Sunrise just past Rio Hato no traffic delays at that moment, the pavement dry, the air conditioning on the bus turned way up. The clock reads six in the morning and the bus is headed east, into the sun.
12 hours of getting around the way the editor does
photos and story by Eric Jackson
I fed and watered the dogs and cats, made sure that things were locked and nothing that somebody would want to steal was within reach of the windows, then I was out the door, locking the door and gate behind me. It was four dark thirty and I had a doctor’s appointment in the city, on a day when SUNTRACS said they’d be out protesting in the streets. Gotta start early, so I stationed myself under the street light closest to my bus stop. Khaki pants, yellow and black striped shirt, my bag with things that will reflect.
The first bus was one of the little ones that I didn’t recognize as a bus until it almost got to me, so I didn’t motion and the driver didn’t stop. The second bus was not yet in service and its driver gestured that to me as he passed. Then came a Penonome bus, which after the entrada would be headed in a different direction from how I wanted to go. But good enough to pay my 40 cents and get off and go into the Van y Ven at the entrada. There I went in and got me one of those Monster Zero ginseng energy drinks to power me on my way, then went across the road to the caseta on the eastbound lane of the Pan-American Highway. Soon enough a David to Panama bus stopped and I got on.
It wasn’t an express bus, or it probably would not have stopped for me. The norm here is that there are true express buses, which make no stops between from whence they set out and their final destination, and then there are the express buses that will stop where someone wants to get off, and take boarding passengers at that point, but won’t stop at any caseta along the way where people are waiting. There are variations on the theme. I had timed things to make it to my appointment on time even if it was one of those agonizing stop-everywhere-along-the-way things. This one made stops but was not quite that extreme.
The longest delay getting into the city was at La Chorrera around 7 a.m., where this and another largely empty Panama bus had the same idea — add more passengers from the local buses arriving at La Espiga. We had this dueling pavos competition before we were more fully loaded an on our way. The Torrijos and Martinelli administrations largely eliminated the painted diablo rojo buses in the Panama City and San Miguelito metro area to make way for the Metro buses, but the art of bus painting survives in many other places in Panama, including La Chorrera.
I arrived at the terminal around 8:30, later than might have been in an epoch with no mega construction on the monorail in Panama Oeste. SUNTRACS had called a one-day strike to protest the denial of banking services to the union and several of its leaders — which Nito’s banking superintendent admits is about politics, in particular the bankers’ support for the wildly unpopular and flagrantly unconstitutional copper mine project. Let word about that get out and abroad in the world and see what the practice of politically motivated account closures does to Panama’s status as an international banking center. But leave it for Mulino to face that sort of fallout.
I grabbed a pastelitos de queso, baked chicken and chicha de limon breakfast in one of the food courts, then off by taxi to the clinica in Punta Pacifica.
The way to the clinic was circuitous. The union brothers were blocking Avenida Balboa, as was to be expected. It was not, however, a mass of angry labor militants making a do-or-die stand on a main drag. It was a roadblock here, then move on, a roadblock down the street, other roadblocks across town, little pockets of protesters showing up suddenly and dispersing suddenly, with police trying to keep up and direct drivers around the disruptions. Surely the companies with the contract to sell tear gas and rubber bullets to the Public Ministry must have been disappointed.
I got to the dermatologist’s office before he did, and soon enough heard that it’s not skin cancer. When The Reaper comes for me, it probably won’t be that.
Then, into another cab. Getting me around the protests all the way to the terminal was asking a lot, but it was less trouble getting me to the Metro subway station near Via Argentina.
The Metro trains continue to revolutionize the transportation calculations in Panama City, especially for those of us who are not enslaved to automobiles.
Up from the underground at Albrook, and all around I saw the work on expanding the train station. As in, adding a monorail line that will cross the canal and go all the way out to La Espiga in La Chorrera. Perhaps it’s also expanding for a contemplated Panama to David train. Across the bridge, from which I took some pictures, and into the bus terminal, and on my way home.
The day of protest was still ongoing, leading to the bus taking the other than legally prescribed route to the Bridge of the Americas through Balboa but instead taking the more direct way past the Electoral Tribunal on Avenida Ascanio Arosemena.
Out front of the Electoral Tribunal a small band of protesters were blocking the street, and a little beyond them, police were routing traffic around them. Going back to my teenage militant day, I could think of ways that SUNTRACS might have done battle to thwart what they were doing. But this, after all, was just a WARNING strike day. And the outgoing director of the National Police? Face it – he dealt with some serious disruptions, including a national strike supported by the great majority of Panamanians, a national uprising, really, with aside from some minor and isolated blunders by cops and strikers alike, avoided severe violence and the downfall of the elected government. The bodies on the pavement in Chame? Forget the MAGA gringo hero worship: he was born Panamanian, a long-time mafia lawyer with old PRD insider ties and whose daughter is married to Vice President Gaby Carrizo’s daughter. Might as well call it an isolated incident provoked by an irate PRD guy, for which he has been sentenced to 48 years in prison with hardly a peep of protest.
Back to the piquera in Antona little before four in the afternoon, with dinner to buy for the animals, a few cleaning supplies, some late dim sum and some pan moña con queso blanco at my usual haunts next door. As I was carrying a lot going into the city, it was the more expensive but also more convenient choice to take a cab back to Barrio El Bajito. I got everything unpacked and put away before I ventured to survey the dogs’ trashing in my absence. It was about four thirty by then. Long day, even before giving the livestock their dinner.
From the pedestrian bridge between the Albrook Metro station and the national bus terminal. More train station construction underway. Panama is deeply indebted, yet it’s standard Keynesian economics to keep an economy in danger of collapse working via public works contracts. Seen Ancon Hill in the background, which has its own attractive development possibilities if one discards “just like Disney World” thinking and considers what this national park has in it, and in the Cold War bomb shelter tunnels underneath it.
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