There are two sides to Panama that you, as a tourist, should know about: one side’s the one you see in all of the brochures and high-budget commercials you catch via your local cable provider about how we have the best brands in the world at the most affordable prices, the best nightlife in the region, and the places you know and love be it food, stores, schools, and franchises of whatever you want, all of them right here in this little piece of land. It’s all true; I can get Kenneth Cole shoes at $40 bucks if I set out to look a little, and the nearest beach is 20 minutes away from the city. You can get to any point in the city to whatever destination you want within 10 minutes most of the day and people are very kind to tourists, most specially if you promise them a tip after they bust their back to tend to you. The other side is the one the Panamanian Institute of Tourism doesn’t want you to see, and that the one I’m trying to bring a light to with this site. In this side of the country, the one where I and all other residents live in, things aren’t as rosy as the commercials and other advertisements put it. Panamanians are lazy and as such a lot of them (at least the ones given the opportunity to cause change in this country) take on crusades without really understanding what they’re in for, and not only that but they speak of negotiating with their enemy (namely, the government) while saying they won’t budge from their stance on whatever’s the pressing matter. The government has zero tolerance for bullshit, so we’re left with an ideological Mexican stand-off where nothing productive happens other than the intellectual death of all parties involved.

The way things stand today, not only is there a teacher’s strike in the capital that’s threatening to escalate to national status starting next week, but the workers of the Social Security offices are also on strike; add to that the potential catastrophe that represents the referendum that’s going down in late October where the government has left the fate of the Panama Canal to its people, leaving the choice to whether or not the Canal should be modernized or not to the populace at large. In fact, it’s the Canal referendum the one that started this whole mess in the first place since the government, already viewed as incompetent and corrupt by its people, rush the proposition to broaden the locks of the Panama Canal and modernize it through congress, getting a quick approval since the political party in power also controls the vote by an over 60% majority of legislators in there and therefore running into the road block that mean getting the green light from the people before letting the project begin. The people are angry because they thought that our current president Martin Torrijos was going to set the country straight and rid it of the corruption and malpractices of the governments that came before his, specially our former president Mireya Moscoso’s rule which, by the way, was a total fraud all across the board for several reasons I’m not going to discuss at this time since it’s ancient history. They thought he would be just like his father, General Omar Torrijos Herrera who successfully made a coup de tát on current president at the time Arnulfo Arias (coincidentally, Mireya Moscoso is her widow. This is the stuff soap operas are made of, I tell you) back in the 70’s. Make no mistake about it: the guy was a dictator in every sense of the word, but he was nothing like the current definition of the term implies. He set up a Social Security infrastructure, put money for sports, opened the doors for trading with other countries, gave food, shelter and education to the poor of the country as well as jobs, but most importantly he signed a treaty with Jimmy Carter in the late 70’s that would finally see the Panama Canal come back to the Panamanian people (ever since the Canal was built back in the 1910’s it was under American jurisdiction, and the profits the Canal generated would mostly go to the United States even though most of the workers were Panamanian) at noon, December 31st, 1999. I wasn’t around when he was our leader and I wasn’t here when his plane exploded and left the country without a president.

A lot of things happened between the moment General Torrijos died and when his son Martín Torrijos took power by democracy, but either way the populace saw him as a splitting image of his father both in looks as well as in heart and they may very well be right since the guy looks to have good intentions, but what people didn’t realize is that presidents aren’t dictators; politics involves a lot of red tape and a ways to compromise in order to get what you want. Things weren’t going to be like when the General was in power, and the people failed to see that. Now our president is surrounded by snakes that don’t let huim do his job the way he’d like and the people, most of them not understanding enough, are taking their frustrations to the streets.

Push Button motels are under watch because cops wait outside the entrances of these establishment in order to catch teacher driving out with their under-aged students. There are reports on the news about who got shot this time in the daily stand-offs the gangs have in the city’s poorer sectors, and everyone wants the government to give them what they need while they can’t be capable of getting off their asses to help their fucking selves. And since they’re so socially retarded they can’t sit down and negotiate they automatically resort to violence in order to be heard without looking at other options first, writing out messages of protests and blocking streets, burning trash and causing absolute chaos for a few hours, usually during the times of the day people take to go to lunch and/or home in order to screw the people who want nothing to do with it even further.

The people don’t budge because their stance is inflexible, and the government doesn’t budge because they know that the people’s stance is moronic. The government is not without its faults either; there’s A LOT of shady shit happening but at least people are getting some sort of penalty for the stuff they do, and people know more about the goings-on now to the degree of this place becoming somewhat of a parody of itself. Who’s the bad guy here? The corrupt government and its noble president or the ignorant people who are stuck on the times where they were told what to do instead of being given the liberties they enjoy now? Watching the news is depressive; just the other day I saw a Social Security salary negotiations go haywire: the head of the Social Security workers union, a rather senile lady, climbed up the negotiation table while others were throwing chairs and tables around until the one she was standing on was the next in line, at which moment she saw a government official and, I swear to God, jumped off the table like if she was Rey Mysterio and elbowed him right on the fucking head.

The news outlets always go out to the streets in order to collect what the zeitgeist of the current issues is and this part of the broadcast is what to me is the most fascinating: they were asking if they thought that there were more job opportunities now than there were 2 years ago and things where polarized… a lot of people said that no, things are worse because you see a lot more street vendors out selling good now and that the government should help them by giving them a job (it’s worth noting that most of these people looked well over their 40’s and 50’s) while the other group of responses (younger folk in their 20’s and 30’s) all kept saying the same thing: there are more job, it’s just a matter of finding the disposition to go out and find them. I couldn’t have said it better myself. In that sense the Panamanian populace are like babies, and that’s directly linked to how someone said that most of the Panamanian workforce is more likely to follow orders than to give them, which is directly linked to the way education prepares our children for the real world… but how are they going to be prepared if more than half their teachers are out on the streets causing chaos because they want an even bigger raise than the one they were just granted by the government? The people aren’t happy but that’s because they’re babies that want things to be tailor-made for them but sadly, that’s not the reality and the populace doesn’t see that. They think that politicians are crooks (and a lot of them are) and they’ll be screwed over every time but they’re asking for too much and that’ shows the poor negotiation skills most Panamanians have. They don’t know that a successful bargain is the one where both parties feel like they’ve lost something in order to gain something better?

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