The Politics of the Dead

During the month and a half before the primary elections of the Arnulfista party, I heard many people call themselves true Arnulfistas. During the month and a half before the PRD primaries, I heard many others call themselves true Torrijistas.

I have asked many of them what Arnulfismo is and what Torrijismo is, and what it means to be an Arnulfista or a Torrijista. None of them has answered my direct question with a direct answer. Instead, they tell me about the life of Arnulfo Arias and of Omar Torrijos, as if the biography of these men and the content of their political philosophies were the same thing. But they are not. Every time I ask, I receive this evasion as the only answer. I have begun to suspect that nobody knows what Arnulfismo and Torrijismo are, or, further still, that they do not exist as political philosophies.

Now, when I hear people talk about Arnulfismo and Torrijismo, I think of nothingness. Because that is what Arnulfismo and Torrijismo are: two names that mean nothing, two titles that not even the top leaders who bellow them every day understand. They are two nothings repeated a thousand times to both flocks, until they are made to look real, without knowing what they are. Without caring what they are.

What does Panamanian politics offer the new generations? Nothing, twice over. Arnulfismo. The politics of a man who removed a legislator from office for being Black, and who declared in the constitution that some races are undesirable. Torrijismo. The politics of a man who gave us an unpayable debt, and who governed from the barracks. Nothing more. After the death of these two “leaders,” the rest has been the brawl of two packs of hyenas who claim the dead man’s name for themselves and who shout themselves hoarse to climb a rung of the political ladder by repeating “Arnulfismo” and “Torrijismo” as if they were magic words: this is the politics of the dead. The rest is just hoopla: caps, posters, motorcades, liquor, a circus for a people without bread.

Is there not, in this whole country, a new leader with ideas of his own, who does not need to invoke the name of these two dead men to make his presence felt? Are there no new forces, no new proposals? Today’s problems cannot be solved with old formulas, least of all if these have already shown that they cannot solve even the old problems.

Our homegrown politics has reached unpleasant, even ridiculous, extremes. The people enjoy and mock these follies out loud, like someone making fun of a drunk, while they keep silent about the deep anguish born of their hunger for bread, affection, and ideals. Of their hunger for true leaders, who with goodwill and without putting petty interests first will help them get out of the mediocrity that has begun to eat away at their marrow and to wither their heart.