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High school riots prompt talk of destabilization plot

by Eric Jackson, partly from other media

It started out when the OAS was in town and many groups with many causes took to the streets in relatively small numbers to demonstrate for or this or that. The government, wanting to avoid trouble, had called off school on Monday, June 4, but the school radicals at the Instituto Nacional and Artes y Oficios gathered to block traffic near their schools anyway.

The following day the protests at those schools escalated. In the case of Artes y Oficios, as a rock throwing student crowd snarled traffic, people from the adjacent slum neighborhood began throwing rocks at the students. Meanwhile over at the Instituto Nacional masked young men stormed the nearby police mini-station and made off with two motorcycles. Teachers intervened before the bikes could be torched.

On June 6, after 51 students had been arrested and a government-estimated $800,000 worth of property damage had been inflicted,  Education Minister Miguel Ángel Cañizales closed down Artes y Oficios and the Instituto Nacional, and the National Police moved in to occupy Artes y Oficios.

Cañizales blamed the teachers for the disturbances. He alleged that teachers were offering to give students higher grades if they participated in the protests. That led to an angry response from Andrés Rodríquez, leader of the Asociacion de Profesores de Panama, who denied the charge and challenged the minister to provide proof.

The allegations and the closures of the two most notoriously rowdy schools in the metro area, in turn, provided much of the excuse for students at the Richard Neumann, Jose Remon Cantera and Isabel Herrera Obaldia high schools on Via Israel to pour out of their classrooms to block the street and do battle with police on June 8, stoning the cars of several people who tried to drive past their blockade.

Those schools were closed and the Ministry of Education made more noises about a plot by unspecified adults to urge kids at at least a half-dozen schools to cause trouble so as to destabilize the government.

The following week on June 13 students at a school not known for protest movements, Angel Rubio in San Miguelito, poured out onto Via Tocumen to block traffic, pelt cars and businesses with stones and fight with police. After the tear gas cleared away, more than 100 students were under arrest. The complaints in this case were about dilapidated conditions in the school building and the lack of equipment in its labs, and the students were also demanding the principal's resignation.

By this time the ruling Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) and conservative business groups were blaming the labor/left umbrella group FRENADESO for the riots, which prompted a strident response. Missing from that reply was an explicit denial of involvement in the student turmoil, and had it been included it may not have been entirely credible as FER-29 and some of the other student groups participating in the disturbances at the Instituto Nacional and Artes y Oficios are part of the FRENADESO coalition.

Pointing out that Cañizales was a psychologist for the former dictatorship's G-2 military intelligence unit that was infamous for its use of torture, FRENADESO accused the Ministry of Education of "trying to mock their responsibility... for a deteriorating education system" and defended the student protesters as being "inspired by true civic values and revolutionary ideals." The group blasted the Torrijos administration for trying to suppress protests against unpopular policies.

It seems, however, that in the battle for public opinion the student protesters are not doing very well. Even if a lot of Panamanians are annoyed by the government, many of those as well as most of the peoiple who are satisfied with the government are unhappy about the violence and disruption of the wave of high school riots.

Look for late June and early July to be a continuing time of uncertainty for metro area drivers, due to street disturbances.

As this issue of The Panama News went to press another construction worker had just died in a six-story fall and several building projects were already being picketed by the militant SUNTRACS construction workers' union over worksite safety issues. The union's rank and file had earlier authorized a national construction strike over safety concerns.

On January 28 in Washington the United States and Panama are scheduled to sign a free trade agreement, which is anathema to most of the labor movement, most farmers, all leftist groups and a number of middle class professional and business sectors that for one reason or another consider their interests adversely affected. The signing will likely prompt a protest season, especially if the treaty is submitted to a special legislative session for ratification. For more than one year polls have suggested that Panamanian society is split nearly down the middle over free trade with the United States, with a slightly larger plurality in favor than opposed.

Meanwhile, Panama's public debt is at record levels, the government is complaining that inflation has eaten up its budget faster than expected and the lack of maintenance to public facilities is apparent to anyone who takes a cursory look at the state of our streets and roads. That state of affairs also applies many of the school buildings and creates ever present opportunities for new high school disturbances.

And even if teachers did prevent students from burning those police motorcycles, the government's creation of a puppet negotiating committee so as to avoid dealing with educators' unions last year will not be forgotten. Don't look for teachers to lift many fingers to help the G-2 psychologist solve his problems.

High school riots
US State Department's take on human trafficking in Panama

Costa Rica dumps Taiwan for China

Rice doesn't much impress the OAS
Panama News Briefs