Latin American Road Kills & Close Calls

"If you don't like the way I drive, stay off the sidewalk!"

So goes the old Gringo bumper sticker gag. But here n Panama City, it's not always a joke. When I was walking to lunch one day near the El Panama Hotel, this cabbie came zooming up the sidewalk behind me, then started leaning on the horn as his way of demanding that I step aside and let him pass.

Now I suppose that a lot of folks in Michigan might generalize from the incident and come to some stereotypical conclusions about crazed Latin American drivers. But I don't. I see it as a specific instance of a different set of general situations.

Understand that there are far too many cabs on the streets of Panama. Cabbies, along with street vendors, traffic stop window washers and others offering a thousand cheap services, are part of a vast marginalized work force.

To have a cab is to be at the top of the margin. For one thing, it means having a car. Then there is a cabbies' syndicate. But sometime during the squalid Noriega era or under the equally corrupt but more anti labor regime that followed, this union became worse than useless.

In the waning days of the recent Endara administration- the one that George Bush imposed - an unholy alliance of crooked politicians, labor racketeers and multinational business combined to create and profit from increased mayhem on Panamanian streets. This is the big picture behind the wild man who tried to run me off the sidewalk.

It happened like this: Hertz had a fleet of used cars to sell. Endara's lame duck thugs were out to grab what they could before inauguration day.Taxi syndicate leaders were looking out for themselves. So Endara's boys illegally sold something like 2,000 new cupos (taxi permits). Hertz sold its unwanted fleet through the taxi syndicate for $15 per day. It was one of history's most massive overpriced used car deals.

Now there are too many cab drivers competing for too few fares, speeding about frenetically and aggravating urban congestion. Congestion that was already outrageous, because as traffic director Leonel Solís says, "Panama hasn't invested a cent for expanding its road network in 20 years and, on the other hand, has allowed the entry of a great number of new vehicles."

Much of this congestion is a sign of the prosperity that comes with a world banking and import/export center, and washed drug money. There are a lot of BMWs tooling around the city. But Panama is also a hungry Third World country, a society with some of the most unequal wealth distribution in the Americas. Most of Metro Panama's over one million people must use public transportation. The beemers not only have to watch out for crazed cabbies, but also must negotiate their way around narrow unmaintained streets that are clogged with a lot of buses.

Traffic accidents and fatalities are common. Half of all such incidents involve a taxicab or bus.

The situation is the subject of much dark humor. In one newspaper cartoon, the cop at a crash scene demands the license of a cabbie, who asks "Which one? The license to drive or the license to kill?" El Cameleón, the national cartoon magazine, recently lampooned former Haitian strongman Raoul Cedras, who was shown continuing his vocation of killing and maiming people by taking a job driving a Panama City bus.

So now I watch out for maniacs when I walk the sidewalks of Panama City. But that, too, can be hazardous to one's health. Walking down another sidewalk, this time with my head up and alert for off-road traffic, I stepped into a hole where a water main cover was missing. It could have been worse. I might have been hurt, or it might have been one of the many uncovered sewer holes. This city, after all, is maintained according to Third World specs.

Road Building is a Feminist Issue

A few weeks ago Panamanian feminists held the Third Panamanian Women's National Conference. It was organized by the Clara González Feminist Collective, named for Clara González, Panama's first woman attorney, who died in 1990.

The participants were mostly in their 30s and 40s, with a few senior citizens and only a sprinkling of women college aged or younger. It was mostly a mixed-race crowd, with black and ndigenous women well represented, only a few whites and no Asians that I noticed. Though there were urban workers, housewives and campesinas, it was by and large a well-educated crowd, with teachers and other professionals either a majority or close to it. About a dozen indigenous Kuna and Ngobe women, some quite young, some dressed traditionally and some in blue jeans, sat in front of me to my right. A couple of nuns in habits were seated to my left.

The evening's events began with a speech by the collective's lleana Centeno on the state of Panamanian feminism. Among the successes that she listed were a gathering of women activists from different political parties and increased attention to violence against women. She called for more attention to the messages that society gives to children. In politics, she advocated a "new methodology for exercising power."

The next speaker took a more radical tack, urging women not to play ordinary roles in established politics. "No to this system," she pleaded.

Activists from Costa Abajo, an impoverished stretch on the Caribbean, demanded improvements to their road. This was being rebuilt in the weeks leading up to the May 8 election. At least, that's what it said on the big signs proclaiming what President Endara and the U.S. Agency for International Development were doing for the locals. But Endara's party lost, and work stopped. When the rains came, the road turned into a quagmire. As far as the Costa Abajo delegates were concerned, an impassable road oppresses women.

The indigenous delegates from Darién and Kuna Yala also had road building on their minds. They live in one of the last unspoiled rain forests, a place where there is a gap in the Pan-American Highway.

Completing that 160-mile stretch in Panama and Colombia would make it possible to drive from Ann Arbor to Argentina. But it would also bring settlers and deforestation, destroying traditional indigenous societies and the ecological context in which they survive.

Part of the drive toward hemispheric economic integration is a demand to complete the highway. This has environmentalists and indigenous peoples throughout the Americas preparing to do battle.

That includes indigenous feminists. While some folks instinctively equate "tradition" with "sexism," any "modernization" which leaves indigenous women dependent on the white man's economy is no "liberation" as far as the Darién delegates were concerned.

Toward the end of the program the politicians spoke. But scheduled speaker Balbina Herrera, the first woman National Assembly president, couldn't make it.

Deputy Haydée Milané de Lay spoke instead. An Afro-Panamanian from Darién and one of seven women in the 72-member assembly, she heads its women's commission. She promised road repairs on the Costa Abajo, but said nothing about her own province. The crowd was polite but unenthusiastic. But when Milané de Lay started talking about how God paired men and women, the crowd groaned and a scowling indigenous delegate walked out.

Eric Jackson, an Associate Editor of AGENDA, filed this report from Panama, where he has been living since February, 1994.