opinion

Victoriano's multiple deaths
by Raúl Leis --- raulleisr@hotmail.com

On May 15 105 years had passed since General Victoriano Lorenzo lost his life before a firing squad at the early age of 36 years. You can easily go to the theater of these acts: Plaza Francia (in those times Plaza de Chiriqui), in the Casco Viejo. Look for it. A plaque marks the scene of the crime. Lorenzo, a cholo from Cocle born in 1867, General of the Liberal Army in the Thousand Day War (1898-2002), led a movement that fought for the rights of the farmers and indigenous people who were abused and exploited by the powerful economic and political groups, then manifested in the Conservative authorities who represented Colombian centralism in Panama. For this he was betrayed and exterminated.

Nowadays his memory persists in many ways, demanding not to be forgotten, but recognized and re-evaluated. To be forgotten is the worst of executions. But he remains a presence in the Panamanian countryside, where an extensive and exclusionary rural poverty exists. Two-thirds of this population lives below the poverty line, and in indigenous areas poverty embraces 95 percent.

Historically the Panamanian countryside has been relegated to the periphery of national development and characterized by concentrated poverty, as there is an asphyxiating centralism and the principal epicenter of economic activity is and has been the metropolitan transit zone.

Let us remember that Panama is one of the countries with the greatest inequality on the continent. The rural economy combines subsistence with links to the market, which is expressed by the presence of tiny farms and huge agribusiness properties. The monetary economy accentuates rural to urban migration, spurred by the need for income for basic consumption and for the education of the kids. Most of our 170,000 illiterates are in the countryside.

Agriculture accounts for only seven percent of the Gross Domestic Product and 22 percent of the total employment in this country --- it's what the great majority of the extremely poor depend upon for their subsistence, but the poorest two-thirds only possess one third of the arable land. The average value of the land held by the poor is less than that of those who are not poor, and thus large families with a low educational level working tiny farms is the core of rural poverty. Under these conditions, the countryside is a growing reservoir of poverty, which via migration affects the agricultural frontiers and the cities.

If we don't make a just transformation to sustainable agriculture and food sovereignty as a great national strategic initiative; if we down build a more participatory democracy; if we don't establish a real strategy against poverty; if we don't bring justice and equity to our society; if we forget the justice of Victoriano Lorenzo's cause and his vocation of struggle for change, we'll continue to shoot him again and again by forgetting and discrediting him, as we shoot down the people for whom he gave his live with hunger and marginalization.