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Panama's journalists protest at the Plaza Paitilla Inn, where legislators gathered to consider what do to about the Penal Code. Photo by Eric Jackson

Pretty much for naught

Some of the protesting journalists had at one point or another been fired over their politics. Some had even fired one another. Most had faced and some are currently facing charges of criminal defamation (calumnia e injuria), most of these allegations bogus.

And now, with a major press bribery scandal arising from last year's referendum that's not discussed in the mainstream media, with editors afraid to call the Torrijos administration on its most easily demonstrated misrepresentations, the National Assembly gathered at a place that has become a symbol of women's oppression, the corruption of law enforcement and impunity for crimes committed by the privileged to consider new laws to restrict public access to information and curtail freedom of the press.

Journalists set aside rivalries and took to the streets to protest. Although some of the other protesters don't consider me a journalist because I don't have a degree from the University of Panama Faculty of Social Communications, because I don't work for the corporate mainstream or because I write in English, I set aside my annoyance to join in the common effort. There is plenty of time to argue among ourselves, but this was a time to speak as one.

By and large the politicians didn't listen, at least not those of the PRD caucus. The next day, with the opposition deputies boycotting the session, all the president's men and women --- actually, mostly their suplentes, as the deputies themselves stupidly think that they'll get away with coming before the voters again in 2009 and telling us that they didn't support what got passed because their alternates rather than they themselves, in person, voted for it --- went on record as 41 to zip to pass two of the three gag laws against which we protested and to add a third one as an afterthought.

Also the next day, President Torrijos and a large entourage went to Washington to lobby for ratification of the US-Panama Free Trade Agreement. Predictably, Martín couldn't handle the sort of questioning that's the norm in American politics and distinguished himself as unusually unresponsive. Also predictably, Torrijos misrepresented some of the things he did in Washington to people back here, wrongly thinking that a claim of a US labor endorsement for the treaty made for domestic Panamanian consumption wouldn't get back to haunt him in the United States. It did get back, and the information manipulation games he plays here are probably going to cost him some votes in the US Congress.

His excellency also must have figured that the obnoxious legislative vote against freedom was a free lick, coming as it did on the eve of Carnival. Well, of course one can't gather a crowd of protesters during these annual festivities, but a delay until after Ash Wednesday doesn't make the issue go away. Torrijos has won a few rounds, but even if Panamanians aren't at all warlike we are a nation of great pugilists and none of our best journalists are yet ready to throw in the towel. One of those taking part in the protest, radio show host, Le Monde Diplomatique correspondent and law professor Miguel Antonio Bernal, was beaten nearly to death by goons sent by the president's father when the latter was dictator in 1979 but it never stopped him. Bernal came out to do battle in the last round and in this one, and he'll be out for the next one too.

How did Ziggy Marley characterize the attitude? "We naa leggo." The cowards and bribe takers will, but those are them and I'm talking about us. Torrijos will not get away with prohibiting investigative journalism so easily.

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This edition is coming out later than usual for three reasons:

·     Carnival coincided with production time, which not only made some conflicting demands on my time but also closed the Internet cafes in my neighborhood;

·       I have had a computer problem that has cost me substantial time and isn't completely resolved (but is now at least under enough control that I can continue my work); and

·      At a certain point the low-grade blahs set in and although I have worked through illness before I decided to take things a bit easier in order to avoid a post-production crash. There is no cause for concern --- it was just a matter of recognizing the signs and taking care of myself.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

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So does it belong in the dining, community or science section? Three scientists affiliated with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, headquartered down here in Panama, were among the 15 authors of a study that shows that 6,000 years ago domesticated chili peppers were a common part of the culture throughout much of South America, Meso-America and the Caribbean. Here in Panama we had peppers before we had pottery. So when did the world taste its first pot of chili, and what were the ingredients? That's going to be a much harder question to answer, but the time when that happened is surely earlier than a lot of people might have imagined, well before hamburger could have been included.

Also in this issue, Darrin DuFord takes us to the Finca Dracula in Guadalupe. He doesn't report any crowds of excited peasants brandishing torches and pitchforks and led by the parish priest, nor does he write about bats. Alas, I still don't know what Spanish sounds like when spoken with a funny Transylvanian accent.

And speaking of Eastern Europeans, are the Russians coming? Alex Sánchez from the Council on Hemispheric Affairs notes the Putin era Russia's resumption of relations with Latin America, after years when they had been scaled way back due to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The environment has been a big issue here lately. We had an oil spill in Bocas. The Rio Teta, threatened by a dam to the point that it has aroused the concern of the worldwide surfing community, now faces another menace, this time from a new and apparently illegal garbage dump. During last December's middle of the night legislative sessions, the National Assembly pushed through a law that opens up much of the previously protected Panama Canal Watershed to conversion from green areas into tourist traps, burger strips and subdivisions. The critics are not yielding in their opposition to the capture of dolphins for the Ocean Embassy dolphin park in San Carlos.

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US election seasons start ever earlier, and down here in Panama both American citizens with a right to vote by absentee ballot in federal elections and people of Panamanian or other nationalities who don't have votes but feel affected are taking unusual interest. In the local chapter of Democrats Abroad it appears that both Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama have strong supporters, and there are some people who prefer other primary candidates as well. Some of us who remember Wesley Clark from his days in Panama with the US Southern Command may not rate his chances to win the nomination very highly but nevertheless think that the man is well qualified to be a good president and would be a valuable asset on any national ticket or in any Democratic president's cabinet.

To many conservatives of both the Panamanian and American persuasion, Hillary is the incarnation of our local bogeywoman, the Tulivieja. In a Dan Gainor column syndicated by the Washington-based right-wing AIPE and published in Spanish in El Panama America, Mrs. Clinton was described as "Hugo Chávez in a skirt."

Chávez is a controversial figure in local Democratic circles. Most don't buy the Bush administration's total vilification of the Venezuelan president, but most also have certain objections to some of the things that he does or says. But if Hillary Clinton can carry the United States by the kinds of huge margins that Chávez gets in Venezuela, and if she can deliver the sort of relative economic prosperity that Venezuela has enjoyed to the American people, I imagine that in that sense a lot of Democrats don't mind the comparison at all.

(And no, I don't give Hugo much of the credit for Venezuela's overall prosperity, although I concur with most of his country's voters in giving him his due for spreading the wealth around better than his predecessors did. Ironically, it's his most strident enemy, George W. Bush, that has done the most to boost the Venezuelan economy. Bush led the United States to war in Iraq and the ensuing fiasco has destabilized the entire Middle East and driven world oil prices sky high, which in turn has given Chávez the extra petro-dollars to do the things he wants to do and cushion the economic effects of any mistakes he makes.)

The sub-text of the conservatives' comparison is that Hugo Chávez is a tyrant and Hillary would be too, neither of which propositions I buy, even if I do have certain disagreements with both of these political figures. The unstated point of such attacks is that the prospect of facing Hillary in a general election scares the hell out of Republicans. She represents a very real threat to the GOP, a much more likely one than being turned into arroz con mondongo by the Tulivieja.

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In the past week I have had two humbling lessons about self-defense.

I have been receiving a stream of hate mail and email bombs for some time now. One of the things I have done to fight back is to occasionally publish some of the more obnoxious communications, just to let people know what I'm dealing with. But it turns out that at least one thread of this series of vicious attacks was carried out under someone else's name and I took that bait, allowing a hoax into the letters section and doing an innocent person wrong. See this issue's letters for the details.

Given that the assault by people who want to put The Panama News out of business by way of harrassing me, pressuring advertisers to cut ties with the website and even by falsely accusing me in the Zonelink email group of seeking weapons of mass destruction is relentless, I'm going to have to reconsider tactics and procedures. I will continue to resist, but will refine my methods of doing so.

The second lesson was learned in the kitchen. I think due to some nearby building demolitions, the building in which The Panama News office is located recently experienced a rat invasion. After the rodents gobbled up a lot of the first poisoned baits that I put out but didn't entirely go away, I changed to another variety of anti-coagulant (which is the sort of poison you want to use to avoid rodents dying in the walls and stinking up the building) and also put out a couple of glue pads promoted as anti-rat devices.

To my chagrin, the latter tactic killed no rats but did claim a couple of members of species that are historically protected in Jackson households --- a gecko and a spider got caught in the glue and there wasn't anything I could do to rescue them.

If you don't like the tropical bugs, the spiders and geckoes are your friends. Why would you want to live down here without sharing your space with little chirping lizards anyway? And, although I was brought up differently, I realize that many people have this fear and loathing of spiders but I still insist that this phobia is counterproductive among those who dislike flies, roaches and so on.

Anyway, I'm not going to use glue pads again. Anything that gets caught on them dies a slow and cruel death, and they're one of those indiscriminate weapons that kills friends and foes alike, kind of like the home-scale version of the terrorist booby trap.

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It was a hard job, but somebody had to do it. So I pigged out on many of the Caribbean delicacies at the food booths at this year's Antillean Fair. At the fair I also picked up the bilingual West Indian recipe book that St. Christopher's Episcopal Church has published, and you can find out about ordering your own copy by calling the church at (507) 224-1014.

Enjoy.

Eric Jackson

the editor