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The madman in the Palacio de Las Garzas and Bosco the Clown team up to save Panama City from...

All the publicity said to gather at Plaza Herrera at seven o'clock on October 30, and my cab got there about 15 minutes before. We passed multiple cops at every corner once we had driven up the ramp where the old market used to be. There was an Italian-Panamanian lady sitting on a park bench, who warned me about the muggers. There were a couple of jugglers near the statue of General Herrera. And then there were all these cops, both uniformed and plainclothes, both National Police and SPI presidential guards.

A little after seven people started trickling into Mojito's, the corner bar and starting point for the Zombie Walk, telling tales of police stopping people who were on the way to the event in costumes or zombie paint. More people arrived, some with costumes or zombie makeup to put on once in the plaza. More cops came, more photojournalists, reporters, and a TV crew, and then one Jairo Morán, the corregidor of San Felipe, and various other functionaries in civilian garb.

The cops came by in a golf cart carrying a black man in handcuffs. Paddy wagons zipped back and forth at the far end of the plaza. Zombie walkers complained that they had been issued a city permit for the Zombie Walk the day before. The fact that you don't need a permit to walk down the sidewalk was a point lost on the authorities.

A little before eight, the corregidor spoke. He announced that the city permit had been revoked, and that Bosco the Clown had ordered that nobody could be in a costume. Despite their gratuitous violation of all manner of constitutional and legal provisions, the mayor's appointee and the president's armed men magnanimously allowed people to go inside the bar and party.

At that point, this reporter headed out to get a bus to the Interior. However, the night was not over. Offended zombies did eventually walk down to the next bar on their prohibited itinerary. Activist Mir Rodríguez was arrested for being in the street, held for four or five hours and fined $360 for disrespecting authority. At least three other people were arrested and held for a few hours without charges.

Thus President Martinelli will be able to make his annual pilgrimage to Little Rock for the Razorbacks' homecoming and boast of his brilliant victory over the zombies. And Bosco the Clown will have Exhibit A on his exhaustive list of A to B of proofs that he's an effective mayor.