Life in the Panama Paradise

A man shot to death last Saturday in a Multiplaza parking lot, was on the payroll of San Miguelito municipality. He had a salary of $600 and worked as a community promoter.

Although he did not respond to La Prensa , Mayor Valdés Carrasquilla issued a statement yesterday on Monday, without mentioning names or specific events, he justified the hiring of Castro. “As a municipality we have a commitment to eradicate the problems that generate conflict situations in our communities, so we will continue to play our role as promoters, mediators, and facilitators of young people, and women who are at social risk in our district, regardless of their social strata because now, with the new accusatory criminal system, they are offered the opportunity to reintegrate into society”, he explained.

Valdés Carrasquilla, currently a member of the Democratic Change party.

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According to the authorities, Castro was a drug lord from Nuevo Veranillo, San Miguelito, and had ties to the Los Chacales gang, a group accused of the murder of two activists from the ruling Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD): Wendy Rodríguez, who was shot dead in the south corridor in August 2020; and Diógenes Yoyi Vergara, a former deputy, who was assassinated in February of this year in Pacora.

After Castro’s murder, an image circulated on social networks showing the PRD Raúl Pineda, a deputy from San Miguelito, lamenting the incident.

The case is in the hands of the Homicide and Femicide section of the Metropolitan Prosecutor’s Office of the Public Ministry, and until the end of this edition there were no reports of arrests.

Tulip’s death occurred just three days after the murder on Calle 70 San Francisco, of Alexander García Vergara, who resided in San Miguelito and had recently been released from La Joya prison.

These events, and the capture last Saturday of José Cossio, leader of the Calor Calor gang, put the national security strategy against the wall.

However, the director of the National Police, John Dorheim, minimized the events and, on the contrary, said on the live radio program Panama : “we live in a paradise. They are isolated acts of criminals. (…) We are developing actions against these groups and we want to tell them that this is a safe country ”.