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Mulino’s coming cabinet (part 1)

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Nito and Mulino
President Cortizo and President-elect Mulino in a courtesy visit at the Palacio de las Garzas after the election. The “official” transition period begins on June 3 and the inauguration / changing of the guard for all elected offices happens on July 1. Photo by the Presidencia.

National unity, or just the same old families? Or do we see something actually new?

by Eric JacksonJuly 

President-elect José Raúl Mulino held his first collective cabinet photo-op for selected rabiblanco media on the morning of May 16, but his first half-dozen ministers were revealed the day before, and his transition chief some days before that.

Just who is going to lead the fragmented new National Assembly is up in the air. The legislature’s leaders will be elected on July 1, and one way to look at Mulino’s cabinet choices could be as how they might attract or alienate a legislative majority with which he’ll likely have to work.

So far it appears that the cabinet will above all come from the wealthy oligarchic fringes of Panama’s small white minority, with some exceptions coming from law enforcement subordinates from Mulino’s days as Ricardo Martinelli’s security minister. Some of the extended clan of the fugitive Ricardo Alberto Martinelli Berrocal and his wife Marta Linares de Martinelli are included, or seem to be. Mulino made his courtesy call on Cortizo accompanied by journalist Rafael Berrocal as well as his transition chief, but we don’t know if either of those two will go on to occupy formal posts once the new government is in place.

Here are the first of his picks:

Minister of Economy and Finance: Felipe Chapman Arias

This 55-year-old lawyer, economist and consultant is the son of a father who occupied a comparable position in the 1994-1999 PRD administration of Ernesto “Toro” Pérez Balladares. Like his father Guillermo Chapman Fábrega he’s known to be an advocate for neoliberal economic theories and consequent government policies. He was early to sound an alarm after the Supreme Court for the second time struck down the mining concession originally granted to imprisoned fraud artist Richard Fifer but ultimately subdivided with a part eventually passing into the hands of Canadian-based multinational mining company First Quantum. The research and consulting company of which he’s a partner, Investigaciónes y Desarrollo SA (INDESA), mostly works for banks and corporations as clients. He’s a partner in the Rosas y Rosas law firm and on the board of directors of Banco del Istmo. In the past he supported the mining colony contract with First Quantum and the privatization of the IDAAN water and sewer utility.

Minister of Foreign Relations: Javier Martínez Acha

60-year-old Martínez is a member of the PRD and of the family that owns the Casa del Mariscos restaurant, where he tends to hang out and hobnob with a variety of political figures. He’s a lawyer,  economist and civil engineer mostly educated at Texas A&M, a popular school for rich Panamanians to send their kids. (Family ties are a big thing in Panamanian politics, but Aggie ties are also a factor here.) He has been working as general manager of Geneva Asset Management, SA. Over the years Martínez Acha served on the PRD’s National Executive Committee and in a now-deleted introduction to his Twitter feed he described himself as a social democrat.

As vice ministers Mulino has chosen Florida State University – Panama international relations and political science professor Carlos Guevara Mann, leader of Panama’s pan-Latin American Bolivarian Society and frequent La Prensa columnist; and Carlos Ruiz-Hernández, former Panamanian ambassador at the United Nations in Martinelli times who has since then worked for the Washington-based arbitration firm Allen & Overy LLP.

Minister of the Environment: Juan Carlos Navarro Quelqueju

Navarro, the former PRD mayor of Panama City and that party’s 2014 presidential standard-bearer, is the scion of the Tropigas fortune and was founder of the National Association for the Conservation of Nature (ANCON). In recent years he has been building a solar panels business. Navarro has vociferously embraced a couple of causes in the past year or so: he was strongly opposed to the mining deal with First Quantum and advocates the closure of the border with Colombia for environmental reasons. The consolidation of Benicio Robinson’s power over and within the PRD pretty much coincided with Navarro’s eclipse in that party’s power circles. NOT an Aggie — he’s a Dartmouth and Harvard grad. 

Minister of Public Safety: Frank Ábrego Mendoza

61-year-old Ábrego, educated at the General Francisco Morazán Military Academy in Honduras, the old US Army School of the Americas (now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) and the US Army Special Forces Officers’ School, was one of Noriega’s boys, personal friend of the strongman and active-duty Panama Defense Forces at invasion time. A Santeño by birth, he was one of the PDF guys who survived the post-invasion purges and became part of the renewed police force. As a cop he did riot control, anti-terrorist and border patrol duties, then was the founding director of the National Border Service (SENAFRONT) when it split off from the National Police in 2008, until he took his retirement from law enforcement in 2016. However, after his police career Ábrego served as a security consultant to presidents Varela and Cortizo. It is said that one of Ábrego’s heroes is the late General Omar Torrijos. In Martinelli times, with Ábrego as its director, SENAFRONT was brought into the cities as an elite riot squad and was widely criticized for its brutality in Colon.

Minister of Labor: Jackeline Muñoz de Cedeño

She’s the daughter of José Muñoz Molina, founder of the small Alianza Party that was in Mulino’s coalition with the Martinelistas. Currently she’s a deputy in the Central Americana Parliament (PARLACEN) and also alternate representante of the Panama City corregimiento of Tocumen. A Panama-educated lawyer, she practices family and immigration law. She was the running mate of the self-proclaimed “sexual buffalo,” RM mayoral candidate Sergio Gálvez, in an ill-fated run for the Panama City mayor’s office.

Minister of Health: Dr. Fernando Boyd Galindo

Dr. Boyd Galindo is a dentist specializing in periodontics, educated at the University of Panama and the University of Pennsylvania. He taught that specialty at the University of Panama in the 1980s and 90s. he served a chair of the Social Security Fund (CSS) board of directors from 1990 through 1996. He was president of the Panamanian Dental Association in 1987 and 1988.

Chief of the transition team: Aníbal Galindo Navarro

Galindo is an attorney, of the family that created the medicine importers’ cartel. Among his clients was the mining company First Quantum, but it seems that his practice has mostly been offshore asset protection. He was vice president of Cambio Democratico when Martinelli still controlled it and was an advisor to Martinelli and an ambassador in Qatar during that presidency.

 

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Hightower, God bless the nurses

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Nurses are fighting back against corporations — including religiously affiliated hospital chains — that profit from their low pay and severe understaffing. National Nurses United photo, taken on Mothers Day.

GOD BLESS NURSES — AND PLEASE HURRY!

by Jim Hightower — OtherWords

Every religion prioritizes care for the needy. Christianity’s Benedictine Rule, for example, puts care of the sick atop the moral order — “above and before every other duty.”

Really? Even above the holy Wall Street mandate that medical and insurance conglomerates must squeeze every last penny of profits out of America’s corporate-care system? Well, there’s morality — and then there’s business.

Consider how today’s monopolized and financialized hospital networks treat nurses — the high-touch frontline people who do the most to put “care” in “health care.”

Often paid a pittance, thousands of nurses across America are now organizing and unionizing against the inequities of this system. The nurses’ core grievance, however, is not their pay, but the gross understaffing imposed on them and their patients by profiteering hospital chains.

In a national survey, more than half of nurses feel “used up” and “emotionally drained.” Why? Primarily because executives keep goosing up profits by eliminating care providers, making it impossible for the remaining, stretched-out staff to meet their own high moral standard of care.

That’s demoralizing for nurses — and deadly for patients.

Yet corporate care lobbyists loudly squawk that hospital chains can’t afford to pay fair wages and fully staff up. Ironically, one of the loudest squawkers is the hospital mega-chain Ascension, a Catholic Church offshoot proclaiming to be “rooted in the loving ministry of Jesus as healer.”

Some healer. In a devilish partnership with a Wall Street huckster, Ascension has been slashing nursing staffs while paying its CEO $13 million a year, hoarding $18 billion in cash, and allotting a pitiful 2 percent of its budget for charitable care of the poor.

To help battle health care greed, go to NationalNursesUnited.org.

 

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Editorials: The coming government’s challenges; and When HE grows up…

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At least we’re now getting some rain! But the empty billboard above the pedestrian overpass is a common reminder that the politicians who will take office on July 1 will face a troubled economy. Photo by Eric Jackson.

The big transition issues

The first issue will be Ricardo Martinelli. Will Mulino want appear as he campaigned, and as many presume, just a front man answering to and following the orders of the former president? Even when he is the president and doesn’t have to do that? Giving his old boss safe passage to Nicaragua would prompt some protests, to be sure, but it would put the problem that much farther away, in a place where press freedoms are severely curtailed and the government won’t want all that publicity.

Some noises coming from the Martinelista camp posit Martinelli on the street and back into political action, with the ex-president not interfering with Mulino’s executive duties but being put in charge of arranging a right-wing coalition in the legislature.

Constitutionally, Martinelli might get his sentence commuted, but could not get a pardon. Will there be an attempt to ratify the theft and laundering of more than $70 million in public funds that allowed him to buy control of the EPASA newspaper chain?

What would the Supreme Court say about such things? What would the US government say? What would international financial institutions say? Would citizens who could take to the streets and shut down the national economy do that? What might the police do?

The debt

The new government will be severely constrain by the huge national debt that was run up by the current government, especially by Benicio Robinson’s majority in the legislature and grasping PRD local officials. Part of the debt problem for Mulino and potential RM / PRD alliance is that the next legislature will pick a new comptroller general and there will be strong objections to yet another one who looks the other way. Do we get a next comptroller who looks back and conducts audits of how we got into our current debt crisis and who the beneficiaries of improper money moves may have been?

In any case the debt is a huge constraint on good things or bad things that the government will be able to do. It will functionally mock some of Mulino’s more expensive campaign trail promises.

Rolling foreign dice

The Biden administration quite aptly called Ricardo Martinelli Berrocal and his two sons crooks. Is Mulino betting on Donald Trump returning to the White House and reversing that attitude? Is he betting on the Panamanian people putting up with Trump as a political factor here?

Mulino talks about closer ties with the MERCOSUR trading bloc of Argentia, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay, with seven other South American “associate states.” As in hitching our wagon to an organization that barely functions, largely due to the waves of weirdness coming out of Argentina? Would that balance off annoying our more traditional trading partners?

The mine

Mulino is making one of First Quantum’s lawyers head of his transition team and, having avoided debates and statements on the subject during the election campaign, now talking about a negotiated settlement with the thuggish multinational mining company. So, to close the mine, will the routine be that it must be put into operation again? See how well THAT one goes.

Water

Damming Rio Indio to get more water for canal operations is a no-brainer. Just kicking out those who live there with little or no compensation would be a typical brainless and heartless rabiblanco way to go about it. Really, a typical Ricky Martinelli way. If that’s as far as it goes, it would still leave much of Panama with chronic water problems. But would debt considerations allow us to do much about that?

The border with Colombia

Darien as a mass migration route has been terribly destructive of what had been a pristine area and is unsustainable by any of a number of ways of looking at the issue. José Raúl Mulino says that he’s going to close that border and that the Americans should help. That problem would be the details. We wouldn’t be well advised to tell indigenous families with members on each side of the border since well before there was a border that they are now permanently separated. An overpriced wall with kickbacks to generate a slush fund for politicians to steal? That would be a true Martinelli solution but would be breached in no time flat.

But would any border wall, physical of figurative, have to be maintained by the presence of US military forces? Both Panamanian and US considerations would make that an explosively dangerous thing to try to do.

The United States stopping its economic strangulation of Venezuela would be a practical way to slow the migration. The United State raising artificial islands from the sea floor to create internationally supervised migrant camps might help. US forces going to war in Colombia against the right-wing paramilitaries turned broad-spectrum criminal gangs who dominate the human traffic across the border. Given Washington’s dysfunction, there would surely be fools in Congress who would hail such intervention into the problem of warlordism on the Colombian periphery as a good idea. It’s not.

 

This one survives…

After a night buried under the rubble of Gaza, this infant survives. When he’s an adolescent boy, or a young man, think he’ll thank Israel and its arms suppliers for the experience?

The trite conventional wisdom is that down the road a few years this is another recruit for Hamas. That would be an optimistic prediction from an Israeli perspective. The next generation of Palestinian freedom fighters – if they are forced to have one – will make their foes wish they had Hamas back.

  

Juarez
Portrait of Benito Juárez, National Palace, Mexico City.
Wikimedia photo by Jorge Méndez.

Never abuse power by humiliating your peers, because power ends and the memory lasts.

Benito Juárez

Bear in mind…

We’re not going to have the America that we want until we elect leaders who are going to tell the truth – not most days, but every day.

Ann Richards


The one and only method of teaching men the true religion was established by Divine Providence for the whole world, and for all times: that is, by persuading the understanding through reasons, and by gently attracting or exhorting the will.

Bartolomé de las Casas

My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.

Jane Austen

 

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What’s in season in and around the public market in Penonome

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There are different varieties of bananas, plantains and squashes being sold right now, along with many other things.

What’s in season?

Photos and comments by Eric Jackson

Probably the most famous public market in Cocle province is the one in El Valle, but by various measures the one in downtown Penonome equals or betters it. First of all, there is a fresh meat, poultry and fish section of the Penonome market. Then, in the same building but apart from the market itself, there is my favorite bakery and on this occasion, they had a really good variation on the cheese bread that I crave. This one was small loaves sprinkled with herbs over the cheese.

The fruit, vegetable, beans and grains vendors inside are the heart if the operation in a farmers’ marketing town that goes back to colonial times, but upstairs they have a handicrafts section, there are people selling things outside the building and there are a bunch of nearby farm and garden oriented businesses.

I go by bus, so have fewer worries about traffic and parking being a pain in downtown Penonome. Maybe the next mayor will wise up and oversee the construction of some parking structures.

I went to the market with my camera in my bag and didn’t notice any tourists around. Some people seemed surprised by this old gringo taking pictures. But take this not as a tale of a picturesque tourist trap. It’s the economy.

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From this lady’s farm, two varieties of limes and ice cream beans.
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The big papayas. The little bananas. AND the garlic and green peppers staples for a low-budget old hippies’ ramen noodles. Et cetera.
Inside you find middlewoman vendors who sell other people’s produce, with bigger selections.

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I could get into one of the darkest and least-told chapters in Panamanian history, the starvation and deaths (mostly from beriberi) in Panama City during and just after the devastating turn-of-the-19th-and-20th-centuries Thousand Days War. The moral of the story, other than the practical antiwar message? If you are on a basic poverty rations diet, VARY that diet. Too starchy? Oh well — but do corn one time, and wheat the next, and some rice (better brown), eat some plantains, and alternate tubers like skins-on potatoes, and yuka, otoes, ñame and other tropical tubers. The rotation might save your life. When getting past the starches, look at fruits and veggies before the meat, poultry and seafood.
 

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Egypt joins in accusing Israel of genocide at the World Court

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Created with GIMP
“It’s a real diplomatic punch,” a former Israeli diplomat said. “Israel would have to take it very seriously.” Al-Aqsa Hospital, Deir Al-Balah, Central Gaza. Photo from the Times of Gaza.

As Gaza assault intensifies, Egypt joins
ICJ case accusing Israel of genocide

by Olivia Rosane — Common Dreams

Egypt announced on Sunday that it would join South Africa’s case before the International Court of Justice causing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.

The announcement from the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs came nearly a week after Israel seized the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt and the day after the Israel Defense Forces issued new evacuation orders for Rafah and the north of Gaza. It also comes as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said that around 300,000 people had fled Rafah in the last week and the death toll reported by the Gaza Health Ministry surpassed 35,000.

“The submission… comes in light of the worsening severity and scope of Israeli attacks against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, and the continued perpetration of systematic practices against the Palestinian people, including direct targeting of civilians and the destruction of infrastructure in the strip, and pushing Palestinians to flee,” the Egyptian ministry said in the statement explaining its decision.

South Africa filed its case against Israel in late December 2023, accusing Israel of violating its obligations under the Genocide Convention as it waged its war on Gaza.

In a preliminary ruling in January, the ICJ determined that it was plausible that Israel was conducting a genocide in Gaza and ordered it to “take all measures within its power” to avoid doing so.

In its statement, Egypt’s foreign ministry called on Israel “to comply with its obligations as the occupying power and to implement the provisional measures issued by the ICJ, which require ensuring access to humanitarian and relief aid in a manner that meets the needs of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”

Israel cut off aid when it seized the Rafah border crossing, making it even harder for Gazans to get access to essential goods like food and fuel, though Israel said on Sunday it had opened a new crossing for aid in the north.

The Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also repeated a call for the UN Security Council and the international community to take action to stop violations in Gaza and Israel’s attack on Rafah.

Tel Aviv is forcing Palestinians to be contestants in its murderous game show as it flouts international law and basic human decency.

Egypt is the third country after Colombia and Turkey to request to join South Africa’s case. However, its request is especially significant for Israel, Alon Liel, former director of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, told Al Jazeera. Liel said that Egypt was the “cornerstone” of Israel’s standing in the Middle East since the two countries signed a treaty in 1979.

“With Egypt joining South Africa now in The Hague, it’s a real diplomatic punch. Israel would have to take it very seriously,” Liel said. “Israel has to… listen to the world—not only to the Israeli public opinion asking now for revenge.”

Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza began October 7 in response to a Hamas attack on southern Israel that killed around 1,100 people and captured around 250 hostages. Before that attack, Israel had blockaded Gaza for 16 years.

Egypt’s action on Sunday accompanied warnings and expressions of alarm from humanitarian workers, diplomats, and journalists as Israel escalated its campaign in Gaza over the weekend.

“Over the past 48 hours, Israel has intensified its attacks in Gaza as it orders Palestinians in the south to move north and the north to move south,” journalist and Intercept co-founderJeremy Scahill wrote on social media Sunday. “Tel Aviv is forcing Palestinians to be contestants in its murderous game show as it flouts international law and basic human decency.”

UNRWA on Saturday posted photos of bomb-damaged schools in Khan Younis to which displaced families were now returning following the new evacuation orders.

“The classrooms are torched. Walls are blown out. There is rubble everywhere,” UNRWA said. “This situation is unfolding under the world’s watch. Enough is enough.”

Responding to the images, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini wrote, “Since the war began, most people in Gaza have moved multiple times: on average once a month. They desperately sought safety that they never found. Some have no choice but to stay in bombed-out UNRWA shelters.”

“The claim of ‘safe zones’ is false and misleading,” Lazzarini continued. “No place is safe in Gaza. Period.”

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a statement Sunday, “A full-scale offensive on Rafah cannot take place.”

“I can see no way that the latest evacuation orders, much less a full assault, in an area with an extremely dense presence of civilians, can be reconciled with the binding requirements of international humanitarian law and with the two sets of binding provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice,” Turk said.

However, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) argued on social media Sunday that Israel’s actions in Rafah already comprised “a large-scale military attack, and not a limited operation as described by Israel.”

The group said that Israel had killed at least 116 people—among them 22 women and 38 children—since IDF forces entered Rafah one week ago.

In addition to stepping up its campaign in Rafah, the IDF has increased its attacks on parts of northern Gaza, including Jabalaya, the largest refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.

“We have been hearing from eyewitnesses on the ground, in that very densely populated area, that military tanks are surrounding evacuation centers and residential buildings,” Al Jazeera journalist Tareq Abu Azzoum reported.

PCHR concluded: “In sum, Israel is continuing its genocidal military campaign against the Palestinian people in Gaza unabated. We reiterate our call for an immediate cease-fire. This genocide must end now.”

 

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Storm damage – work to do but a small offset from wanted rains

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chaya down
YIKES! Open the front door and see the chaya – Mayan spinach tree – fallen over just in front of my gate. An awkward detour, a bunch of chopping and a bit of replanting to do, and lots of cuttings to give away if I can. Fast growing, edible privacy hedge stuff, it is.

LOVE that rainy season, farm damage and all

a photo article by Eric Jackson

Face it. I’m this rustic old hippie, lazy to begin with and in kind of a funk of late. The Panama News and feeding the animals take priority over cleaning up after myself or maintaining the farm. But there are limits, some of them externally imposed.

Were I living in the USA, I’d have an ordinance enforcement officer or lawyers from a homeowers’ association on my case for living like this. But this is Panama, where there is something of a privacy culture, and this is a semi-rural neighborhood in Cocle. Those neighbors who would do battle with me would do so over other issues.

But I do need to sharpen machetes, and clean up this mess.

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I can sing the praises of chaya in many ways. It’s more nutritious that spinach per se, but you have to cook it to neutralize toxins that will make you sick before eating it. No problem. Indigenous people were doing that for more than a thousand years before the Spaniards intruded. But one thing about it, the plant puts down shallow roots. As in a big enough soak to a big enough plant and it’s likely to topple over under its own weight. Heavy winds, which we didn’t have this this storm, would just be gravy.

To grow chaya you just take a cutting and stick it in the ground. The elements will grow it without chemical additions or careful tending. Until it falls over and leaves a gap in your edible privacy hedge. Almost perfect for the lazy hippie who’s a writer first and a subsistence farmer to support that.

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Dogs don’t mind rainy season, especially when they have an understanding human around who won’t get too upset it they shake of the water on them.
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And if the plumbing isn’t functioning as it really should be, rainy season lets you get away with that, too. It’s nature’s way.
 

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Polo Ciudadano, La izquierda panameña hoy

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“Compañeros y compañeras: junto a ti, vamos a transformar este país.”
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STRI, Contabilización del carbono de los manglares

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Morrissette
Hannah Morrissette muestra cómo eliminar el lodo sobrante del testigo para obtener una muestra de tamaño estándar. Foto por Jorge Aleman — Smithsonian.

Conociendo las reservas de carbono azul de Panamá

por STRI

Los investigadores del Smithsonian colaboraron con las partes interesadas para compartir técnicas de contabilización del carbono de los manglares y conocer su importancia en la mitigación del cambio climático.

Con una docena de personas a cuestas, Tania Romero -una de las principales expertas en carbono azul de Panamá y directora del Laboratorio Collin del Instituto Smithsonian de Investigaciones Tropicales (STRI)- recorrió con pericia el intrincado sistema de un manglar costero. Los manglares, que prosperan en la frontera entre la tierra y el mar, proporcionan protección costera, son viveros para la vida marina y alimento para las comunidades costeras. Un beneficio menos conocido de los manglares llevó a Romero a la costa: su papel como almacenes de carbono azul.

El término “carbono azul” se refiere al carbono almacenado en ecosistemas marinos como pastos marinos, marismas y manglares. Mediante la fotosíntesis, las plantas absorben dióxido de carbono de la atmósfera y lo secuestran en sus raíces, hojas y, concretamente, en sus sedimentos, contribuyendo así a frenar el cambio climático. Aunque los bosques terrestres también almacenan carbono (lo que se conoce como “carbono verde”), los índices de secuestro de carbono son significativamente superiores en los ecosistemas de carbono azul; en su biomasa y sus suelos, los manglares tropicales pueden almacenar hasta 4 veces más carbono que sus homólogos terrestres.

Con costas atlánticas y pacíficas bordeadas por doce especies diferentes, Panamá alberga los manglares más extensos de Centroamérica. El poder de secuestro de carbono de los manglares panameños será importante para que el país alcance sus objetivos de emisiones esbozados en los Acuerdos Climáticos de París del 2015, afirma Romero. “Tenemos que poner a Panamá en la mira mundial para mantener nuestro estatus de país con cero emisiones”, afirma. Pero este carbono debe medirse con precisión, y la contabilidad del carbono azul en los manglares aún no se practica de forma generalizada, ni se ha estandarizado en todo el país. Para compartir las técnicas de medición del carbono azul y las mejores prácticas, Romero se asoció con Hannah Morrissette, biogeoquímica de humedales costeros del Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) de Suitland (Maryland), para organizar un taller técnico sobre el carbono azul. Con financiación de The Pew Charitable Trusts, se invitó a participantes de diversos sectores, como el Ministerio de Ambiente de Panamá (MiAmbiente), grupos conservacionistas (Audubon Panamá, Panamanglar, Asociación Nuevo Manglar), turismo (ChameXplora), pesca (Cooperativa de Pescadores Artesanales), investigación (CCIMBIO-Coiba) y grupos indígenas (Congreso General Guna). “Estamos encantados con la entusiasta respuesta de tantos grupos interesados”, declaró Rachel Collin científica de STRI, coinvestigadora principal del proyecto. “Ha sido fantástico trabajar juntos en tantos sectores”.

El trabajo de campo en los manglares no es fácil. Romero recomendó a los participantes que llevaran botas de goma, camisas de manga larga, repelente de insectos y que se mantuvieran hidratados sobre el terreno. “Las condiciones son difíciles”, subraya Romero, que lleva recorriendo los enmarañados sistemas radiculares de los manglares desde que hacía su licenciatura. Hizo una demostración de cómo medir la biomasa aérea con técnicas forestales típicas y la biomasa subterránea con un testigo para extraer columnas de lodo. Estos núcleos se secan durante una semana en el laboratorio antes de ser quemados para revelar su valor en carbono azul.

Romero señaló que muchos panameños que viven en zonas costeras ya conocen de primera mano la importancia de la salud de los manglares. “Hay una respuesta comunitaria cada vez que los manglares se ven afectados por la construcción, la basura o la mortandad”, dijo. Sin embargo, mucha gente sigue quemando carbón vegetal hecho de manglares, sin darse cuenta del efecto que tiene en el almacenamiento de carbono azul.

Susania Avila, participante en el taller, reflexionó: “El taller me dio una perspectiva más profunda de la importancia de los manglares y su papel en el secuestro de carbono… lo que ha reforzado mi aprecio por la conservación de los manglares”. Ávila es estudiante de biología marina en la Universidad de Panamá y miembro del Congreso General Gúna. Aunque ya conocía bien los manglares y el papel vital que desempeñan en los sistemas costeros, Ávila dijo que la combinación de teoría y trabajo de campo del taller reforzó “cómo el concepto de carbono azul está estrechamente relacionado con la salud y la estabilidad de los ecosistemas costeros”. El entorno de aprendizaje fue tan impactante como el propio contenido: “El taller fomentó la colaboración y el intercambio de ideas entre los diversos participantes, lo que enriqueció aún más la experiencia de aprendizaje.”

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Tania Romero (camisa rosa) es la directora del laboratorio Collin de STRI y experta en carbono azul en STRI. Foto por Jorge Aleman — Smithsonian.

Referencia: Donato, D.C. et al. (2011) ‘Mangroves among the most carbon-rich forests in the Tropics’, Nature Geoscience, 4(5), pp. 293–297. doi:10.1038/ngeo1123.

 

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Historical note: This past week Patti, the editor’s original co-host when The Wappin Radio Show was on the radio, passed on to the hereafter.

 

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Jackson, What may be to come (1): The Colombian border

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From the Martinelista sex-and-death tabloid La Critica, which was purchased with tens of millions of dollars stolen from the Panamanian government and by court order is now public property, although Nito has never seen fit to enforce that order. We get into linguistic ambiguity — among other things — about the meaning and importance of President-elect Mulino’s declaration.

“Must,” or “Should?” — and “help” in what sorts of ways?

by Eric Jackson

There is no question about the damage that has already been done to our Darien region by hordes of undocumented migrants. The ecosystems will not fully recover within the lifetimes of Panamanians now living. It’s not just xenophobes calling for the border crossings to stop. But how, as a practical matter, can it be stopped.

Mulino uses the Spanish verb “deber,” which has various meanings. The USA SHOULD, or the USA MUST? The United States has a duty? To do what?

US officials, including folks from the US Armed Forces Southern Command, have been to the border since the migration crisis began many reported times. The full extent and content isn’t reported, but it’s safe to say that whatever advice has come from the north to the governments of Colombia and Panama, the flow of migrants has not stopped.

What’s a Panagringo war skeptic, what’s an old history major, what’s a reporter who has been into and flown over the Darien to think? Those are secondary or tertiary questions. The matter here is what Mr. Mulino and his fugitive criminal mentor Mr. Martinelli prepared to do. Plus, what kind of US help would be requested and what might be delivered.

As security minister for Martinelli, Mulino oversaw blunt and brutal “solutions” to things. Like the televised extrajudicial torture execution of teenage boys who hadn’t even participated in the juvenile prison protest that the government provoked and was purporting to suppress. Like the police attack on the hospital in San Felix. Like the police sweep through a Changuinola working class neighborhood with shoot to blind with birdshot at will orders that were carried out and then denied. Like the law that was passed to “legalize” any act of violence committed by a police officer while on duty.

So, would the policy be to shoot anyone who crosses the border without permission? Yes, there are now trodden paths, and well-used riverine routes, but that border is still drawn through a more or less trackless jungle wilderness. Are Martinelli and Mulino expecting the United States to station troops along the border and shoot at the Venes and others found crossing over? How long would THAT last?

Understand that the US forces are already somewhat at war with the human traffickers behind this flow — their erstwhile Plan Colombia allies of the present-day Clan del Golfo crime cartel. Their old leader, a Mr. Mancuso, is a US prisoner and he confirms things that the US and Colombian governments had been denying for years. Time marches on. And on. And on. 

Panama might well tell the United States ‘You had a hand in creating this mess, so it’s up to you to solve it, or to help solve it.’ It’s a morally respectable argument. Except, when was the victory parade for the decisive US win in the “War Against Drugs?” Except, the United States still has issues at its own border and long has. Except that, since its independence from Spain, warlord politics have always been a factor in the Colombian hinterlands, notwithstanding the brutality of forces sent on orders from Bogota and various US interventions.

So, send in heavily armed Americans all along the border and THEY will really kick ass? As an old US citizen war skeptic, I’d have my moral and political objections to that. As a Panamanian citizen born in Colon and old enough to remember The Day of The Martyrs, I’d have another whole set of objections any such foreign intervention in Panamanian affairs. My own opinions about it matter much less than the realities of attempting such an impractical adventure.

But what could the United States actually do to help?

First, stop the economic strangulation of Venezuela, which is led by the United States. That’s the root of most of the problem. The US embargo against Cuba, and clumsy American attempts to impose order in Haiti add smaller bits to the problem.

US military help? Well, yes, we need some international migrant camps where people who have fled might sort out their futures. The world knows how to run those sorts of centers. Let’s put them under UN supervision, and not in or next to Darien province. The US Navy Seabees, the US Army Corps of Engineers and the US Air Force REDHORSE units would know how to build them, even by raising them as new artificial islands in Colombian, Panamanian or international waters.

The problem is political. In Panama, in the USA, in Colombia and in most other Latin American countries, there will be shrill voices, minorities demanding punishment because they’re really into the politics of cruelty. That’s what we’re up against and it’s not an easy challenge.

 

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