|
|
|
|
|||
|
| |||
newsBe well informed --- try these online news and talk radio alternatives:
Also in this section:
Hugo Chávez draws a crowd in Panama photos and article by Eric Jackson The Bolivarian Clubs of Ocu? Really, for those of you who worry about an imminent communist revolution in Panama, there is no cause for alarm. However, if you are a mainstream Panamanian politician who counts in your plans carrying the Interior, it is cause for concern. A lot of people from the central provinces, from the Ngobe-Bugle Comarca, from Colon and from San Miguelito came to the University of Panama on June 22 to hear Hugo Chávez speak, and it's a sign that a lot of people in those places would like to see someone come out of the blue and run our political class out of public life, just like Chávez did to the former ruling elite in Venezuela. Now it so happens that the little grouplets that argue about who is and who isn't the Marxist-Leninist vanguard of the Panamanian people's revolution are mainly to be found on campus, and that most of them were so intent on getting themselves validated by proximity to President Chávez that they ended up being rude to their guests from off campus. It also ended up that Chávez talked too much, about three and one-half hours' worth, so that when he stopped at about one in the morning most of his audience was gone. That so many people from so many walks of life turned out to greet the Venezuelan leader was a clear sign that despite everything Panama is not the outpost of political stability that the establishment pretends, but the social realities in his audience and throughout the country indicate that nobody has caught the public's imagination the way that Chávez did in his country.
Chávez came to Panama on June 22 because that was the 180th anniversary of Simón Bolívar's Congreso Anfictionico, wherein The Great Liberator tried to set up an inter-American system to keep the European colonial powers from coming back to redeem lost lands, and to forge a confederation of republics to address regional issues. Bolívar's congress failed, but the Monroe Doctrine issued from the north a few years before did manage to limit European ambitions in the Americas thereafter. (Eventually it was expanded and distorted to imply that the United States would be the quasi-colonial power in this hemisphere, but that was a later development that President Monroe apparently did not intend at the time.) The Venezuelan president's first invitation came from leftist Panamanians who embrace Bolivarian ideals, but rather quickly it became a state visit with heavy security and a day of official ceremonial functions, the main one a speech to the National Assembly. The Torrijos administration would have liked another endorsement to add to its collection of foreign backing for its canal expansion project, but Chávez limited himself to commenting upon Venezuela's interest in the possibilities that an expanded canal might offer. Noting that he didn't come to Panama with a big checkbook, he nevertheless offered his country's support to build a new petroleum refinery here and raised the possibility of extending a planned Venezuela - Colombia gas pipeline under the Caribbean Sea to Panama. Later at the University of Panama Chávez explained that although OPEC rules prevent him from giving Panama discounts on oil prices, a refinery would both reduce some of the charges that middlemen now impose on this country and provide a source of jobs for Panamanians. It was at the University of Panama, however, that Chávez addressed "his own." That has to be qualified, however, because the university's PRD administration glommed onto and took over the event, and reserved the front two rows at the Paraninfo for such dignitaries as former boxing hero and PRD mayor of San Miguelito, Héctor Carrasquilla. The event was publicized as beginning at 6 p.m., and expected to get underway at about 8, but Chávez and the entourage that came with him didn't get to the campus until well after 9 p.m. The Paraninfo is a relatively small room, so big video screens and seating were set up outside for the majority of the 3,000 or so people who came to greet Chávez. Several musical and dancing acts had readied themselves for the occasion and there was plenty time to kill between the announced time and when the guest of honor arrived, but for some weird and probably sectarian and egotistical reason the Ngobe dancers were cancelled, the murga from Los Santos cut short and the people had to listen to a too-long and repetitious performance by a Nicaraguan band that mostly sang Venezuelan campaign jingles. The most revolutionarily dressed and enthusiastic flag-wavers and chanters inside were not any of the people whom one saw in, for example, last year's Seguro Social demonstrations. Essentially it was a scene of university in-crowders asserting their privileges and superiority to "the people" whom they purportedly supported. The various radical factions were given their quotas of tickets, as were a number of foreign delegations. The Rector Magnifico's crowd, however, was limited in the dominance they could assert. The people inside refused to vacate the front seats for the dignitaries, and when Mayor Carrasquilla spoke in the introductions he was heckled. (Chávez later offered hizzoner some boxing advice: "You have to hit with your LEFT.") The Venezuelan leader's long discourse touched many subjects, from history to how to organize a movement; from political theory to religion; about personalities ranging from Fidel Castro to George W. Bush; panning some international economic pacts and plugging others. He said he doesn't hate Americans but will defend his country from US intervention, and expressed confidence that sooner or later the American people would understand and appreciate Latin America's swing towards the left. He got a lot of cheers --- including from the scattering of Americans in the crowd --- when he criticized the war in Iraq.
Chávez told jokes, sang a song, quoted Walt Whitman poetry and extolled the almost-forgotten heroes of Latin America's anti-colonial liberation struggles. (As in, for example, Francisco Miranda, who raised money in Cuba for George Washington's ragtag band of continental soldiers who fought King George's redcoats, and later in his revolutionary career served as mentor for Chile's liberator Bernardo O'Higgins.) He criticized media moguls for twisting the minds of children, dogmatists for twisting the social sciences pioneered by Karl Marx, male chauvinists, elitists and people who think that they're well educated when actually they are so historically ignorant as to not know who they are. He had scathing words for capitalist medicine, multinational corporations, the ongoing Central American integration process, free trade deals with the United States, Soviet-style "state socialism" and intellectual laziness. Chávez was talking past the dignitaries and the chic radicals, reaching out to inspire and inform a radical base. He spoke too long to do it effectively. In the days that followed the public officials, media figures and business leaders most identifiable as Panama's cheering section for NAFTA-style globalization had many a snide comment about Hugo Chávez to make on the op-ed pages of the daily newspapers. For example, there were complaints that he wasn't offering cheaper fuel prices. Did the critics convince Panamanians that their savior does not reside in Caracas? Seeing as even most of the people who came to greet Hugo Chávez never believed anything remotely approximating that, those who felt a need to criticize the Venezuelan president at best killed a straw man. The critics' main failure was in convincing anybody who doesn't already believe it that their salvation is in free trade with the United States. Hugo Chávez commands great respect in Panama, but hardly anyone here looks to him as their leader or wishes for a Panamanian head of state precisely like him. He's the president of our close yet slightly strange neighbors, the Venezuelans, and appreciated as such. But if the truth is to be told, although people here want new home-grown leaders rather than foreign imports, they tend to like Hugo Chávez better than they do the people who run our government.
Also in this section:
News |
Business
|
Editorial
|
Opinion
|
Letters
|
Arts
|
Review
|
Community
|
Fun
|
Travel
Make the
Executive Hotel your headquarters in Panama City --- http://ww.executivehotel-panama.com Find the boat of your dreams through Evermarine --- http://www.evermarine.com |
|||||||||
|
