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photo by Maralily, copyright 2007

A stormy end to 2006

What a year! Not because of the Christmas Day waterspout shown above --- those things happen all the time here, and they rarely do any damage. They're spectacular shows, especially if you live up high near Panama Bay.

I can imagine somebody who thinks that a jounalist's job is to convince people that now's the time to buy griping about this photo on the front page. Don't want to scare off the marks --- that is, investors --- by showing them something negative, so that way of thinking goes. After all, Panama City is about to have Latin America's tallest skyscraper, the monsignior, politicians and business leaders told us. If they all vouch for it, it has to be true, doesn't it?

Well, Panama is a wonderful place to retire, especially if you can appreciate nature's spectacles in the Torrid Zone. But if you come here looking to get rich quick, or fall in with a crowd that thinks in those terms, this can be a really horrible place because it's more likely that somebody will get richer at your expense. Come here with your eyes wide open, without illusions, and you most likely will not end up disillusioned.

Over the holidays I encountered a recent immigrant from northerly climes who now thinks about calling it quits on Panama. Against the better advice of people who had been here a long time, she thought it would be more convenient to get "all in one service" and ended up hiring her lawyer's boyfriend to build her house. It has been a big disaster, and the same lawyer who did the papers for her real estate also organized the corporate shell game that most likely means that she has no recourse for being ripped off and left with a very partially and very badly built house.

It's really too bad, but you can't come here acting on the assumption that this is a country with the rule of law, responsible public servants and well functioning democratic institutions and not risk getting taken to the cleaners. You have to come here, look around before you commit to anything of consequence, network with the right people and use your brain to protect yourself.

But still, despite the waterspouts --- even because of the waterspouts --- Panama's a wonderful place to retire and this past year brought many new people, mostly but not all Americans, to our tropical shores. And I hope to lend a hand by keeping many of you newcomers informed. Not dazzled by hype, not led to believe that you're living in a North American bubble, but informed and exposed to the social forces and great debates sweeping through this country and across the Latin America and Caribbean region. This is Panama, not Kansas or California or Canada, and you have to take the place by its local terms to really enjoy it.

There's a lot to enjoy this month, which is one reason that I made a special effort to get the calendar up on time, and in fact more of this issue uploaded on time than I have for a long time. Mañana may be Panamanian Standard Time, but this year I'm going to try to be more punctual.

Anyway, in January we have the Panama Jazz Festival, the National Junior Baseball Tournament that has all sorts of major league scouts in the country at the moment, the start of cayuco racing season and the initial moves of a political battle royal whose short-term results on this end are most likely predictable but will nevertheless be fascinating for political junkies.

The legislature, for its part, ended its regular 2006 session with a chaotic scene. Sadly, however, both the national martial arts movie industry and the National Assembly president Elias Castillo's brain functions are woefully underdeveloped. They told us that opposition deputy Mireya Lasso went into contention to be Panama's next boxing champion, but all their video really showed was one irate deputy who had been gratuitously insulted  outside of her presence on national television by Castillo, and a bunch of security guards and PRD deputies trying to keep her from saying --- or shouting --- her reply.

The legislators will be back in special session on January 23 to consider, among other things, President Torrijos's proposal to legalize domestic violence by adding the requirement of a repeated pattern of abuse before the law can step in. It's in a demogogic Penal Code reform proposal to make our prisons more overcrowded by, for example, doubling the potential prison time for a reporter who writes a true story that makes a powerful person look bad. (They call that crime "injuria" and the OAS and international human rights groups have been calling for the repeal of that law for a long time, but the president's "reform" commission and the Cabinet Council have endorsed a doubling of penalties instead.)

This issue marks the beginning of volume 13 --- it's still hard to believe that I have been doing this since 1994 --- and I take an impressionistic look at the year just concluded, the most momentous and far-reaching feature of which was the campaign and referendum over the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan to expand the Panama Canal. But maybe for you, the new Transito Code requirement to get insurance in order to acquire your 2007 license plate tags will be the most important thing that happened last year. (Bus service is more relevant to my personal needs, and there is a huge confrontation brewing over that as well.)

In this issue's review section I give my take on the new Shorty & Slim CD and a gig the band played at Lum's (if you're a big fan you may want to catch them as one of the warm-up acts for The Mighty Sparrow in Boquete during Carnival next month), Willy Gutman covers the latest Mel Gibson flick and the Cool Internet sites include one by a Vermont cartoonist who's spending a year down here to draw Panama for the folks back home. The arts section gets into a welcome new addition to one of the areas that's popular with American retirees --- San Carlos has a new arts center and it's being inaugurated on January 13 with a benefit concert to fund programs for local people.

And what are my expectations for 2007?

I think we'll have a year of social and political ferment in Panama that probably won't be so spectacular now but probably will bubble over and wash the current political and economic paradigm down the drain in the years to follow.

I think that the polarization of US society will continue unabated and that this year will lay the groundwork for the most significant American political realignment since 1968, with the main question being the person whom the Democrats choose to lead the charge. (My own early favorite, made so not on the basis of who can win what but who would be a good president, is New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who is way behind in the polls at the moment.)

I think that this will be a year when Cuba changes course, I hope toward a bit more freedom and a bit more democracy, on terms set by the Cuban people rather than Washington or the Miami exiles. The island's remarkable economic upturn of late may set the conditions for a calm and gradual transition.

This year we will see whether Lula leaves an indelible mark on Latin America or not. Brazil can be the center of a Latin American alternative to the NAFTA economic model, but if Lula doesn't make some dramatic strides in that direction early in his second term then it would have to be some other administration that does it.

I expect even worse horrors in Iraq, and hell to pay in the USA if George W. Bush tries any sort of military escalation there or expansion of his eternal wars into any other country in any region of the world.

China and India will probably continue their economic growth, and the United States will probably have less money to buy their products and services and less leverage to set the terms of its economic relations with those emerging superpowers.

I imagine that we will see more Euros circulating in Panama.

And I think that for every American expatriate who comes here and gets the unpleasant shock of his or her life in the next year, many more will come down here and justifiably fall in love with this country.

Enjoy.

Eric Jackson

the editor