Panama’s “forlorn hope” make a last gasp attempt

In the time of the Napoleonic wars on the Iberian peninsular   the final assault on a fortress standing out  against Wellington’s  army  was led by a group of soldiers known as the “forlorn hope”.

Hope was the operative word. Few lived but  their was at least hope for survival and the opportunity to get the first pickings in the orgy of looting and other events that followed … known as “the spoils of war”. If the assault failed, there were no spoils, only an unmarked grave in a foreign land.{jathumbnail off}

Panama’s forlorn hope went into action on Saturday, April 9, and the ramparts they stormed in a “cultural  assault”   were the walls of the former American Embassy on

  Avenida Balboa, behind which  were hidden  the soaring dreams of the Ministry of Finance, as the demolishers moved in.

It was a last gasp attempt  to get the government to reconsider the demolishing of the building  to make way for a 70 story mega-tower, a giant sky pointing finger or phallus, depending on your viewpoint, erected as a symbol of growing government bureaucracy.  Panama’s homage to Mammon.

A similar venture a week earlier, left behind some classic murals and slogans calling for the building to be used for a museum, which in Spanish has a broader context and can be 

interpreted as an art or cultural center, like the  Museo de Arte Contemperain. (Museum of Modern Art).

Some commentators have interpreted it in the English sense, and have expressed fears that such a building would become a paean to the 20 years of military dictatorship in Panama. That’s an interesting thought. Would  such a  museum contain some of the pre-Wikileaks notes between Noriega, and his alleged handlers in the CIA. Or piles of shredded files that the former leader kept on anybody who was anybody, and some who weren’t?

But the “The Collective,"  that arrived Saturday, most  of them only toddlers at the time of the  U.S. 

invasion and Noriega’s transfer to a jail cell, were not looking for  that kind of memorial.

They discovered earlier in the week  that their previous murals, which had livened up the dull portals of the building, had been white painted away, so they returned to the battle armed with brushes and paint, and  accompanied  in some  by kids, set to work once again to spread their message. The kids got some early lessons in activism and had fun dipping  fingers in paint, and  adding to the graphics.

As  Henry Lombard, a spokesman for The Collective, emphasized, the second assault on the former home of Uncle Sam was to get the facilities made into  a cultural space in the middle of Panama City. 
Later the group provided music and a show of shadows and  promises to repeat the artistic protes next Saturday. While in the meantime they submit a formal proposal  for the building’s use to the relevant authorities.

A forlorn hope indeed. The Ministry of Finance, which plans to occupy the mega tower has already issued a $284,000 demolition contract, and two days before the last assault, demolition equipment arrived in the grounds of the former embassy, and men were at work on the roof, removing tiles.