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Volume
14, Number 4 |
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Chaos ratchets up after cop kills labor activist at hospital entrance Obama grabs early lead in Democrats Abroad primary Not so easy for Wever to take over Panama Oeste PRD organization International verdict pending on dictatorship disappearance case Panama News Briefs British business dispute, Panamanian political scandal or a little of both? American youth shot by Carnival rent-a-cop Prior news briefs, through February 10  Members of the SUNTRACS
construction workers' union block traffic on Calle 50 on February 13,
the day after one of their colleagues was shot and killed at the
entrance to the Policlinica Hugo Spadafora (the old Coco Solo Hospital)
while seeking medical attention. Photo
by Allan Hawkins
Cops
attack hospitals, kill labor activist
by Eric Jackson --- video and some information from other media The Sindicato de Trabajadores de Construccion y Similares (SUNTRACS), a militant construction workers' union led by followers of the Marxist-Leninist November 29th National Liberation Movement (MLN-29), has emerged over the course of the Torrijos administration as the political foe that the president hates the most. The rivalry has has always been deadly, dating back to November 29, 1969, when teacher and leftist leader Floyd Britton died at the hands of General Omar Torrijos's prisoncrats at the Coiba Island penal colony. Britton's body was disposed of in an undisclosed location, but his breakaway faction of the old Moscow-line communist party, the Partido del Pueblo, has never forgotten. Hence the name "November 29 National Liberation Movement." The other side of the Partido del Pueblo by and large sided with the dictatorship and was eventually mostly absorbed by the general's Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD). Fast forward more than 38 years and you have the dictator's son and the teacher's spiritual heirs carrying on the feud. Although many of the old commies are still in the PRD, saying and doing what they must to hold onto their hack jobs, this is not an intra-leftist dispute: the PRD has for many years been the more urban face of big business politics (as opposed to the more provincial Panameñistas), while SUNTRACS is by far the largest and most successful private-sector labor union. It's the core of the FRENADESO labor/left umbrella group and, in alliance with unions representing teachers, health care workers and other economic sectors, it has been at the forefront of the labor militancy that has grown over the past few years. As Martin Torrijos has increasingly put Noriega's old boys in key positions, the old rules have also been making a comeback. Under Colonel Daniel Delgado Diamante, Minister of Government and Justice under the current regime and a member of the Panama Defenses general staff under Noriega's, and Major Severino Mejía, Martín Torrijos's Vice Minister of Government and Justice and Noriega's adjutant, the shaven-skulled National Police Chief Rolando Mirones has been given a license to kill SUNTRACS members and the law enforcement apparatus has been reorganized to minimize the possibility of independent investigations into the particulars. For years, the Panamanian political culture has been that people sufficiently annoyed with government policies block the streets. The dictatorship's constitution, which is still in effect, in combination with the flagrant corruption of the legal and political systems, afford few practical and meaningful other means to redress grievances. Ordinarily police route traffic around the blockade, or, if it's in a spot that can't be conveniently bypassed, give a few minutes' warning and then move in with tear gas and clubs to clear the road. For SUNTRACS, President Torrijos has changed the response to birdshot and bullets. Last year the police killed one unarmed labor activist at a work site where the president's campaign manager Héctor Alemán is one of the developer's partners. Also last year, police pulled back from another confrontation to allow goons from the corrupt Brazilian Odebrecht construction company (which probably has members of the Torrijos family or political entourage among its Panamanian subsidiary's shareholders --- the company spokesman won't specifically deny it, but this country's corporate secrecy laws make it difficult to confirm it) to shoot and kill another SUNTRACS member.  Al Iromi Smith. Photo by SUNTRACS And so it came to pass that on Tuesday, February 12, when SUNTRACS members in Colon took to the streets to cause a major traffic jam at Four Corners, resisted efforts to disperse them with a hail of rocks and bottles, and then continued the battle just down the road at a construction site at the entrance to Puerto Esconidido, police responded with gas, birdshot and bullets. And so it was that 29-year-old Al Iromi Smith, a construction worker by day and a University of Panama Colon campus student of mathematics by night, took a birdshot pellet in his right temple and made his way to the nearby Policlinica Hugo Spadafora --- where his wife works in the pharmacy --- in search of medical attention. And so it was that the National Police sent in their elite linces --- cops who ride on motorcycles and carry machine pistols and are trained for quick responses to armed robberies, kidnappings and other violent crimes in progress --- to attack Smith and other injured SUNTRACS members seeking medical attention at the clinic, which used to be called Coco Solo Hospital in Canal Zone times. The cops rode into a group of people at the hospital's entrance and one of their number, Sergeant Eliseo Madrid Valdés, whipped out his pistol and shot Smith in the lower back. Smith died a few minutes later. Chief Rolando Mirones declared that the shooting was in self-defense and thus justifiable, and announced that, this conclusion having been reached, the National Police would investigate themselves over the incident. However, the medical examiner announced that Smith had been shot in the back and there were more than a dozen eyewitnesses to dispute the Torrijos administration's cover story. Prosecutors filed a murder charge against Sergeant Madrid.  SUNTRACS members block traffic on Via Israel on February 13. Photo by Harvey Heard, Jr. On the following
day SUNTRACS and the MLN-9's student affiliate, the Revolutionary
Student Front (FER-29) responded by blocking all entrances to Colon
city, eight major traffic arteries in the Panama City metro area and
the Pan-American Highway at three points in the Interior. There were running battles between cops and
construction workers all over the capital, the former using tear gas
and shotguns, the latter stones, molotov cocktails and heavy objects
thrown from atop tall buildings. In some places such as the Amador Causeway the topography
favored the police, while in other places like Costa del Este circumstances made
for more equal battles. The blockade on Via Israel was rather easily
dispersed, but on Avenida Balboa police used copious shotgun shells and
tear gas grenades but were nevertheless run off the street by a
charging mob of enraged construction workers.
 Shotgun shells left behind on Avenida Balboa Photo by Eric Jackson Over
on the Transistmica, the campus militants of FER-29 set up the usual
blockade in front of the University of Panama. The police directed
traffic around them in order to concentrate their forces for the
rumbles with SUNTRACS.
Meanwhile
in Colon, police moved into the La Feria
housing projects where the Smith family was holding a wake. After two
raids on Iromi Smith's mother's apartment where the wake was being
held, purportedly to serve arrest warrants on two of
the witnesses to the previous day's shooting incident,
uniformed and plainclothes cops met fierce resistance, including sniper fire,
on an attempted third incursion. After rousting drivers from their
cars, blocking residents from
their homes and, according to the Smith family, threatening to jail the
slain construction workers' three brothers if the family persisted in
the murder prosecution, the police were obliged to withdraw.
At the end of the day nearly 500 people were under arrest, most to be released after paying fines of between $25 and $50, more than 30 SUNTRACS members had been wounded by birdshot. Police told La Prensa that 16 members of their force had been been injured, including four who had been shot in the fighting around Iromi Smith's mother's house. The police added that one of their vehicles had been burned and their La Feria substation trashed in that fighting. Also in La Prensa, the Chamber of Commerce estimated some $12 million in business losses caused by the February 13 disturbances.  Police gather near the Papal Nunciatura on Avenida Balboa on the 14th. Photo by Eric Jackson The
next day the police were out in force, particularly around Avenida
Balboa. But in the morning the construction workers went to work, and
after quitting time at four in the afternoon many of them went to
Parque Porras to begin a march to the Presidencia along the usual
route, up Avenida Peru, then down Via España and Avenida
Central in to
the Casco Viejo.
 After a day of work... photo by Eric Jackson  The labor movement and its allies marched to the Presidencia. Photo by José F. Ponce  Photo by José F. Ponce  Photo by José F. Ponce Once
at their destination, the protesters gathered in Plaza Catedral while a
delegation of labor leaders met with third-string Torrijos
administration officials. The government representatives invited
SUNTRACS to sit down and talk about workplace safety regulations, but
warned that any street closures would be forcibly suppressed.
Meanwhile, the mainstream opposition politicians were deploring the previous day's events. Typical was the reaction of former Vice President Guillermo Ford, who is seeking a 2009 presidential nomination from the Union Patriotica party. He told El Panama America that he doesn't support the SUNTRACS tactics but criticized the police for using more force than was called for under the circumstances. Responding to the opposition while on a visit to Arraijan to show off new public works projects, President Torrijos leveled a blast of his own. He said that "we have lamented the death of a worker in Colon," but that "unscrupulous" politicians had taken advantage of the situation "to fall into political opportunism without concern for the consequences of their actions."  Meeting at the Palacio de las Garzas. Photo by the Presidencia Being the 15th of the month it was payday and the Torrijos administration was annoying another union that the president doesn't like, the Social Security Fund Employees Association (AECSS), by not paying x-ray technicians, surgical nurses and orderlies for overtime. This, after earlier this year having refused to pay contracted pay raises, again on the excuse that the government is running short of money. So, except for emergency and transplant operations, the union shut down Seguro Social's operating rooms. The doctors and nurses in other unions, who wouldn't have had much choice in any case, honored the picket lines. It wasn't just about pay or insults. Smith had been slain at a hospital entrance while seeking medical attention. "Members of the National Police invaded public health facilities," the AMOACSS doctors' union charged, "placing at risk patients, doctors and other workers and the public in general." AECSS leader Priscila Vasquez issued a call for "the entire population to mobilize, demanding the country's demilitarization." The National Medical Negotiating Committee (COMENENAL), an alliance of public health sector doctors' unions that won a bitter 39-day strike against the government late last year, called a "state of alert" and denounced an "aberrant conception of public safety" that involves "the excessive use of force and of tear gas near health care facilities, affecting the patients." The doctors, nurses, technicians and orderlies were about to see more of the same. The fighting of February 15 did not start with SUNTRACS taking the initiative to block the streets. According to the union's number two leader, it began early in the morning in Paitilla, when police arrested activists for passing out leaflets to construction workers about to start work. So who started it? It's perfectly legal, even protected under the dictatorship's constitution under which Panama lives, to pass out leaflets. However, during the canal expansion referendum the Torrijos administration had "no" campaign activists arrested for passing out literature, sent out government workers to tear down legally posted "no" banners and posters, and during that campaign and the previous labor strife over the privatization of the Seguro Social retirement fund took various measures to remove critical journalists and opposition commentary from the mainstream media. If SUNTRACS had every legal right to pass out leaflets, they also had every reasonable expectation that people would be arrested for it. And with the busts, the battle was on, with the police moving in on construction sites and SUNTRACS members greeting them with hailstorms of missiles, some of them quite large and heavy and thrown from high above.  Riot police ready to do battle in upscale Paitilla. Photo by Phil Edmonston The
day's heaviest fighting was in Paitilla, where even above 20
floors residents had to close their windows against the clouds of tear
gas. One of the most vociferously critical of the annoyed neighbors was
former President Guillermo Endara, a man with a history of heart
problems who's no big fan of labor unions but on this day was very much
less a fan of the National Police.
 The munitions of choice in the SUNTRACS arsenal. Photo by Phil Edmonston  The munitions of choice in the National Police arsenal. Photo by Phil Edmonston In
these days of cell phones, it didn't take long to call SUNTRACS into
action across the country, and in some cases where there was a delay,
the police moved in to begin the confrontations. All along Avenida
Balboa and in Punta Pacifica --- in all the places where Panama City's
construction boom is most concentrated --- battles raged. The police
met some of their strongest resistance of the day at
buildings under construction near Parque Urraca.
In the Interior as well, the riot cops were dressed for battle and massed before the work day started. In San Carlos it wasn't until later in the morning that SUNTRACS members poured out of the Vista Mar construction site to block the Pan-American Highway. Traffic flow was soon restored with tear gas and truncheons. This reporter was briefly detained while taking photos of the prisoners and their captors at the San Carlos police station. There was another brief closures of the Pan-American Highway down the road in Coronado, while in Veraguas police stopped a march before it got to the highway and in Cocle and Chiriqui there were SUNTRACS street protests that resulted in neither major traffic problems or violence.  Under arrest in San Carlos. Photo by Eric Jackson  They held the highway at day's end. Dibs on the national symbols is another question. Photo by Eric Jackson Some
of the day's confrontations got downright bizarre. A worker injured in
the fighting was taken to the Policlinica JJ Vallarino in Juan Diaz,
and having been treated for his injuries was in the pharmacy when a cop
burst in, slammed him against the wall and started biting him.
According to AECSS leader Priscila Vásquez, other patients
waiting to
get their prescriptions filled stepped in to cut short this act of
attempted
cannibalism, but the union member was taken away by police.
And the University of Panama? Even though there aren't a lot of people on campus for summer session, FER-29 did its customary thing and blocked the Transistmica. The rector ordered an indefinite university closure.  Students blocking the Transistmica. Photo by FER-29 The
day's casualty figures, according to the Red Cross, were 18 workers and
one cop injured. Police reported 473 people arrested.
While the tear gas swirled and the rocks flew around the country on February 15, negotiators for SUNTRACS, the Panamanian Chamber of Construction (CAPAC) and the government met in marathon session. They ended up with at least a partial agreement about new construction site health and safety regulations. (The union said they weren't enough, but it would take them.) At a series of meetings on February 16, unions and groups that had been estranged from FRENADESO, SUNTRACS and the MLN-29 announced their intention to close ranks with SUNTRACS against police repression. The possibility of a national strike over the issue was left open, but for the time being no such action was called. SUNTRACS said that it would be holding a vigil for Smith on the following evening in front of the Don Bosco Basilica, passing out leaflets to people on their way to work on the morning of the 18th and turning out their members for Smith's funeral procession on the 19th in Colon. A coalition of health care workers' unions called for a March 6 national day of protest against police repression in general and attacks at hospitals in particular. However, it was also announced that the overtime pay dispute and consequent operating room strike had been settled. Also in this section: Chaos ratchets up after cop kills labor activist at hospital entranceObama grabs early lead in Democrats Abroad primary Not so easy for Wever to take over Panama Oeste PRD organization International verdict pending on dictatorship disappearance case Panama News Briefs British business dispute, Panamanian political scandal or a little of both? American youth shot by Carnival rent-a-cop Prior news briefs, through February 10
Make
the Executive Hotel your headquarters in Panama City --- http://ww.executivehotel-panama.com
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©
2008 by Eric Jackson email: editor@thepanamanews.com or e_l_jackson_malo@yahoo.com Mailing
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