New Year's munecos

They've all gone up in smoke now
photos by Eric Jackson

The muñeco is an tradition from Panama's Interior, wherein effigies, often of prominent figures from the previous 12 months, are displayed after Christmas and burned on bonfires at New Year's parties. In Chame and San Carlos in particular, the tradition lives.

2007's labor strife and the militarization of the Ministry of Government and Justice by putting a member of Noriega's general staff and Noriega's adjutant, Colonel Delgado Diamante and Major Mejía respectively, were the subjects of a number of this year's muñecos. Above we see a doctor who won a pay raise in a 39-day strike, and a carpenter, whose union suffered casualties when company goons and cops opened fire on its unarmed members. Below we see the police depicted.

So how bad was the repression in 2007? Not nearly as bad as 20 years earlier, when the notorious head of Noriega's feared G-2 intelligence / torture unit knocked on a young man's door and informed him that his muñeco was "seditious."

The muñeco phenomenon has always had its political side, and also reflects popular culture, but in recent years it has become a bit more corporate. As in these depictions of television news personalities.

And the contest winner was this, one of several depictions of athlete Irving Saladino

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