Letters to the editor

Lots of points of view about different subjects this time

Saludos Eric

Your article on dual citizenship was great. Two questions:

1) Do the British subjects abroad have British citizenship while abroad?

2) What if the Panamanians abroad agreed to some type (Panamanian minimum wage of taxation) while living abroad?

Ray

Editor's note: 1) As far as the British government is concerned, one born British is always British, wherever he or she may be. 2) This year Panamanians abroad were given a limited right to vote for the first time, and most did not take advantage of it. I doubt that there will be a significant dialogue between the Panamanians in diaspora and the government here with respect to the rights and responsibilities of the former anytime soon. Instead, I expect that politicians here will without much consultation base their decisions on perceived political advantages or disadvantages, or in some cases according to base prejudices. I would like to be proven wrong about this.

Why didn't President Martin Torrijos or the PRD confer
any honor upon former US President Jimmy Carter?

Hermano Lobo Eric, no one in Panama has the "guts" to answer this question --- will you?

Is Panama, an ungrateful nation?

Why didn't President Martin Torrijos or the PRD confer any honor to former US President Jimmy Carter? Can anyone answer this question?

The US administration of the Canal lasted for 74 years, until President Jimmy Carter and his Panamanian counterpart Omar Torrijos signed the Torrijos-Carter Treaty, which gave Panama all power over the Canal starting from December 31, 1999.

Is it an act of Panama's INGRATITUDE?

One piece of information, offered by the Canal Authority, highlights the importance that this change in administration has had for Panama: During the 85 years of US presence, the Panamanian government only received $1.9 billion from the Canal, which was practically the same amount it collected during the first six years the Canal was controlled by the PCA (quote).

So many honors to communist Cuba Fidel Castro and zero to Jimmy Carter, who sacrificed his presidency in order to bestow dignity, justice and sovereignty to Panama?

We, Panamanians need to move up to a higher level of dignity and reciprocity in foreign affairs and culture.

Of course, this is just one person's opinion.

Amanecerá y veremos.

Arturo Hassan
Arcadia, California

Editor's note: As I recall, the 1999 ceremony at which the canal was formally and fully turned over to Panama was not the only time when Carter was in Panama as an honored guest of the government --- but offhand I can't think of any specific medallions or keys to the city or honorary degrees being bestowed upon him.

The Martín Torrijos administration was heavily infested with Norieguistas and very late in the game, when Noriega tried to nullify the 1989 elections, Carter turned against the dictatorship. I'm sure that in the PRD there are people who hold that against him. Then there are anti-PRD people who will never forgive Carter for his administration's repeated official denials that any of the disappearances or other human rights abuses of the dictatorship ever happened. Do not forget the Torrijos-Carter Treaties --- plural --- and that some Panamanians consider the security treaty that went along with the better known canal treaty to be an infringement of this country's sovereignty and a free pass for US military intervention. There are also a few Panamanians (and many more Americans) who regret the decolonization process that ended the old Canal Zone. So, although many Panamanians hold Carter in high esteem, the man has a large and diverse group of detractors here as well.

En route to his 1980 defeat, Carter faced a revolt in his own party, but few of the Democrats who supported Kennedy's primary challenge did so because of Panama. Carter lost to Reagan because of events in Iran and a public perception that the Democratic Party didn't really stand for anything. It's an exaggeration to say that Carter sacrificed his presidency over Panama, notwithstanding Reagan's agitation over the issue.

Smoking in Panama

I am not sure what your paper's position is on the new Orwellian smoking regulations in Panama, but just wanted to let your readers (and maybe your government) know that it has made at least two US citizens have second thoughts about investing in real estate in Panama.

We were very excited about the possibilities of buying, and probably even living in Panama. So much so that we booked a flight in October to check things out.

We are smokers, and when we tried to book a hotel with smoking rooms, we found out about the law.

Is this alone a deal killer for us? NO! What concerns us is that one of the reasons we were considering moving out of the US is the continuing control that the US government is trying to take over our lives.

California started its road to an Orwellian state with non-smoking laws. Now they want to control everything from colas to potato chips (of course they are flat broke).

Please understand what this is the beginning of, and don't think for a second this is the end. No power the government takes is ever given back, only increased!

Louie Jones
Johnson City, Tennessee

Panama book reviews

Eric, about five years ago you reviewed Bill Boyd's Panama which I enjoyed. I am wondering what your all time favorite Panama books are. I thought "The Path Between the Seas" was the best.

Jeff Slemrod

Editor's note: McCullough's "The Path Between the Seas" is, despite some major flaws, a masterpiece and required reading for anyone who doesn't read Spanish and wants to know about Panamanian history. Ovidio Diaz Espino's “How Wall Street Created a Nation” contains the most important corrections to the story of Panama's separation from Colombia that McCullough tells. However, I think that the definitive English-language version of Panama's separation from Colombia has yet to be written, as the devastation wrought by Colombia's incessant civil conflicts in general and the Thousand Day War in particular are given insufficient weight by McCullough and other English-language historians. Panamanian independence may have happened in a little US-backed plot by French and American speculators and a few elite Panamanian families, but the separation stuck mostly because people here didn't want to be part of Colombia or its never-ending wars and that attitude is with us to this day. The most commonly agreed aspect of what it means to be Panamanian is negative: we are not Colombian, and we tend to fear and resent Colombian influence.

Of the slew of English-language Noriega books that came out after the 1989 invasion, I consider John Dinges's "Our Man in Panama" to be the best of the lot. Koster and Sánchez Borbón's "In the Time of the Tyrants" is the best written book of this lot.

The best stuff about the dictatorship is all in Spanish. Anyone who reads Spanish and wants to know about those times should at a minimum find of a copy of the Moscoso administration's Truth Commission report.

Two seriously flawed but nevertheless revealing and useful English-language works touching upon the Torrijos dictatorship are William J. Jorden's massive "Panama Odyssey," about the diplomacy that led to the Torrijos-Carter Treaties; and Graham Green's "Getting to Know the General," the English writer's sympathetic tale of the social scene around the dictator. Another important book about an epic political battle of the Torrijos years, and indirectly about things that are going on today, is the Jesuit priest Chris Gjording's "Conditions Not of Their Choosing: The Guaymi Indians and Mining Multinationals in Panama." Thomas J. Bleming's "Panama: Echoes from a Revolution" contains a compelling account of what it was like to be a political prisoner during the dictatorship.

To begin to know the West Indian part of Panama's English-speaking population, above all read Michael Coniff's "Black Labor on a White Canal" and also pick up a copy of Leticia Thomas's "Dictionary of Panamanian English."

A couple of good books about aspects of US relations with Panama are Aims McGuinness's "Path of Empire: Panama and the California Gold Rush" and John Lindsay-Poland's "Emperors of the Jungle."

A good place to shop for English-language books about Panama, including a bunch that I have been meaning to read for a long time, is the little bookstore in the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute's Tupper Center in Ancon. And which Panama book do I consult the most? Well, it comes in English and Spanish but I prefer the Spanish-language version: Ridgely and Gwynne's "Guide to the Birds of Panama."

The book that our reader mentioned, by the way, is historical fiction. I liked it. One entertaining but in certain ways despicable recent piece of fiction set in Panama that ought to get more attention is Ringo and Kratman's "Yellow Eyes," a bit of military science fiction that has space aliens looking to eat humanity for lunch and the elite rabiblanco politicians looking to collaborate with these invaders. (This portrayal of juega vivo culture is not what I think is despicable about the story. It's the attitude it takes about torture.) I also really liked Michael J. Merry's "The Golden Altar," (a crime novel) and --- maybe in part because the class of Panamanians who were lampooned (as were Gringos and Brits) protested too much, but mostly because I found it be hilarious satire --- John John LeCarre's "The Tailor of Panama."

And then there's this fool

The United States government’s decision to obtain concessions for the use of multiple military bases in Colombia is a matter of grave concern to us. Given that the appalling record of human rights abuses under President Uribe's government has led President Obama’s administration to place conditions on its support for the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, it makes no sense for the administration to turn around and offer backing to that regime by increasing US military presence in Colombia.

As an organization that rejects the armed struggles and kidnappings that have plagued Colombia for decades, we are convinced intensified US military activity in the country would only exacerbate ongoing armed conflicts and interfere with efforts at negotiated solutions. Claims that these foreign troops on Colombian soil will be focused on the so-called war on drugs without their operations spilling into other areas strain credulity, especially since one of the pretexts being given for the agreement is that the bases are needed as part of the “war on terror” --- a term used by the previous US administration to define anything it saw fit to attack.

It is very important for Colombia to maintain cordial relations with the United States within a framework of mutual respect for each country’s sovereignty and the pursuit of bilateral benefits. But the agreement to place US troops in seven different locations in Colombia constitutes a violation of national sovereignty: there is no law on the books in Colombia that would permit this kind of agreement. According to the Colombian Constitution, no foreign troops may be stationed in Colombia on a permanent basis. Furthermore, the agreement would keep US troops beyond the reach of Colombian courts so that foreign soldiers and mercenaries would be able --- as they have in other places --- to commit all manner of crimes with impunity.

This enlarged US military undertaking is an expansion of the fateful Plan Colombia, which has caused serious losses to Colombian agriculture as well as social and environmental problems. Plan Colombia and the proposed US-Colombia FTA, which would make permanent the destruction caused by Plan Colombia, are both tools for the ongoing submission of the Colombian nation to the greed of US multinational corporations.

Coming on the heels of the coup d’etat in Honduras, carried out by military officers with close links to the Pentagon, and of the reactivation of the US Fourth Fleet in the Caribbean, the agreement for use of military bases is no minor matter: it would signify a dangerous expansion of US military activity in Latin America, and has already escalated tensions in the region.

This policy decision by the US government is a losing proposition from any angle. It would not benefit the people of either the United States or Colombia. Rather than promote peace, it would raise military tensions both internally in Colombia and in the region as a whole. For the good of the people of the United States and Colombia, we ask that the plan to station increased numbers of US military personnel on seven Colombian bases be abandoned.

Mingas-FTA is a group of individuals from across the United States, Canada and Colombia who are concerned with promoting sovereignty and grassroots economic development, strengthening democracy, improving labor conditions, and pursuing social equality and justice in Colombia. We are integrated within the Hemispheric Social Alliance and are active in North America. We are united in our support for social movements and our rejection of armed struggles that have plagued Colombia.

First, there are a lot of folks, in the US and elsewhere who have opinions about our right to bear arms. Fine, keep them to yourselves. Regardless of what your country's laws and/or constitutions allow, or don't allow, the 2nd Amendment to the United States Constitution states specifically that all citizens have the right to bear arms (this means rifles, pistols, whatever you can use to defend yourself or hunt with). If anyone doesn't like that, or our crazy romanticization of our "cowboy" culture, you can easily find a means for exiting the country.

A rather high ranking Japanese official was asked around the time of the big War if he would entertain sending his troops into the US and he responded "No. They all have guns!" A criminal might decide to break into my home and attempt to steal from me, but he, or she, would have to contend with machete, my combat knife, my 9 mil, and my SK rifle. And I am one of more mild mannered of my family.

Second, I keep hearing about, and reading about, the opinions of others on the "new" Health Care proposals being bandied about in my country. Socialism is just another way of saying everybody gets the same amount of everything, except for the big boys in charge of course. And this always applies to the average citizens, whether they are willing to work for it or not. And in some instances whether they are even tax-paying, or law-abiding citizens of this country. So, until you are one us, the ones who have worked all our lives, paid taxes on all that we have earned with this work, and now look at the possibility of being taxed out of nearly half what we earn, I would respectfully request that you keep those opinions to yourselves, also. If not, then by all means, get a visa, come on in, get a Social Security number, or a work permit, and feel free to pay the same taxes we do, but don't expect that to translate to better health care than we already pay for. Oh, I'm sorry, I meant those of us who already work and pay for it.

Based on what I have read, President Ricardo Martinelli will be a nationalist president of the Republic of Panama. He will establish this country among the best ones in Latin America. I hope the population helps President Martinelli as well.

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