editorial

The metro

They call it a metro, but it's a commuter train system that could be a subway, could be an el, and given the realities of geology and geography would probably be a bit of both. It was one of the few specific campaign promises that Ricardo Martinelli made on his way to the presidency. It was a winning issue because it's a good idea.

What we get could not only solve many transportation woes, but become an urban development stimulus that few people now expect. It could also be a disappointment if things are not done as well as they should be.

Burrowing underground is relatively expensive to do, but can save a lot of money on land acquisition and avoid expensive entanglements with surface transportation routes. Running on elevated tracks can mean cheaper construction costs but can aggravate the city's noise problems and create issues with respect to rights of way. Geology may be the determinant in some stretches along the way. A subway in a rainy place like Panama creates drainage issues that competent engineers know how to solve, but we need to be careful about the probability of rising sea levels and the complications these could cause.

The decisions are not just of a technical nature for the system itself. A new commuter rail system can dramatically change the capital's way of life. Its power to do that should be the subject of an open and intelligent public debate, the results of which should be reflected in the plans. Some key points need to be addressed:

• The system should unite as many of our transportation infrastructures as possible. A subway can wind its way around the city without much regard to existing surface routes, and thus there is no real technical problem in connecting Tocumen International Airport, the Albrook domestic airport and the national bus terminal along a single line.

• One of the capital city's great but little appreciated treasures is the location of several outstanding parks within its limits. A subway stop at a park might mean the arrival of more trash-strewing crowds, but it could also bring more visitors who become natural constituencies to preserve parks located where there are stops.

• The areas around train stops naturally become more attractive for shopping, dining and entertainment activities. These are generally good things but there should be planning so that the metro system enhances rather than detracts from the neighborhoods where it stops. Let's not allow the building of a metro to be the occasion to move the Calle Uruguay or Via Veneto scenes to residential neighborhoods where they are not wanted.

• There are little used and little known public properties that could all of a sudden become valuable assets with a metro connection. For example, if the route went by the canal administration building and up to the Foreign Ministry compound and then the Gorgas court and hospital complex along the flanks of Ancon Hill, not only could it deliver people to within walking distance of the national park, it could also make the old US military tunnel complex at Quarry Heights into a bustling yet quiet underground shopping, entertainment and dining area. However, there would be skeptical neighbors to convince first.

• The New York City subway police are one of the largest police forces in the United States. There is a good reason why this is so. A successful Panama City metro system would require adequate policing, by real, professionally trained and properly paid cops rather than by standard private security guards.

• Our new metro could have a boring international generic look --- or it could be distinctively Panamanian. We should hire some of our best bus artists to decorate the metro's cars according to our national culture. Panamanians who are used to that sort of art on the diablo rojo buses could argue the merits of the work, but tourists would love it and the art alone would bring more visitors and the money they spend to these shores.

We need to get the details of the new system right, because they will in many cases become difficult or impossible to change once it is built. To get it right, at a minimum everyone with a stake or an interest in the system should have a chance to be heard before the final plans are made.

US bases in the region?

The latest "carrot" to get the US Congress to approve a free trade agreement with Colombia is an offer of five American military bases in Colombia. Washington politicians who ought to know better consider it a game-changing offer. President Uribe protests that "the accord is to strengthen Colombian military bases, not to open US bases," but it's about bringing US military personnel to those bases.

So do bases strengthen democracy? Did the bases we had here prevent a 21-year military dictatorship? Did the US air base in Soto Cano, Honduras, prevent the recent coup there? And is a bases deal that boosts Uribe's ambitions to revise the constitution to extend his death squad and corruption tainted presidency to a third term and beyond really pro-democracy?

Do US bases prevent the rise of politicians who oppose Washington's policies in the region? Is that what happened in Honduras? Is that what happened in Ecuador, which elected Rafael Correa despite the presence of a US air base at Manta? Is that what happened in Cuba back in 1959, when Fidel Castro came to power despite the well established US naval presence at Guantanamo?

And what's the need for US military bases in Latin America anyway?

Is it about "winning the War on Drugs?" That idea is demonstrably the product of insane minds, and only one of the many proofs of that is how little the complex of US military bases that we used to have in Panama affected drug trafficking in those times.

Are we going to invoke the "s-word" and say that the bases are "strategic," maybe even as a matter of "national security?" Of importance to a strategy for what? Making which nation secure against what?

Yes, military emergencies may arise in the hemisphere. Maybe we already have one on our hands as the result of the Honduran coup. But there are already mutual assistance treaties in effect that would pave the way for US forces to pass through or operate from Latin American countries that are willing to allow this in the event of such an emergency. US military transports might be called into a Latin American country in the event of a natural disaster --- but this is done from time to time now, without any need for bases.

So please understand the many Latin Americans who take the term "strategic" to mean "useful to a modern version of the old American gunboat diplomacy, the aim of which is to assert US hegemony throughout the Western Hemisphere." And please note that the American politicians who have hailed Plan Colombia as a great success that justifies ratification of a free trade deal can't have it both ways and now argue that the government in Bogota is in such peril that it needs five US military bases.

New American bases in Latin America? That's an old idea and a bad one, an idea that starts with false assumptions and gets worse. In these days of economic crisis, it's also an inexcusably expensive folly.

Also in this section:
Editorials: The metro; and US bases in the region?
Tedman, The proposed road from Boquete to Bocas
Jackson, A single standard for dual citizens
Castaneda, China's policies in Latin America and the Caribbean
Birns & Mathis, Argentine ambassador supports Zelaya in Washington
Matsunaga, Barack and Hillary on Cuba
Patel, The AUC scandal
Mangal, Caribbean-European relations
Obama, Health care reform cannot wait
Steele, Obama's grand health care experiment
Lerner, Why can't Obama convince the Dems?
Weyler, Ecological trauma and recovery
Weisbrot, Trade adjustments and stimulus packages
Human Rights Watch, US treaty signing indicates policy shift
Reporters Without Borders, Cuba arrests another journalist
Bernal, Submissive journalists
Leis, Violence in the home

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