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So what's my excuse this time?

Lots of explanations, no excuses. July's production was late and incomplete, worse than the usual.

Have I fully assimilated into the "maybe mañana" culture?

Or can I blame it on the traffic jams?

The traffic jam shown above is more thoroughly illustrated in our travel section, although it might just as well have been in one of several others. The attempt to impose company unions in the construction sector, coupled with an appalling and related death toll at building sites, has brought SUNTRACS out onto the streets. Getting photos of the protests was on my list of things to do, but on this particular morning I was on a bus to San Carlos to do a couple of things and then dash right back to the city to go to a doctor's appointment and meet with a lawyer who had some problems with something I published years ago. However, my plans were modified by SUNTRACS, who set up their picket line across the Pan-American Highway just a bit before San Carlos.

Now, were I one of these gringos afflicted with both the "time is money" syndrome and an imperious attitude, I might have wasted a lot of time and energy being furious and made life miserable for some poor bus driver and his long-suffering assistant. Instead I got off the bus, got that story and walked a few kilometers from the bus to the protest and then into town. It was a few hours lost, which I mostly spent working on the graphics for this issue, until the word came that the road was open again and I went back to Panama City to my rescheduled day.

(And how did it go? Well, for a guy as fat as I am the checkup said that my overall health is surprisingly good. It's just that I have this nagging minor injury. I am not being sued or facing another criminal defamation charge --- other than the pending one by erstwhile "Patriot" militia shill and current unlicensed banking / investment hustler Mark Boswell alias Rex Freeman, with whom nobody with any brains should have any financial dealings --- but a brief from years back about how someone and something was under investigation has been edited to reflect the reality that the investigation didn't turn up anything that warrants their continued association with a notorious case. I try to be fair.)

Anyway, the story of the traffic blockage above reminds me of a disagreement I had with someone at the US Embassy awhile back. In the US State Department's annual human rights report of a few years ago, it was asserted that there are no undue restrictions on the right to travel in Panama. I argued that our political culture, in which people take out their grievances with the government by blocking the roads, is a serious impediment to the right to travel.

It's not that I'm going to rush out and file some sort of charges against SUNTRACS, because on the issues of that particular day I sympathize with them and, as unfortunate as it is, blocking the road is part of our culture. One of the reasons that I am for a new Panamanian constitution is to provide better alternatives for aggrieved citizens seeking to make their point.

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A travel story that I got into the last part of the last issue, but so late that many of you regular readers surely missed it, is continued in this issue. I interviewed Rubén Blades, our multi-talented director of the IPAT tourism bureau and tourism minister, in a very long conversation that got into many subjects but mainly stuck to his job as a public official and closely related matters. Some of the things he said ought to calm certain controversies, and other things he said ought to ignite other ones. So far, from my perspective, what have drawn the most adverse reactions to what he said are things that are factually not very disputable. So is "residential tourism" really an oxymoron in either the framework of the basic tourism law or as a matter of economic realities? Is there really no such thing as sex tourism? Will the El Carmen Church immunize Via Veneto from the more mortal sins? Is it true that immigration laws that keep visitors from certain regions of the world from coming here are a thing of the past? Read all about it, and think about it, in the travel section.

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The other night --- actually, about two in the morning --- I was roused from my sleep by my mother's dobermans, Heidi and Blitz, making all this noise out in the yard. They were ganging up on this unfortunate opossum. His rear end was a bit chewed but after having chased the dogs away I used a shovel to create a bridge to a neighbor's tree to help the poor thing climb away under his own power.

Dogs are like that. They have this instinct to bully, and it's not by chance the under the former dictatorship they called the brutal riot squad the "dobermans." Miguel Antonio Bernal, who was beaten within an inch of his life for protesting back in 1979, sees various similarities in the recent actions of the SPI presidential guards, who beat and stomped people sick from diethylene glycol poisoning and the relatives of people who died from that government-distributed toxin when they approached the presidential palace. Because of the huge public uproar, President Torrijos came back from his trip abroad and took stern disciplinary action. He sent the SPI director, a veteran of Noriega's old Panama Defense Forces who personally supervised the beatings, on a 30-day vacation.

Maybe it's a cop-out to say that "dogs are like that" anyway. From my observations, people tend to be as well. In general, human beings behave worse in groups than as individuals, and tend to pick on those whom they think can't fight back.

And am I being a bully to publish the quotation that follows?

"The American people know traditional marriage is a vital institution that goes to the core of so many of the deep social problems."

Senator David Vitter (R-LA)

In Panamanian politics that sort of taunting goes way beyond the pale. But then in this country's politics nobody gets elected to national office by playing "smear the queer" like Vitter did. I could make lawyer-like arguments about how he "opened the door" and can not now reasonably be heard to complain when his contact information comes to light in a DC madam's client records.

Vitter's far from the only one who has been elected to US office by waving a phony "family values" flag. As there is no constitutional provision to recall federal elected officials, one might expect a certain small percentage of voters to take it out on his party's other candidates at the next opportunity. It may be unfair, but then in the overall scheme of things it's a better way of protesting than blocking the roads.

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Some of us prefer our brutality in the ring, and some prefer to manage it rather than directly engage in the fisticuffs. Silvio Sirias dedicates his column in this issue to a young man who may become Panama's next world-class boxing manager.

Labor strife is an important topic in the news lately, and I dedicate my column to a legendary figure in US labor history, who took a beating that pulled the malevolent Henry Ford off of his pedestal. Not only that, but the guy got a type of monster named after him.

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Violence against journalists is all too common around the world. We have very little of it here in Panama --- legal harrassment we do have, but it has been 17 years since a journalist was killed in the line of duty here and by many accounts that was a case of mistaken identity --- but it's a severe problem in several Latin American countries and of course wherever there's a war zone.

That plague touched the United States the other day. Chauncey Bailey, a reporter and editor for the Oakland Post, a small publication covering that California city's African-American community, was gunned down. His alleged assassin is described as a young fanatic enraged about Bailey's coverage of apparent business improprieties in some establishments run by members of a small heterodox Muslim denomination.

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We have a larger than usual arts section this time, leading off with "Jesus Lizard on a Banana Channel," a painting by artist Mark Nelson, who lives and works in Chicago. That work has now been installed in the new American Embassy in Clayton. Remember that as part of the process of moving the US diplomatic missions around, the consulate will be mostly closed for business for most of the first half of September. When all the inconvenience is over the new embassy won't be as centrally located but it will be much more easily defended from terrorist attacks.

The interesting question is what will happen to the old embassy building on Avenida Balboa, for which there is a centuries-long but non-transferrable lease. As vulnerable as the place has been in the event that someone might drive a truck bomb down Avenida Balboa, it is built like a fortress and would be difficult to demolish.

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This issue's Cool Internet sites focus on some of the alternative online media that have arisen in Panama as the PRD, the oligarchic families and the ad cartel --- often all three combined in one --- have tightened their chokeholds on the mainstream sources of information. I would suspect that as the powers-that-be realize that a march has been stolen on them by these and other publications they will react, but I don't expect them to change the attitudes and practices that have led people to look toward other sources in the first place. They can package their propaganda with sex and gore or they can look down their aristocratic noses with feigned restraint, but news that's at the bottom line constrained by imperatives to maintain a few dozen families and a partisan political system that almost everybody hates on top of Panamanian society will always leave plenty of room for genuine journalism.

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The late Abbie Hoffman once lamented that his cultural immersion south of the US border was impeded by a terrible shortcoming. "I get my Latin American virgins mixed up," he said. Our community section, in addition to covering the swearing-in of a new batch of Peace Corps volunteers, taking a glance at how the handicapped parking concept is poorly understood here and passing on a notice about the American Society's "welcome back" wine tasting, warns that the icon of yet another Latin American virgin is headed this way.

Enjoy.

Eric Jackson

the editor