letters

A wide range of reader concerns this time

Just because he's...

Everyone please be aware and alert:

In October of 2004 I purchased a small "repo" apartment in the Paitilla area. It required extensive renovation; just about everything needed either fixing or replacing. I hired a contractor to do the job, one who was highly recommended by a close friend. The contractor is bilingual, US College educated, member of the respected Union Club. He completed the job, gave me the keys to the new "burglar proof" multilock door and stated that I was totally safe as no one could ever enter without a key.

Last Wednesday when I went to my small apartment, I was unable to turn the water on (I close the valve when I am not there). I contacted the security for the building and they said "Your contractor, was there for two hours again yesterday working on the apartment, perhaps he did something to the water valve." I was in a total state of shock, no one had authorized his entry to my apartment, I had not seen him since the job was completed in 2004.

I contacted the contractor who finally admitted that he had copied the key to the downstairs door, kept one of the multilock keys and had been using my apartment on occasions for the total two and a half years for his sexual trysts. He offered his most insincere apologies, and felt that was enough.

He also paid to have an immediate change of locks installed to the apartment door.

This contractor had my total trust and I thought we were friends. I have lived in Panama for MANY years, and never thought this could happen to me, but it did.

I urge all residents to have their keys changed after the completion of work done on their house or apartment, do NOT take anything for granted!

Karen Coffey

Gorgona

Redact, redacted, redacting, etc.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no such verb in the English language as "to redact" or any of its conjugations. You should stop using it.

Vernon E. Smith

Editor's note: It's in my dictionaries, but when it's my choice I don't often use it. It appeared in the last issue in an article by Human Rights Watch, which in turn used it because the Pentagon used the word as political/military jargon when a more appropriate word would have been "censor." As in the brass saying that they had "redacted" a Guantanamo prisoner's statement so as to omit his allegation of torture.

Alarm about the new Penal Code

We, the United Artisans of the Casco Antiguo (AUCA), active members of OUPSAF, accuse the government of the Republic of Panama and responsible local authorities for the irresponsible management of our community World Heritage Site, San Felipe, which was inscribed as such on 6 December 1997 at the WHC Convention in Naples, Italy.

Under the New Penal Code of 2007 we and our families face arrests and persecutions. The Panamanian state does not respect its own constitution or laws.

As the consequence of being declared a World Heritage Site in 1997, we have faced a holocaust of forced evictions of the most vulnerable and with the lowest socioeconomic and cultural incomes, thereby destroying our most valuable cultural heritage and annihilating our commununity.

Where is our disappeared community that existed in 1997 today? The cart seller of mangos or fruits in season for used bottles? The charcoal cart seller who would come around regularly during the week? The vegetable cart seller? Our Post Office, Zone 1, Catedral? The first AA (Alcoholics Anonimous, San Felipe)? Our Official Lottery sellers.

The San Felipe University Center,quartered behind the San Francisco de Asis Church that housed nearly 100 of the poorest students from the outlying provinces? Today it's a mausoleum, prey to international real estate investors. There has been nothing to serve the Historic Center residents or the common masses of the Panamanian people.

Our Historic Center properties been pirated, have been sacked and sold to foreigners by wealthy international and national real estate speculators, of which many are grouped under ICOMOS Panama and their International ICOMOS Secretariat.

Adan Cerrud Sanchez

President AUCA

Active Member OUPSAF

Fan mail

Excellent editorial Eric, keep it up!

See you around, best wishes,

Roberto Sánchez

Finally found the right church

When I first came to Panama some 11 months ago, I began to look for a church or meeting. I knew I wanted an open, affirming, liberal church that welcomed all persons of any race, culture, social standing, sex, gender, political belief.

I came from the US Episcopal Church, one of the liberal ones and the Church of Canada.

Here I found no one welcoming, open, and affirming. I found so little social action or social justice. I found no Jesuits, no Quakers, and nothing like the Church of Canada or the liberal Episcopalians and Anglicans anywhere on earth. There are no liberal Old Catholics either, in spite of the number of people here from the Netherlands. I didn't even find any pagans. How could this be? Where on earth was I?

This had to be impossible. I visited so many churches they are all a blur of beautiful R. Catholics and very ugly Anglican or Episcopal churches. The hymnody, for the most part, is nothing beautiful. I found some rock and roll which offended my Oxford Movement Anglo-Catholic snobbish sensibilities. No chant except from the sort of Pentecostals whose theology, even with my bad Spanish, was so horrible I was afraid I'd been kidnapped by a cult or something. I missed High Sung Evening Prayer or Evensong; I missed grand processions;hell, man I missed Easter in this land of bloody Good Friday. I was lost and untethered. It never occurred to ask about churches when I began my plans to move here. I just assumed I'd find someplace to hang out, work, and worship. Was I ever wrong?

Work brought me here and I was planning to ask my boss back home to get me out of here.

Then I met a woman priest of a new church, literally "The New Church" --- it is called of Our Lady of the Rainbow. This church has no building, no sanctuary, other than in people's homes. There are no members officially either and I do not understsand why. But this priest walks the streets of Panama City, her pockets full of condoms and accompanied by a translator when it is needed. The church was founded in the USA and is made up of all gay and lesbian pastors or priests except for the priest in Panama who is heterosexual. I understand the Metropolitan Community Church will be here within a year. But for those of us whose Spanish is bad on good days, I still need an English service for the sermon. And as much as I appreciate the MCC's, I come from Roman Catholicism to Anglicanism's ritual and liturgy. I need all those bells and smells as is said in the USA.

I felt better about Panama, having heard a rousing sermon that God loves us all and created us all as we are. That the bad news of the bible of homosexuality has been grossly misinterpreted and misused and abused for centuries. The interesting point of the sermon for me, in terms of Panamanians, is that it was colonialism's bad theology that brought the bad news of homosexuality to people the world over. It is a belief I'd hope Panamanians, too long under the gun of Spain, England, and France to consider, the idea of brainwashing by those missionaries who came with a purpose of bananas, enslavement, the evil anathema of the Zone's racism gold and silver days not so long ago.

This church is on the streets where people are the most desperate, most hurting, a place that does not accumulate space not used from Sunday to Sunday, a church that celebrates and honors the unions of all persons, straight, gay, lesbian, transexual, bisexual --- all persons. Yes, people of Panama, if you are gay, you can have your union blessed and celebrated and honored and someone who will love you and will tell you how much God loves you and how much church has hurt you and that the church with good theology, sound theology of the last fifty years, can also heal you.

I look forward to gay pride parades and Aids Day because I know there will be a pastor there, as God is always there with us.

I can, at last say, that Panama is becoming home for me and my friends and family. And the Celtic way of Christianity is honored and celebrated as well with Welsh, Irish, Scottish, Breton, Cornish prayers and in the native tongues of some of those thin places.

Pat

From all over the world,

and now the isthmus