news

Also in this section:
Torrijos inaugurates new legislative session
Lively "no" forum at ULACIT
On the referendum campaign trail
Church fires Héctor Endara as CARITAS director
Panama News Briefs

Héctor Endara fired as CARITAS coordinator

by Eric Jackson

On August 18 Héctor Endara, who had worked for the CARITAS Catholic social ministry for 24 years, 16 as national director and six as director for the region encompassing Mexico, Central America and Panama, was fired by Panama’s Catholic bishops. It was one more sign of the church’s global shift to the political right under Pope Benedict XVI and seen by many observers here as a part of the local hierarchy’s embrace of the wealthy oligarchy and the political power brokers.

The letter firing Endara, however, stated no reason. “The time has come to relieve you of your functions, the note from Monsignior Pablo Varela Server said.

CARITAS had provoked the hierarchy’s wrath by supporting campesino movements against canal and hydroelectric projects that threatened to flood them off of their lands and for backing labor strikes like last year’s Seguro Social protests. Earlier in July Monsignior Oscar Brown, who heads the church’s Episcopal Committee had accused the CARITAS leadership of “threats, insults, intimidations and harassment” of the government and the church imposed censorship on the CARITAS literature and website.

The bishops also criticized CARITAS for opposing the abuses of Petaquilla Minerals, a company recently fined for environmental offenses and promoted by former Cocle governor Richard Fifer, who faces outstanding charges of embezzling public funds.

Among the prime movers behind the removal of Endara, his supporters charge, was the rightist organization Opus Dei, which has enjoyed the favor of the current pope. Pope Benedict comes from an ultra-conservative social milieu --- in fact he was a Hitler Youth, although he says he had no choice in the matter at the time --- and since ascending the papal throne he has moved to eliminate leftist, pro-labor or anti-corporate ideas from the Catholic media worldwide, get rid of electric musical instruments in Catholic ceremonies and functions and generally present a more conservative face to the world.

Endara responded to his firing in a note that stated his “deep regret for the support that the Panamanian Episcopal Conference… has given to the neoliberal government of Martin Torrijos,” and by the creation of a new organization that will continue the work of liberation theology Catholics, Panama Profundo.

The new organization’s first order of business has been to join the “no” forces for the October 22 canal expansion referendum, through a campaign committed called Accion Ciudadana Por el NO (ACP-NO). Some members of the old CARITAS team that worked with Endara all those years have also been seen marching in the streets of Panama City with striking teachers these past few days.

Part of the Catholic hierarchy, for its part, has appeared in propaganda for the “yes” campaign, but at the same time the church says it will act as a neutral observer of the referendum. By and large the groups in the “no” campaign don’t object to church observers, but neither do they trust them to be impartial guarantors against possible fraud.