Every New Year's eve, throughout parts of Latin America, including in Panama, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia, campesinos construct what are known as muñecos (effigies) which they burn to ward off evil spirits for the next year. These muñecos are not just random though. The vasy majority are meant to depict national leaders, imperialists, and businessman. In one Ecuadorano market, a seller presented muñecos of Osama bin Laden, George Bush, IMF officials, and hated Ecuadorano Presidente Lucio Gutierrez.

In Panama, the celebration is not over. Last year saw two national strikes and an increase of militant protest against the government, neo-colonialism, and capitalism. Then the centennial anniversary of Panama's controversial indepedence from Colombia saw scandal, and marchers attempted to attack the US embassy during a demonstration marking the 14th anniversary of the US invasion.

Perhaps most notably, Panameños all over are gearing up for the 40th anniversary of a five day national insurrection against US neo-colonial rule. Whilst Panama has always been a land of tumult and resistance, the uprisings that occured January 9th thru 13th, 1964, set the stage for the US military pull-out (which the 1989 invasion was partly meant to prevent) and the end of the domination over the Panameño-built canal. July 4th Avenue, adjacent to the then US-occupied canal zone, was renamed Avenida de los Martires. Every year, Panamanians come out in full force, and both the corporate and indepenent newspapers run stories, narratives and dialogues about the significance of the day.

It began with high school students who raised the Panamanian flag on the July 4th Avenue which was usually littered with US flags. US citizens and their white collaborationists who lived in the US territory violently contested this.

'Estanislao Orobio was a 17-year-old boy who, seized by patriotic fervor after a series of Zonian and Panamanian flag-raising demonstrations and a scuffle between high school kids in which the Instituto Nacional’s historic Panamanian flag was torn, carried a Panamanian flag across the street into what was then the Canal Zone and onto the lawn of the old Tivoli Hotel. A Canal Zone cop shot him through the neck and he drowned in his own blood. If you go down to the former Balboa High, now named after Ascanio Arosemena, the first Panamanian to fall on January 9, 1964, the shrine to the martyrs out front has a pillar bearing Orobio’s name. But in the public mind, this brave young man who gave his life so that Panama could be whole, undivided by a strip of English-speaking suburbia, is largely forgotten.' excerpt

The events of January 1964 amounted to an anti-colonial uprising by a broad cross-section of the Panamanian people, but to the extent that anyone was organizing or instigating it that distinction goes to the left, and most particularly to a group of militants around Floyd Britton and also to legislator Thelma King and her radio station.

The primary Panamanian political figures of the next few decades (fascist Arnulfo Arias and dictator Omar Torrijos) lashed out at the masses as thugs, and Torrijos was flown, by the US, to quell the uprisings in Colon. US troops themselves killed many, including an 11-year old and an 18-month old infant. Their primary method was to stay in their fenced-in canal zone territory and snipe protesters, or anyone else that they saw. They also directed the Panamanian 'security' (re: repression) forces to suppress the dissent.

Pictures will be added of the commemorations. Join the Panamanian people in solidarity, by staging public burnings of US flags or muñecos during the days of the uprising, this coming Friday thru next Tuesday.

for one of several analyses of the Panamanian left by Panama's only English newspaper (which is noncorporate) http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_09/issue_01/news_02.html http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_01/opinion_01.html