BASIC BASKET: THE SALADINO´S LEAP

By: Felipe Argote

To analyze economic indicators is like painting a cloth. With the same palette and brush even using the same colors can result in art or motivate loathing.

If we read the numbers of the Ministry of Economy and Finance in its last publication that includes February and March this year, we see that the basic food basket was B/272.30, just 0.91 more than the previous month. According to analysts of the MEF, whose figures are official, however this amount is less than the same B/0.95 March last year. The ACODECO, meanwhile, has submitted a report stating that the basic food basket has declined further in April, causing the anger of the majority of the population, which has the feeling that your money every time buy less.

About ACODECO analysis I will say no comments, because it doesn’t have any scientific rigor.

To understand the position of the majority that feels that there is a diminished quality of life, we must briefly explain how we analyze the basic food basket.

The basic family basket is the price paid to cover the basic needs for an average family in Panama. This is 3.8 members. So a family of five members who told only needs B/272.3 to feed in a month gets angry every time they watch a public bureaucrat on television trying to make him understand that what he says true. If the family is five members, always following the numbers of MEF, would need B/358.29, if seven would need B/501.61.

To establish this basket, they have to calculate the caloric needs of people each day, multiply by seven (days), then by 52 (weeks) and then divided by twelve to see the monthly requirement of calories. Finally multiply by the average (3.8 people). Then, these needs are filled with the proportions of meat (15.84%), cereals (47.8%), vegetables and vegetables (4.33%), legumes (2.38%), fruits (1.67%), fat (10.58%), milk (5.75%) , eggs (0.79%), sugar (6.89%) and miscellaneous (4.71%). To this is added the cost of gas for cooking (B/0.37 per day per person)

Of course, to cover the item could take hock or beef steak, if we take one or the other very different prices. Or we could take within the potato product, the price of a five-pound bag of potatoes at Price-Smart or in another supermarket as Extra or super 99 to develop our average. In one bag may be more expensive, but the potatoes are better and his weight advantage, while another may be cheaper per pound, but each bag will have a rotten potato, so even when cheaper, to match the nutritional volume of the first would have to pay for a pound and a quarter. But for statistical purposes as if the pound takes the whole bag to be good.

Then a monthly variation is not very sensitive to the consumer unless the jump in prices is like to compete with those of Saladino. If there was a significant increase last year and the previous one, if this year is a small decrease in price, consumers should not be satisfied when the expectation was to return to the levels of two years ago and even below.

Consider the trend. The basket as we know it was organized in 2002. At that time cost B/187.30. If it is currently in B/272.30, that means an increase of 45.38%. Some optimists say that it happened during eight years. Right, but there was a stepwise increase. Only in early 2008 the cost of the basket was B/239.05. That means that in six years it rose 27.63%. (4.6% annually). In January last year had risen to B/270.60. This is an increase of 13% over the previous year. In February of that same year was raised to B/272.3 and B/273.25 and March, 14% compared to January 2008. In January this year had dropped to B/271.00. Then if in March of this year 2010 the basic basket is B/272.3 means B/1.30 has been raised regarding the beginning of the year. It is naive to think that people will believe the myth that the basket has declined because in March last year was in B/273.35.

It's like being put under a temperature of 90 degrees, then you raise the thermostat to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, then you raise it again at 120 degrees. When you are about to suffocate you go down to 119.5 degrees and pretend to smile with the argument that the heat has diminished.

THE TRIBE OF BLOND INDIANS OF DARIEN

By: Felipe Argote

When the American adventurer Richard O. Marsh traveled to the Darien jungle in the early twentieth century sponsored by the Smithsonian, the museum of natural history at the University of Rochester and the U.S. Army military intelligence never thought he was going to be face to face in the middle of the jungle white skin, blond hair and blue eyes Indians. When he returned to New York with the unusual news that he had discovered an Indian blonde tribe he became the laughingstock of the media, especially the tabloids. Some have claimed that they were descendants of English pirates who had been stranded on the shores of the Atlantic and had survived for centuries lost in the jungle fending off the Indians and hiding from the Spanish made any attempt on their lives. Others argued that Marsh had been the victim of some psychotropic plants and had been seeing visions. Others, because his controversial personality, claim that the adventurer had invented the story in the midst of his desire for notoriety, stating that it was a lost colony of Vikings in Greenland.

But Richard O Marsh was not willing to go down in history as a liar. So after gathering enough resources sailed to Panama and then to Darien in search of evidence of the existence of the mythical blonds Indian tribe of Darien. The result of his trip was better than expected. In 1924 he returned to New York. This time he was not alone, three Indians with all the features of the Indians of Darien, but with great particularity... were blond, blue eyes and white skin. They were the living proof: blond Indians of Darien.

Contrary to what Marsh thought, white Indians of Darien are not a different race, are part of the Kuna that because of a special genetic evolution born albinos. At kuna Yala albinos are born at a rate of 1 per 144 births, with this being the highest proportion of births of albinos in the world. In the U.S., for example, there is one albino for every 17,000 inhabitants. They are called the children of the moon by the Kuna themselves, who according to tradition born blonde because their mother during pregnancy feels an irresistible attraction to see the moon, and because during the day while his weak eyes cannot see clearly, during moonlight are those with a more acute eyes.

But long before Marsh, as far ahead as 1699, Dr. Lionel Wafer, an English doctor and pirate in his book "A New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America" described the Indians of Darien and sets targets the proportion among the Kuna of one for every 200 inhabitants.

The three Kuna albino Marsh took to New York were being studied by different specialists, but it was the geneticist Dr. Reginald G. Harris of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in genetic research that after seeing the captive Indians were motivated to travel to Kuna Yala for further studies of this rare congenital anomaly. This description was developed by Dr Harris: "Their skin is that of white people among Europeans, with a sieve of bluish skin, nor is it their skin as pale of our people, but rather a milky white. They are as high as the other indians. His eyelids are closed and open into an oblong shape, working down at the ends, forming an arc or crescent shape of the tips down. From here and from seeing so clearly on a moonlit night they are called sons of the moon. They canno see very well in full sun as they close their eyes as if they were myopic, however night vision is pure, clear and alert. They do not care at all "

The Harris report cleared the doubts of the existence of a tribe of white Indians developed by adventurer Richard O Marsh. He, Marsh left the Kuna Yala area escorted by U.S. troops after trying to mount on a legitimate revolutionary kuna movement. This survey proclaimed the Tule Republic in 1925 due to pressure of the Panamanian government wanted to force them by law to convert to Christianity and forbid the use of their traditional clothing, their religion and any culture. Richard Marsh took advantage of the movement suggesting that it seek to be a protectorate of the United States. So after signing the peace agreement between the Kuna and the Panamanian government the adventurer Marsh left the area protected by the U.S. army to his country of origin.

THE GOKOMERE EMPIRE

By: Felipe Argote

In times of the World Cup in South Africa many, myself included, have been surprised and a lot more will be surprised to see the places as developed and as beautiful natural sites offering Africa.

The European arrogance which claims to have discovered America for example, where already lived 30,000 years before our ancestors, who claim to have discovered the Pacific Ocean when the history tells was chief Comagre who showed Vasco Nuñez de Balboa the way, who then came to the archipelago of pearls, murdering and pillaging the Indians tribes found in his way, just as the Portuguese, Dutchmen and Englishmen who came to South Africa have hidden to say about the vast region that civilizations existed for hundreds of years.

One was that of The Great Zimbabwe, located northeast of South Africa in the present Republic of Zimbabwe. This country before independence was called Rhodesia, the name of the English who controlled and squandered these lands as his private company, having at their disposal tens of thousands of black slaves and thousands of white workers brought from England with the delusion that these regions were the Biblical mines of King Solomon.

For centuries Europeans have argued that these colossal ruins of a stone without mortar could not have been built by blacks, and assurances that may have been built by the Phoenicians or the Arabs. Its ancient ignorance led them to decide that this was a city built for the mines of King Solomon.

The further development of archeology shows that the great Zimbabwe was the capital of the black empire Gokomere and reached its highest development in the fifteenth century. Its economic strength was based on the gold trade. Excavations have shown that Gokomeres traded with the Arabs and Chinese. The complex of stone indicates that the great Zimbabwe was a huge city with high economic activity of more than 10,000 stone walled enclosures with more than 10 meters high. One of the buildings left standing is the Great Wall that is believed was built around the twelfth century and had at least three access doors lintels. Also stand part of the Royal Palace, a huge stone building. There was found the bird called Zimbabwe, a sculpture carved in stone that now appears on the flag of the country. Also near the Great Zimbabwe, the caves adjacent to the capital of Gokomere civilization can be found cave paintings of over 35,000 years, while the first cave art developed in Europe was 5.000 years later. The Great Zimbabwe has been declared World Heritage by UNESCO. The empire stretched not only in the current Zimbabwean whose name was recovered after independence but included part of today's Mozambique.

It is believed that its decline in the seventeenth century was due to the depletion of gold and overexploitation of hunting and logging. When they had changed their activity from gold to the slave trade it was colonized by the Portuguese. Those who remained in the stampede formed the Mutapa kingdom in Mozambique. This was known by the English as Monomotapa. At this moment is when the idea that in this area were the mines of King Solomon began. This leads to a Netherlands company called East India to the foundation of the Cape Colony, the first European settlement that will lead the creation of South Africa. This argument was used by the company to convince the first European settlers to relocate to this area. It was false. There were no mines of King Solomon and the Great Zimbabwe gold was exhausted. Instead two hundred years after was discovered in South Africa, specifically in Johannesburg, the largest gold reserves on the planet. While searching north of Cape Town a dummy mines they were established, unknowingly, on the largest gold mines in the world.

Zimbabwe was colonized in the late nineteenth century by Cecil Rhodes who came to trade 90% of the world's diamonds. Rhodes colonized Zimbabwe enslaving the natives. He had his own private army of the British Society of South Africa, with which seized the land to blacks who enslaved, and encouraged the settlement of white farmers who mainly located in the area called Mashonaland.

One hundred years later, the descendants of the native black teas have expelled from Zimbabwe in a systematic way the white farmers, who say in their defense that these lands have been occupied by them for generations.

Between Zimbabwe and Mozambique is one of the wonders of the world, falls Mosi-oa-Toenja (the smoke that thunders), at Zambezi River, the largest water curtain in the world. It fell to 500 million liters of water per minute.

THE FIGHT IS FIGHTING

By: Felipe Argote

Pedro Hoyos was the hated ruler of Penonomé and collector of tithes and first fruits of the church. According to the usual medieval law, church required all residents to hand over ten percent of their crop. But not only that, the abusers were snatched from the poor peasants calls firsts, the first fruits of the earth and the first offspring that their animals give birth. So while the Conservative government and the church were becoming richer, the farmers were becoming poorer. But it happened that an indian from Penonomé faced the collector Hoyos. So he decided to make him pay his daring to serve as a warning. Together with a group of buddies the deputy waited Victoriano to kill him with bad luck for him that Victorian was alerted by villagers, so he was ready to confront the ruler, settling the confrontation with the death of Pedro Hoyos.

On May 25, 1900 had started the civil war in Panama with the manifesto of Belisario Porras, a lawyer from Las Tablas, calling for equal democracy. Victoriano already had served nine years in prison for the death in self-defense of the collector Hoyos. He had read about military strategy and had gained the sympathy of prisoners and guards. Now as a free man Victoriano was presented May 25 at Valle de Anton with 500 men

No wonder that his indian condition caused the liberal bias of the generals, especially Emiliano Herrera and Miguel Antonio Noriega. He was assigned the task of carrying weapons and supplies. But on June 7, after the battle of the “old black woman” e received the rank of captain.

Later that month, the liberal forces controlled the entire department except the city of Panama. Under the command of General Emiliano Herrera liberals were just preparing an offensive to enter the city for three different points. Is in that moment when the U.S. consul is involvd. Through a messenger he tells General Herrera tha t if he destroy the city the U.S. troops will intervene. Frightened he decides to develop the offensive on July 25, 1900 by a single point: the Calidonia bridge with the disastrous defeat of the liberal versus conservative army shrapnel.

Victoriano, shrewd as wisw as he was, anticipating the defeat of the Liberals by pithing plan of Herrera, comes with most of its troops to the hill Trinidad. Conservatives soldiers seek to him to “El Cacao” where they found the buried weapons. Unable to find him tey burned all the crops of farmers who supported him, but also they rape all the women and kill all the men in their path. After the withdrawal of conservative troops, the people gather in assembly and vote to continue the war and named Victoriano Lorenzo their General.

This occurred on October 20, 1900. Their weapons consisted of seven rifles captured to conservatives soldiers. By January 1901 the native troops led by General Victoriano Lorenzo had headquarters in La Negrita and prepare the offensive to Penonomé. There liberal General Manuel Antonio Noriega presented accompanied by General Manuel Patiño. Victoriano was required to submit to him and recognize him as commander in chief. Victoriano did not answer immediately. He said he would consult with his generals. Following consultation informed him that they had decided unanimously to reject the offer of the eponymous general who is currently imprisoned in Paris. It was during this meeting that General Victoriano Lorenzo said his famous phrase: the fight is fighting when he told Noriega: I am informed and I have seen, General Noriega, that you are writing letters to the Governor of Cocle in Penonomé. That do not believe it right because the fight is fighting. If they catch they will shoot me to dead, however, you, who are white and friend of the Mayor, no nothing would happen. For this reason I can not accept this situation. "My memories of General Victoriano Lorenzo. Stories Lt. loudly. Colonel Juan José Quiroz Mendoza 1900-1902).

Already in February 1902 the Liberal troops controlled the country again with the exception of Panama City. But at that moment began the betrayal. Liberals and conservatives had come to an agreement under the auspices of the U.S. government, which placed the armistice as a condition for signing treaty of the construction of the canal known as Herran Hay Treaty. In November 1902, Eusebio A. Lucas and Caballero Morales on behalf of the Liberal Party in Panama signed the peace treaty in the American battleship Wisconsin. As they did signed the death warrant of General of the Indians, for whom the war rather than economic interests sharing was about the survival of his people.

For over sixty years, his memory was distorted by the consecutive governments: The reason is obvious. Both liberals and conservatives betrayed the general Victoriano Lorenzo. Eusebio A. Morales, a senior leader of the Liberal Party, who signed the peace treaty in Wisconsin, was responsible for Victoriano trick it out of the mountains and take him to the city of Panama in an alleged meeting to discuss peace and land delivery farmers. Instead he gave him to his conservative party enemies. A council of war drew to invent a hoax charges and sentenced to death Victoriano. The judgemens who cowardly murdered Victoriano was chaired by Esteban Huertas, later declared by both liberals and conservatives as hero of the fatherland. Finally the doctor born in Cartagena, Colombia, which ruled the death of Victoriano Lorenzo for alleged natural causes, was none other than Manuel Amador Guerrero, Panama's first president.

Before being executed on May 15, 1903 General Victoriano Lorenzo said:

"People, hear a public word: you know who says it. Victoriano Lorenzo dies ... I forgive you all ... I die like Jesus died ..." Quoted by Ramon H. Jurado. Desertores. Manfer, Inc. Panama, 1991.

CERTAINTY OF PUNISHMENT

By: Felipe Argote

I have thought a lot about the reasons for the uncontrollable spiral of violence affecting our country. I concluded, as the vast majority of Panamanians, that there are multiple factors. Television, destroyed homes, the irresponsibility of parents. Take into account that when I wrote parents I mean only male. I refer to the irresponsibility of the fathers, because the mothers in most cases must comply with both roles. You should also note the inability of politicians who place as head of police people who do not have the slightest suspicion of the scientific mechanisms governing the science of criminology. The other factor is also, of course, corruption. We can list many additional elements. But I think there is one that is separated from the rest by lot and it is therefore a determining factor. I mean the certainty of punishment.

Mind repeatedly observed that sectors of society complain that many delinquents kill and although some are caught in a short time they are on the streets and kill again. Some police fear taking someone prisoner because they found them the next day in the same neighborhood and they laugh in their face. So the government says the solution is to increase the punishment. Twenty years of maximum sentence was increased to thirty and then forty years. As this has been unsuccessful and rising level of violence now proposed the death penalty. But I wonder how many criminals have been convicted to thirty or forty years? The answer is none. Then you better hope the penalty is a thousand years if well be in the streets ready to murder again soon. Records show that 83% of indicted are declare non guilty.

A few days ago we all saw on television a brawl in the baseball stadium. Even the ongoing spat out in front of the police who did little or nothing to prevent it rather than separate them with stick and pepper spray. How many were arrested? None. After discussion in the media was how to make this not happen again. That's fine, but nobody talked about how they would pay for that cowardly beating three to a subject who was on the floor. Here are the videos. How is it possible that they are not showing their faces and asking them to identify each? They have to be barred from entry to stadiums. That's the way it has controlled the hooligans in England and all around Europe. In my case I won’t be unable to attend a stadium with my children where they can be attacked by some thugs just for wearing the sweater of the opposing team.

TWO MORE MATHS, TWO CIVIC LESS

 By: Felipe Argote

Try to buy the idea that the serious problem of education in our country begins to settle with a curricular change in higher years, that with two more math and two civic fewer students will get into more preparation for college or at least we will not keep half of the undergraduate students drop out of the system is at least an insult to our intelligence.

The improvement of our educational system, in my opinion, certainly starts with two key elements: the radical improvement of infrastructure and faculty.

The improvement of the infrastructure: It is not possible to continue the practice for students to mobilize tens of kilometers from their homes to try to receive a minimum of conditions for their education. The conditions of schools in the suburbs are so deplorable that parents get up at midnight and spend hours in the rain to get a place at schools that are far from their home. How many students from the Professional School Isabel Herrera Obaldía, Richard Newman and Remon Cantera live in Paitilla, San Francisco or Obarrio? Very few or none. Then we have to look at the sorry spectacle of hundreds of students at night waiting for buses that refuse to receive them because they don’t pay full passage.

Education reform must begin with the construction of new schools. The Professional, Moscote, the Remon Cantera, are schools built more than fifty years ago. Those schools have already served their useful life have become dilapidated buildings unsuitable for education without minimum conditions for the school environment. Since when do not hear from the construction of a new school. What are the public schools in the capital: the National Institute is the only high school in the entire area of Santana, Chorrillo and vicinity. It has more than one hundred years. Rather than building new schools because of population growth the governments preferred the double shifts, in which students receive no less than five hours of classes a day. How much longer will be double-shift schools? It is necessary to build large schools, with green areas, a gymnasium and school canteens to make them attractive to young people.

The faculty improvement: The continuous closure of the school done by the workers unions are nothing if you place them in perspective. Absences from classes are the rule rather than the exception. I know from direct references that in the city of Santiago schools do not work on Fridays or Mondays very often. This is common practice in the Ngöbe area as teachers travel to their homes on Friday and begin his return on Monday. Teachers at Arraiján schools close Friday because some teachers organize trips to Decameron. In David, Chiriqui, a director of a secondary school called the media to report that in a search of the backpacks of students confiscated 61 cell phones. The director called parents to review their son’s bags because it was not allowed for students to carry phones to school. Now it seems that the way of being able to contact their children after school hours, to ensure that they are way to the house while their parents are working is for this anachronistic schools principal a crime. This is possible because a principal doesn’t earn much than a teacher. So many who are compete for the position of principal is to avoid class hours and to have access to the pinch of budget items. I know a director who was removed from office for robbery and now returns to the same position under the auspices of the new government to the same post. A few weeks after his return five computers disappear from the computer class room without forcing the doors. The computers mysteriously disappeared over the weekend.

If the head is not right what we think may be the body healthy. Should there be incentives for top managers to be the principals and the best teachers have to occupy the best jobs. Additionally old teachers must leave the system when they are already retired. There are many educators who retire and continue working to receive two salaries, of course reluctantly, while young people with modern ideas and training cannot access the system because it is dominated by people who make invectives against computers and the internet. We know the needs of these educators, but this cannot be the determining factor at the expense of training new generations of students.

Finally, a method must be organized for student transportation to mobilize in time and prevent these young people remain in the streets until late at night with the argument that buses do not want to pick up them.

THE MARTYRS OF CHICAGO

By: Felipe Argote

The first of May, 1886 anarchist groups in Chicago, Illinois, called a general strike to achieve 8-hour Labor Day. Its leaders were mostly European immigrants, especially Germans. Their best propaganda written tool was the German anarchist newspaper Arbeiter-Zeitung, also known as the Chicago Arbeiter-Zeitung, the worker`s newspaper of. That day all the factories of Chicago joined the strike, with the exception of McCormick factory that operated on the hiring of strikebreakers since February, and that its workers had stopped to protest because the factory owners had decided to impose a reduction in their salaries required to build a church.

Amid the concentration of the strikers out the siren of a factory shift so concentrates went on strike-breakers and formed a battle. Police involved shooting at close range against the strikers sector. Kills six and injures dozens. Adolf Fisher a German immigrant, anarchist, editor and typesetter for the Chicago Arbeiter-Zeitung was present at the time of killing. Outraged goes to the newspaper and write a proclamation denouncing the police and calling for insurrection. 25.000 printed fliers were distributed proclaiming that the next day amid a rally of 50,000 people that was violently suppressed by police.

On 4 May following a merger takes place in Haymarket Square that had been authorized by the mayor of Chicago. Mayor Harrison was present at the concentration to ensure the safety of protesters, aware of the aggressiveness of the police chief John Bonfield. After the concentration, the mayor retired and much of the demonstrators. Because some remained at the site, the police chief decided to evict them by force to the argument the merger was over. In the midst of political repression someone threw an explosive device killing one police officer and wounding others. Police returned the insult firing into the crowd killing and wounding an undetermined number of workers.

Then start hunting. A large number of workers were jailed. Special care were the members of the Arbeiter-Zeitung newspaper, most Germans, who were sentenced to death: The editor August Spies, German, editor of the proclamation calling for insurrection Adolph Fisher, German, George Engel, German, Louis Ling, German, and American Albert Parsons died hanged. While the English Methodist minister Samuel Fielden was sentenced to life imprisonment, Michael Swabb, German, was sentenced to life imprisonment and Oscar Neebe, American manager of the newspaper was sentenced to 15 years in prison. There was plenty of xenophobia in this decision as the only American on death row, Albert Parson was illegally married to Lucy Gonzalez, born slave, originally from Waco Texas, the daughter of a black Mexican and an Indian creek at a time when they were banned interracial marriages. Both had fled Texas for threats of lynching them when Parson drove a campaign for black voting.

Despite being one of the most shameful episodes in American history, the first of May, internationally recognized as the Labor Day, has the United States as one of its exceptions. However from 2006 the first of May has been set unilaterally by the immigrant advocacy groups like the day of immigrant workers in the United States.