Civilistas warn, but is anyone listening?

Delivering the word --- what a small movement does to grow

Civilistas warn of killer militarism
--- but how many are listening?
photos by Eric Jackson

On the afternoon of October 29 a few dozen members of the Red Democratica Ciudadana (Citizens Democratic Network) gathered on Calle 50 to press their demand for an end to President Torrijos's security decrees and for the definitive ouster of Daniel Delgado Diamante, a former Noriega-era military officer, as Minister of Government and Justice. Delgado Diamante is on unpaid leave as he's being investigated in a 1970 murder case.

There were some supportive reactions, a few hostile ones and mostly the rush hour crowds paid little heed to the mostly middle and upper class protesters, most of them veterans of the 1980s Civilista movement against the dictatorship.

Two of the organization's leaders, Dr. Mauro Zúñiga and Angélica Maytín, had been charged with criminal defamation two days earlier by Delgado Diamante. Usually a little bit of repression brings out the supporters, but in this case the complaint was sufficiently ridiculous that nobody felt any sense of alarm. "He's a minister --- he can't do anything under the new Penal Code," Zúñiga said.

The discussion among the protesters centered not on fears of Delgado's charges, but on indignation about complaints by the suspended minister's backers that the murder investigation is unfair to his family. Many of the protesters and their families suffered because of exiles, imprisonments or beatings at the hands of the old dictatorship and empathy was in short supply in this crowd. Especially, as one man said in the bullhorn, because there are families still suffering from some unfinished old business: "The military knows where the dead are: after 40 years, we should know." More than 100 political opponents of the 22-year dictatorship were killed, and a number of their bodies have never been found.

Law professor, radio show host and Panama City mayoral candidate Miguel Antonio
Bernal, who was beaten, censored and twice driven into exile by the dictatorship

Protesters mock Delgado Diamante's calumnia e injuria
charge against activists who called for his dismissal

Bernal's running mate, attorney and former Vice Minister of Public Works Grettel Villalaz

Dr. Zúñiga, left, is more worried about the state of Panamanian democracy than
about the criminal charges that Daniel Delgado Diamante filed against him

Former La Prensa publisher I. Roberto Eisenmann Jr., who saw the newspaper shut down
and its offices and equipment trashed by Noriega's boys, and who was driven into exile

Support from a passing car