Beware of Xenophobia!

I have been noticing, for some years now, how a poisonous opinion about foreigners is spreading among the Panamanian population. As always happens in lean years, a scapegoat is sought: some short-witted Panamanians, who blamed Mireya Moscoso (a mediocre president, besides) for the worldwide economic depression that began in 2000, have now aimed their venom at the foreigners residing in the country. I have perceived an escalation in the open manifestations of this evil, in two isolated but symptomatic events.

The first is that a few days ago, while visiting my hometown, I was told that a person of some prominence was going around asking his fellow townspeople for support to advance a petition to expel the Chinese from La Heroica Villa. The reasoning was of a logical rigor so thin that it would have given Aristotle a fatal heart attack: the Chinese are prospering in business, they are taking the top places in the schools, and they are occupying more important positions in society. Ergo, they must be expelled. I received the news of such stupidity with a smile of skepticism at first, and with lamentation when it was confirmed to me that it was not a joke.

The second, more alarming, was an opinion piece titled “Devuelvan el país” (Give Back the Country), which appeared today in the Panamanian daily La Prensa, from the pen of an educator by the name of Alicia Araba. The article takes advantage of the issue of the bidding for commercial premises at Tocumen airport to attack the foreign merchants residing on the Isthmus. The paragraph that opens the text alarmed me deeply. I quote:

Panama for the Panamanians. We cannot allow them to keep snatching the country from us. You turn your head and on every corner you run into a flourishing foreign business. It is high time that someone dared to take measures similar to those of a well-known president when he declared his intention to expel the Asians. It cannot be possible that foreigners arrive in this country with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and after a few years become rich.

There are truths so obvious that stating them sounds like a platitude. Nevertheless, I will run that risk, because I cannot remain silent while such arguments are brandished against my fellow human beings. I respect Mrs. Araba’s right to set out and defend her opinion. Since I have the same right, here I exercise it: I find her assertion xenophobic and dangerous. It is common to find opinions of this kind among private citizens: there have always been such opinions. But it reflects very poorly on La Prensa that it should publish an opinion piece that fires such a torpedo at the tolerance and peaceful coexistence of Panamanians.

Panama for the Panamanians, she says. And who are the Panamanians? Only those who were born in this land, or also those who came to it seeking better fortune? Perhaps the supporters of “Panama for the Panamanians” define “Panamanians” as those who were here first. In that case, the only authentic Panamanians are the indigenous peoples who settled on the Isthmus thousands of years ago. And in gratitude for their Panamanianness, we razed them for centuries, we enslaved them through the Encomienda of Pedrarias, and then we have starved them to this very day. Along those same lines, we, the Spaniards and all their descendants, are upstarts and ought to go back to Spain. From where they would surely throw us out right away, for being foreigners.

In my opinion, a Panamanian is anyone who loves this land, who works it and seeks its progress. Whether he was born here or in China does not matter: if he loves Panama and wishes it well, he is Panamanian. That is my opinion. What sin is there in a Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, Arab, Jewish, or Colombian person, or a decent person of any nationality, coming to our homeland to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow? And if he works hard, and strives more than the others, and if his business prospers, what is wrong with that? Does Panama not progress that way too? Instead of criticizing, we should imitate the good lessons, learn all the virtues of the newcomers, of those who are putting down roots of love in this soil, so as to improve ourselves through their example.

I feel I have the right to speak on these subjects because I was born here, as were my parents and the rest of my family, with two illustrious exceptions. My maternal grandmother was a Chilean lady, who left her land out of love for her husband and who, at the end of her life, seriously considered becoming a Panamanian citizen. She did more good for this country than most of those born here, reforesting and helping cancer patients. And a maternal great-grandfather was born in Colombia, was exiled to Panama for defending freedom in his land, and served for decades on the Isthmus as an itinerant surgeon, caring for the destitute, and as a deputy at a time when there was honor in that word. All the rest of us were born here. Here we grew up, married, and made our lives. We are, in short, as Panamanian as anyone.

Allow me an example. Few things are as Panamanian as the Canal. In honor of the truth, it must be acknowledged that it would not be possible without French inspiration, gringo ingenuity, Chinese sweat, and Afro-Antillean muscle. And it would not be ours without the blood of the martyrs, which bathed this land of ours to make it peaceful, not hostile, open to the whole world. Take the pollera1: is it not the Creole2 evolution of the traditional Andalusian dress? And the congo dance, and the saracundé of La Villa, do they not come from Africa? And the Montezuma Española of the Corpus Christi of La Villa, has there ever been a better mixture of zarzuela and Creole pride? Panama is a melting pot of races, a bouquet of peoples, a fine blend of all the components of the Americas and the world. Who beats his chest and says, “I am truly Panamanian, and you are not”?

It is argued that there are those who come here to break the law and to engage in illicit activities, evading taxes, enslaving their own countrymen, and trafficking in drugs. To this I reply: let them be imprisoned and punished as the law prescribes. And this has nothing to do with a race or a nationality; or are there no criminals among Panamanians? If a person, while in Panama, commits a crime, let him be punished as the law says, whether he is Panamanian, Chinese, Colombian, or from any other country. But to the honest the doors must be opened, for it would be a crime against humanity not to do so. This country received hundreds of races, and that is why it is what it is. And will it now disown its own past?

The columnist insinuates, one might say quotes obliquely, Arnulfo Arias. If someone once wanted to expel a race from the country, going so far as to call it “undesirable,” that person has fallen into the sin of xenophobia. I recommend not using as a moral reference, especially in opinions about supposedly superior or inferior races, a person educated in Nazi Germany. Whoever says that a race is undesirable is either mad or possessed by the demon of hatred. We Panamanians call ourselves Christians: did Christ not teach that we are all children of God, equally? Be very careful about believing that, because someone got some things right, everything he did or said is good without exception. Arnulfo Arias had good things about him, but he was hardly noted for his tolerance toward Black and Chinese people. Xenophobia, then, is not thereby justified; rather, the caudillo who sinned by wanting to implement it is diminished.

While I studied in Cambridge, I saw for myself the enormous racial diversity of that city. White, yellow, red, and Black people lived together in harmony. Christians, Muslims, Jews, atheists, pantheists, and agnostics, seated at the same table, sharing bread. At my university, MIT, there were Jewish professors teaching Muslim students, Turkish and Greek classmates chatting harmoniously, Hindus and Pakistanis working as a team. Like a little paradise of Eden was that oasis of knowledge and tolerance. No one was judged by race, sexual orientation, religion, age, or nationality. How far we are from reaching that ideal of tolerance!

I feel deeply ashamed to hear in my own hometown, which I love so much, such stupid and intolerant opinions, and even more so to see them reflected afterward in an article circulated in thousands of copies of the most important newspaper in my country: this is one more step in the decline in seriousness that has been afflicting it for years, and that will end up costing it the place of honor it won through its battles for human dignity in the time of the dictatorship. In the name of decent Panamanians, of the tolerant, of the open-minded, I say to the Panamanians who were not born in Panama and who live among us with the label of “foreigners”: forgive the intolerance of those few who do not understand the great sacrifice that foreigners, alongside the native-born, have made to move this country forward! For my part, I consider myself a citizen of the world, and a brother of all people. Welcome to my country and to my home, all who come with a good heart to work for a better future.