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photo by Eric Jackson

America's face in

the Americas?

The face above is that of Specialist Myles Mason, a Wisconsin army reservist who was down here with his engineering unit for this year's Nuevos Horizontes construction and health care maneuvers. Because these activities tend to take place in impoverished rural areas of the country --- in this case the outlying communities of Bocas del Toro's Chiriqui Grande district --- most Panamanians never actually see the faces of the likes of Specialist Mason, except on TV and in the newspapers.

Which is not to say that the US military people who came down here for this year's maneuvers were not appreciated. Although there are some Panamanians with ideological objections to any presence of US forces and others who think that the sort of thing that Mason was doing here --- working on some new school classrooms --- ought to be reserved for Panamanian construction union members only, most people in this country are glad to see the American troops here. (And of course, to the extent that just before leaving they get some time to spend in Panama City or David before flying out, a lot of local merchants really love the business they bring in.)

Panamanians mostly like American soldiers, even though polls show that from day one people here have been overwhelmingly against the Iraq War. That opposition to that adventure has always been over 80 percent here is mostly not a matter of people being communists or anti-American, but an indication of the influence that the Catholic Church wields here. It's only a few years since the US military bases here closed, and many local families are married into the US Armed Forces. The unpopular US disaster in Iraq is not cause for such widespread grief, anger and political recriminations here as it is in the USA, but cause to shrug and conclude that the in-laws' boss, the notorious Uncle Sam, is off on one of his occasional nutty binges again.

The face of America that so many Panamanians came to know, the helpful and considerate soldier who was a good neighbor and maybe even married the young lady next door, is one of the best things going for today's American community.

Ah, but there are both Panamanians and Americans working very hard and investing a lot of money to promote another image of the gringo. They want people to see a mindless consumer with far more money than brains, a sap who's going to make the rabiblanco richer quicker and flock to whatever cheesy tourist traps get set up for them. To such people, Disney World is the Mecca of gringo culture and trash strewing, status symbol worshipping, superficial-minded American consumers are Panama's salvation.

Never mind that most Americans, here and there, find such people offensive. Never mind that the Americans who are actually coming here are mostly middle class and are appreciated not so much by the speculators because they're buying into that Trump thing on the polluted bay but by the waitress who gets left 15 percent instead of 10. Never mind that the Americans who are issuing press releases pretending to be Panamanians and claiming that Panama has the right to do what America does are actually attempting to do things that are not allowed in the United States. The gringo as a species of golden fleeced sheep is being carefully inserted into the popular mythology here.

That's bad for the American community on the isthmus, and bad for Panamanians. I say that as a dual citizen.

As a Panamanian, I insist that the people of this country will solve our problems or else they won't be solved, that dependence on foreigners to rescue us is both degrading and unrealistic, that even if a big influx of foreigners brings a lot of money here most people will never share in the bonanza unless we get our own house in order. I insist that we should never trash our national parks, our historical sites, our Panamanian culture to serve some stereotype of what an American customer is supposed to be like.

As an American, I see our portrayal as Panama's saviors not as flattery but as a cynical set-up. When our public beaches have all been sold off, when so many ancient fishing villages have been removed from the islands to make way for developments marketed to foreigners, when our archaeological sites and parks have been destroyed and converted into private luxury condos, when treaties with the US government have turned control of our entire economy over to America corporations and the same families that drive around in luxury cars still do so and the same families that live hand to mouth in miserable shacks still do so, we Americans will be the gods that failed, won't we? Demagogues will be able to point to socially isolated, fenced-off gringo ghettoes and stir up mobs by telling people that they are poor because those English-speaking consumers on the other side of the fence are rich.

How is this sort of trap avoided? The quietly positive things that the visiting men and women of the American guard and reserve units did while they were here helped. The Americans who are the good neighbors next door, the honest people with whom to do business, the men and women who without fanfare pitch in for community causes, the ethical employers and yes, the ones who leave 15 percent tips --- these are the faces that Panamanians ought to see. And the criminal element that comes from the United States to use Panama as a base of operations for international scams, the rogue businesses that come here looking to do what's not allowed in the USA, the pedophiles in search of Panamanian girls or boys, the plastic people lured here by promises of no taxes and no social responsibility, the arrogant ones with their anachronistic notions of colonies on private islands  --- these are the faces that Panamanians ought to see the American community explicitly rejecting.

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This is a graphic-rich edition of The Panama News. My visit to the Nuevos Horizontes maneuvers is to be found in three illustrated stories --- in addition to the one featuring Specialist Mason there are stories about the US medical mission and about getting to Bocas and back in a Blackhawk helicopter. I took pictures of the 1000 Pollera Parade and took both photos and the pulse of the Panamanian labor movement in the Mayday parade.

Dominating the news is the controversy over a proposal to catch dolphins in Panamanian waters. The American promoters filed a Panamanian criminal defamation charge against a prominent local animal welfare activist and she, with American help, went on a counter-offensive. We've seen a lot of familiar political and media tactics in this dispute. Silvio Sirias looks at the brawl from ground level on Calle 50. Richard O'Barry, the man who trained "Flipper," says why he has since that time dedicated most of his life to opposing dolphin captures and dolphin parks. Ocean Embassy's publicist has some remarks among our letters to the editor.

There's another story that should be dominating the news here, but because it was not broken by a Panamanian medium it hasn't. Two reporters for The New York Times have apparently solved the mystery of how toxic diethylene glycol got into Panama's medicine supply and the link to their story is found in this issue's Cool Internet Sites. They ought to be in the running for a Pulitzer Prize for that story.

(Now some may ask why I don't just copy the story and put it up on my website. I don't do it because that would be theft of other journalists' labor, and especially inexcusable when there is a convenient link to their story in its original context.)

Also in this edition's review section, I check out the Panama Audubon Society's long-awaited guidebook, Where to Find Birds in Panama. I would expect that the entire first print run of 1000 copies will sell out rather quickly.

I also review a restaurant this time, a regional Italian place called the Vesuvio.

And are you thinking about buying fine art? First, you might want to know what Panama's most renowned art dealer, Carlos Weil, had to say about it in one of Mary Arreaga's Tuesday Talks. You also may want to attend the Patronato de Nutricion's annual art auction to fight hunger.

(The United Nations Development Program just released a report that indicated that poverty is growing in Panama despite the much-heralded real estate speculation boom, and another way that you can do your bit to reduce hunger is to participate in the Girl Scouts' March Against Hunger.)

And is baseball season over, or has it just begun? If you have a broad enough perspective, both. Silvio Sirias, a dual US-Nicaraguan citizen, celebrates both of his countries' national pastime with a focus on Panama. Me? I'm noticing that the Tigers are only one game back of first place in their division and keeping track of Panamanians in Major League Baseball.

Enjoy.

Eric Jackson

the editor