community

 

American ambassador highlights 1992 drive-by shooting for which US authorities blame RP National Assembly president

 

A diplomatically combative Veterans Day ceremony

story and photos by Eric Jackson

 

The norm for Veterans Day in Panama --- a US holiday also celebrated by Canada, the UK and France variously as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day --- is for an international ceremony with representatives of the World War I Allied countries at the American Cemetery in Corozal. In 2007, it was an Americans-only affair, and used to further an increasingly acrimonious argument between the United States and Panama.

 

US Ambassador William A. Eaton didn't raise his voice. Very diplomatically, he gave a brief speech recognizing American veterans, not only for their sacrifices during military service but for the civic and public services that most of them render afterwards. As is often the case at such ceremonies, he highlighted the case of a particular fallen member of the US Armed Forces.

 

That's when the ceremony got quietly confrontational. The ambassador highlighted the case of US Army Sergeant Zak Hernandez, gunned down in a 1992 drive-by shooting of which the US justice system accuses Pedro Miguel González, the president of Panama's National Assembly.

 

Hernandez, the ambassador said, "was murdered not because of any personal animosity, but because he was a symbol" selected on the basis of the uniform he wore.

 

González denies the allegation, and was acquitted by a jury of government employees in 1997, in trial that Washington has always rejected as a mockery.

 

Ratification of the US-Panama Trade Promotion Agreement, a NAFTA-style bilateral free trade pact, has been taken off the US Congressional agenda --- over the Bush administration's objections --- due to the selection of González to head Panama's legislature. It's a big setback for free trade boosters, one that may in the end waste a lot of Ambassador Eaton's labor over several years.

 

About 150 people gathered for the November 11 ceremony, including American military veterans and their families, representatives of the US Embassy, members of the Elks Club, Navy League, VFW and Boy Scouts of America and military attaches of several Latin American countries. Veterans Day marks the anniversary of the end of World War I, when the guns on the Western Front stopped firing at 11 a.m. on November 11, 1918.

 

The invocation prayer, with Chaplain James Wilkins (right) and VFW

Department Commander and master of ceremonies Edward Lesesne (left)

 

Colonel Pete Oliver, US Defense Attaché

 

 

The Boy Scouts of America, who operate here by agreement with Panama's scouts

 

Ambassador Eaton, an Army vet

 

A salute during taps