A pictorial review of 2007

The year began with the demolition of yet another historic structure, the old Castillo El Millon, which used to be the mansion of Domingo Díaz Arosemena, who served as president of Panama in 1948 and 1949. Historic preservationists rallied their forces to save the capital's noteworthy architecture, but pretty much lost every battle.

Glimpses back at
2007 in pictures
except as noted, photos by Eric Jackson

This young Colombian lady, Andrea Tierra, and her jazz harpist husband, Edmar Castañeda, were the surprise hits of an all-around great 2007 Panama Jazz Festival

February? That's when Panama's Girl Scouts --- the Muchachas Guias --- go camping along the Zarati River in Cocle province. Their camp is also rented to other groups

Their majesties the queens of the Antillean Fair

During Carnival The Panama News suffered an electronic attack, shown by the very tall red bar (bandwidth consumption) and corresponding lower bars of every other color. A criminal element got past our web server's defenses by way of a location in China --- where we doubt the attack originated --- and inserted a "bot" that, without registering a visit or a downloaded file, consumed an enormous amount of bandwidth and led our web server to shut off service for several days. This crime was part of a constant barrage of electronic assaults, frivolous legal actions, published appeals to file further frivolous legal actions, libel, invective and pressure on advertisers, for the most part organized by an extreme right-wing element of the American community here and by people who had been involved in scams that The Panama News exposed. Graphic by Datarealm, which didn't stand by its customer in a time of electronic attack

As dry season approached its end, a view of Chame Bay from Cerro Campana

American football is part of Panamanian culture and will remain so

The Balboa Union Church's Reverend Veagra at the
Afro-Antillean Museum's Easter Sunrise service

A small Falun Gong group exercises and meditates in
Parque Omar, no big deal here but a serious crime in
benighted China. Lots of people all around the world
downloaded our little photo feature on Falun Gong

The Wisconsin National Guard took part in the Nuevos Horizontes engineering
and health care maneuvers, which took place in rural Bocas del Toro province.
Here a guardsman puts the finishing touches on a new primary school classroom

Panamanian boxing is at one of its high points, led by WBA super-bantamweight
champ Celestino Caballero. This was a more popular boxing night at the Club de
Leones gym in El Marañon, for prizefighters on their way up and true boxing fans

The powers that be didn't pay much attention, but the movement to defend
Panama City from irresponsible developers isn't going away any time soon

One short-lived idea was the notion that Avenida Central would become more
competitive as a retail center by bringing traffic back to the pedestrian mall.
The mayor and city council bought that suggestion, but after protests reconsidered

Panama's Gay Pride march made its way up Via Argentina

Yum --- star apple season! (Yes, we know --- the apple growers' lobby
insists that it's terribly misleading to use that name for a carambola)

A couple of dozen construction workers died on the job this year, leading to militant
protests by the SUNTRACS construction workers' union like this one in San Carlos

Cops defending a company union at Isla Viveros and
Odebrecht SA company goons in Colon shot and killed
two SUNTRACS members, leading to protests that the
government charged were for the purpose of inciting
more violence. Despite such police attempts to stir up
violence as directing traffic into this labor march, the
violence that the government predicted didn't happen

This country with its rodent national symbol had one of the many wonderful stands
at the Caravana de Asistencia Social charity fair at the ATLAPA convention center

Bad news that the Panama Canal Authority still denies. The Northwest
Passage (yellow line) across the top of Alaska and Canada melted to
the point of full navigability this year, and the Northeast Passage (blue
line) across the top of Russia and Norway was only blocked by ice in
one relatively small section that could be opened by icebreakers. It
means shorter routes than via the Panama Canal between East Asia
on the one hand and Europe and the East Coast of North America on
the other, with short but ever longer shipping seasons every summer.
Composite photo by the European Space Agency

Riding a decorated oxcart in the El Valle Campesino Parade

US - Panamanian intergovernmental relations took a turn for the worse when the
PRD caucus chose Pedro Miguel González as president of the National Assembly.
González is wanted by US authorities for the 1992 drive-by shooting death of US
Army Sergeant Zak Hernandez, a crime for which a Panamanian court acquitted
González in a verdict that Washington has never accepted. Here in his legislative
circuit in Santa Fe, Veraguas, somebody defaced his image on a PRD billboard.
In Washington Congress put ratification of a free trade agreement with Panama
on indefinite hold because of its Panamanian counterpart's choice of a leader

November is Panama's season of patriotic parades

The indicted but government-supported ex-governor of Cocle, Richard Fifer,
just went ahead and started his strip mine without an environmental permit

2007 was one of the rainiest years on record, so the Panama Canal Authority
had to open a gate at the Gatun Spillway to let some water out of the lake

A 39-day strike by physicians in the public health
care systems proved to be more than the Torrijos
administration and the adversaries of organized
labor in general were able to defeat. It was the
first public sector strike that this administration lost
and was commemorated in this New Year's muñeco

The members of the San Carlos Bombero Band practicing for a Christmas parade