became American citizens, many by way of service in the US Armed Forces.

In the 1977 Carter-Torrijos Treaties it was agreed that the American section of the graveyard would remain US property, to be run by an American institution. The Panama Canal Treaty expired at the end of 1999, but well before then the deed to the American part of the Corozal Cemetery had been transferred to American hands.

The American section of the graveyard was eventually put into the custody of the American Battlefields and Monuments Commission, a US government institution, and recognized as a military cemetery, although there are also civilians there. In 1979 the graves of some but not all Americans buried at Mount Hope on the Atlantic side and in the section of the Corozal Cemetery to be turned over to Panama were disinterred, some for the remains to be repatriated to the United States and some to be moved to the American section of the Corozal Cemetery.

To find out if an ancestor or loved one is buried in the American part of the Corozal Cemetery, go to http://www.abmc.gov/cemeteries/cemeteries/cz.php and click on the information link. The American cemetery maintains a list of people buried there, which is not online but which the folks at the commission that maintains the site will consult if you contact them by email or phone. If the person for whom you are looking for is in the American cemetery, you can be confident that the grave will be maintained and won't be dug up.

The part of the Corozal Cemetery that was featured in the last issue is in the section that was turned over to Panama and is now run by the Panama City municipal government. The graves that were shown having been dug up there were from the Canal Zone era --- one broken headstone bore a 1955 death date --- and were of those of people who worked for the Panama Canal or were the dependents of such workers, whether US citizens or not, and whether their families became Americans or not.

Make no mistake about it: due to the unique historical relationship between Panama and the United States there are American families whose relatives are buried in the Panamanian section of the Corozal Cemetery, and city policy is to dig up the remains of those whose families have not paid fees --- regardless of their nationality --- and use the burial plots for somebody else.

The Mount Hope (Monte Esperanza) Cemetery is run by the city of Colon, under a different administration and with somewhat different policies, but within the same cultural paradigm, as the Panamanian section of the Corozal Cemetery.

If your loved one was buried at Corozal and is not included on the list of people in the American section, then contact the municipal management of Cementerio de Corozal at (507) 317-9026. If you have problems in such contacts --- for example, a language barrier ---  you may want to call the city government's main switchboard at (507) 212-9600 in search of someone who can help you. The mayor knows American culture and is not driven by anti-American bias. Moreover, the city he runs is always underfunded and if there are people in the United States who want to pay grave maintenance fees for relatives buried in Panama it is in the local government's financial interest to welcome this.

Questions about Mount Hope (Monte Esperanza) Cemetery should be directed to the management of Colon's municipal cemetery department, at (507) 445-3418. The number for the switchboard at Colon's city hall is (507) 441-6161.

Americans who are moving down here to live out the rest of their lives in retirement ought to be aware of Panamanian attitudes about graveyards when making their final plans. A lot of Panamanians, taking into account the impermanence of graves in this country, decide upon cremation as an alternative. And then there are many Zonians who die in the United States or elsewhere who ask that their bodies be cremated and the ashes be taken to Panama and scattered in the Chagres River.

Warrant for former Canal Once director

I have been reading your column for many years, and have always seen your paper as impartial on issues, but as someone who knows Ariel Rosas I have to say a few things, and get some facts straight.

1) Ariel Rosas (not Alex) was not granted political asylum in Costa Rica because at this moment in time, Costa Rica does not consider there to be a political situation in Panama. But based on evidence that Ariel presented to the Costa Rican government, he has been granted refugee status, which allows him to travel anywhere in the world, apart from Panama.

2) On taking the position of director at Once, Ariel requested a list of equipment that the channel owned so that he could conduct an audit. This was denied by the previous government, so he had no idea what he was supposed to have.

3) The attorney general has repeatedly denied requests to accept evidence to clear Ariel's name.

Ariel's attorney, Sidney Sitton, has all the evidence, and I am sure that he would happy to talk to you about this particular situation. He needs an impartial newspaper to report his story, as he is getting crucified in the government biased media.

Ariel is a good man, and this is the second time that he has been persecuted by this party. The first was when he stood up to the dictatorship as a reporter, which he was given political refugee status by the United States. He came back to Panama when he thought things had changed.

Personally, I see nothing has changed. The new government is still building roads to nowhere, except that they own property close by. Now they have big construction projects that they are funding, which I am sure will fund their new houses, such as the one at Playa Blanca.

But I am an insider looking in, and I am sure it makes sense to Panamanians!

Stuart Mitchell

US Embassy robbing Panamanian citizens

To obtain a visa in Panama to travel to the US there is a $100 fee to apply. In the past, when a Panamanian citizen applied, the US Embassy didn't charge them if their application was denied and when they reapplied and were granted a visa is when they were charged the $100 fee.

Now, the US embassy in Panama is charging a $100 prior to the visa application interview and consequently repeatedly denying visa applications to an alarming rate to the Panamanian citizens. Literally in minutes during an interview for a visa application, many Panamanian citizens are literally denied for unjustified reason such as, if you've seen the person you're going to visit in the US recently; say less than a year ago, then you have no reason to go to the US and that's that.

And as simple as that they're denied and are out of $100; which is a substantial amount of money that doesn't come easy and isn't just laying around for the common Panamanian citizen to just give away.

So I would like to now if someone can investigate this matter in Panama and alert the news and the community so this can be brought to a stop.

Allan Bishop

The price of victory

The news out of the States looks increasingly worrisome.

When the news media broke the story about the massive government spying on our phone records, I heard that President Bush insisted "the privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected."

I would like to know just who is an "ordinary American."

Probably not teachers, since then-US Secretary of Education Rod Paige called the National Education Association a "terrorist organization." Certainly not librarians, considering that the American Library Association is on record as strongly opposing the Patriot Act. And we all know that people who support legalization of drugs or radical environmental causes are simply dupes of "narco-terrorists" and "eco-terrorists." I guess Bush is really saying, "If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about." Try saying that line with a German accent.

But what I'm thinking about is how many of the "terrorists" who were being held at Guantanamo turned out to be terrorists after all. The government sent them home after a few years and never even charged them with any crimes. If this present administration thinks it's OK to waterboard suspected terrorists in Guantanamo and find out whether they actually are terrorists, wouldn't it tap our phones and listen to our conversations if our calling patterns fit some kind of secret "profile?"

God help anyone who makes a telephone call to me in Panama. With all the narco-terrorists running around just across the border in Colombia I'm sure anyone who calls Panama is going to have a red hot NSA profile.

I know I'm sounding a bit paranoid. But you might want to remember what happened to a Portland, Oregon lawyer named Brandon Mayfield. He fit some kind of FBI profile because he was a convert to Islam and once helped a client in a child custody dispute. That client was later convicted on terrorism charges. The FBI insisted that Mayfield's fingerprints proved he was involved in the 2004 bombing of a Madrid commuter train, even though Mayfield had not been out of the United States for 11 years.

Well, Mayfield spent a couple of weeks in secret detention as a "material witness" until authorities in Spain matched the damning fingerprints to a real terrorist named Ouhnane Daoud. Who knows how often this kind of thing happens with government "profiles?"

I guess the risk, if the United States loses the war on terrorism, is that Americans will be forced to live under some kind of Islamic theocratic dictatorship. Of course, I don't think I want to live under some kind of Christian theocratic dictatorship either.

Win the war, lose the war, what's a guy to do?

name withheld
Panama

Send it to the Supreme Court or let the ballot box decide?

Just before reading your article on warantless wiretaps in the current Panama News, I was reading Wired.com on the evidence of NSA bugging of the Internet with AT&T's help.

This, from Wired News. Secret cabinets in telecom offices only allow entrance to those with NSA security clearances:

http://wired.com/news/technology/0,70910-0.html?tw=wn_index_2

Some evidence:

http://wired.com/news/technology/0,70908-0.html?tw=wn_index_3

Some background on one of the key tools used --- maybe a stock (Narus) you'd want to bet on in this new Age of Total Surveillance:

http://wired.com/news/technology/0,70914-0.html?tw=wn_index_4

And some fresh news of a (minor) victory in court:

http://wired.com/news/technology/0,70916-0.html?tw=wn_index_1

As to your suggested strategy of taking both houses of congress away from the Republicans as opposed to taking the issue to the Supreme Court, I see your point that its current makeup may give an edge to a Republican president. But relying on the ballot box seems risky, too. Cases in point: Florida in 2000, Ohio in 2004, Deibold. (A few months ago Wired.com had a strong thread of comment on electronic-only voting --- little of it optimistic).

And then there's the question of the Dems being any more committed to privacy than the Reps are. Both parties overwhelmingly supported the PATRIOT Act. And from my perspective the anti-privacy financial know-your-customer rules were at least as much Democratic-inspired as Republican. To boot, Clinton's national health database, taking my health records and copying them to Washington, which Tommy Thompson carried along when George W. came to office.

Seems to me that fighting the privacy fight these days is an uphill battle. (Mixing metaphors ;-) One of those cyclical pendulum swings that hasn't quite hit bottom yet --- and may never until something drastic occurs to change the popular mind. Some outrage, maybe. But then there was Ruby Ridge and then Waco and Elian Gonzalez. Maybe we just don't outrage anymore either.

My opinion is to both take it to the Supreme Court AND make it a major Democratic Party issue this election year. If the Supreme Court decides in Bush's favor, maybe that becomes more reason for the electorate to change the seating arrangements in Congress this year and in the White House in 2008. (I predict the Dems will retake the House but not the Senate, though I think they'll gain seats there).

Kent McNaughton
Boquete

Likes The Panama News

I love your news! Good work!

Aurora E. Hunter

A message to the world from the FARC Famous 5 in Colombia

We are The FARC Famous 5, the youngest kids of the old fellas, the FARC main command!

We are sick of Marx & Mao, and want to leave the jungle!

We want to live a normal life!

We are going to liberate all the kidnapped people here!

We say no to violence!

We say no to landmines!

We say no to kidnapping!

We say no to paramilitaries!

We say no to guerrillas (sorry, dad!)!

We want peace in Colombia!

Help us, please!!!! Help Colombia, please!!!!

The FARC Famous 5
(Trini, Elvis, Gallito, Monotono and Burro!)

Editor's note: Is this is a propaganda put-on or the real thing? Certainly not the latter, but arguably the former --- this is a plug for an online comic strip, published in Spanish and English versions at http://www.famosos5.com/. The characters include the rebellious younger kids of the FARC rebels' high command, old Tirofijo himself, weird Danish leftists and more.