ANOTHER IN A SERIES OF POSTS OF CONTEMPLATION AND REFLECTION

David B. Dancy of http://jonestown.wordpress.com/ was curious about race and ethnicity in Panama. I've covered this before, but as someone with a worm's eye view of it, it's a worthy subject to revisit and a worthy lead-in to the contemplative and reflective stuff.

Dave, it kind of breaks down like this, Panama, at least in the Capital, is as color-blind a place as I've ever been in my life. As an American who already spoke Spanish when I arrived I made sure that as I didn't know how long I'd want to stay but it would be a while, I made the decision to assimilate. Within two or three weeks down here one's reflexive views of skin color lose all Anerican meaning because skin color has no normative meaning here. It's hard to find a crowd that isn't pretty mixed-up and professions are available to everyone, really, depending on the normal weeding process of talent, whom you know, etc. Such-and-such dark-skinned person is just as likely to have some clout with this assemblyperson or that one. As a result, people here use descriptive words to identify someone by color or ethnicity but as the "political correctness" takes a very different form here, there's nothing wrong with saying "blanco" or "negro" or "judio" or "chino" or "arabe" or "gay" or "lesbiana". One uses these terms to differentiatel people with similar first names. Spanish "oaths" are not condisered a big deal either. It's a cultural quirk.

"Political correctness" such as it's observed here has more to do with pleasantries, cheer, not gossiping, and not taking liberties with anyone's privacy. Most of all, it is extremely important to judge no one. Oh sure, friends and business partners argue all the time but it's pretty much a code never to let an argument fester, to end things with an agreement, a handshake or a hug. I find this culture very agreeable and in many ways antithetical to the American blogosphere, where one must be outrageous to get noticed.

Here one must be "caballero", "super-especial"...o sea..."un tio" to be noticed in a good way. Only one other time in the last year did someone whom I didn't know mention drugs to me and I went batshit loco. Privacy is so very important here. I supposed the combination of the rarity of drug humor among Americans and the hard-and-fast rules of assuming nothing about anyone down here, put me in a very uncomfortable and perplexed state of mind last night. Down here, you may make all the jokes about all of the verboten American topics you like: sex, drugs, partying, money, whatever. Those jokes, however, must be around people whom you know well.

Why? Well, to all American bloggers I'll turn it around and ask why is it OK to say the most horrible things about the President and the Vice President but a joke about crack or heroin or even pot is considered way beyond the pale? I don't really know the answer to that. Perhaps, it's the real 3rd rail. Perhaps, because the privatized prisons in the U.S. need to be filled with warm bodies and possesion charges are an easy way to do that so people are scared. Perhaps, it has something to do with the "marriage market" in the U.S. In US-Datingland, I have heard such things as someone "looking good on paper". I have, through my training in economics and finance, come to view U.S. dating as a market in which the spot-price of sex clears with the future price of an engagement ring. Every single person up there looks for "signals" and "disqualifiers." A degree from such-and-such university is a "signal," while any discussion of drugs that merely suggests one thinks that the "harm reduction movement in psychiatry" is a "disqualifier," as another cigarette is lit and "yes, thanks I'll have another." Wretched hypocrisy but that's where it's at.

Panama has a rather different way of socializing in which a spirit of fun kind of overrides everything else. At the same time, the country is only 8 or so years into being a contemporary democratic republic...without U.S. bases or "war-on-terror" rules. Meanwhile, there's all sorts of stuff going on to our South which the current crop of U.S. leaders do not like: Chavez's philosophy of economic-planning, Uribe's having to walk a very fine line with regard to narco-traficantes, para-militaries, and the FARC, while needing U.S. support and at the same time seeing the foolishness in doing the U.S. fighting for it against Venezuela, Correa of Ecuador's "Chavez-Lite," plus the conversion of much of Latin America into the Western European capitalist model. Trust me, as capitalist and avariciously so as any place down here can get, the social and economic policies of the more properous nations like Mexico, Panama, Argentina, Brazil and Chile are pretty far to the left of anything Dennis Kucinich or Ralph Nader could dream up.

Thus for better or for worse, all Americans are viewed with some suspicion. Except the Clintons, who rightly or wrongly are credited with the good things that have come to pass down here. So, even in jest if someone American I don't know that well asks me in a public forum to get drugs for him, it confuses and scares me to some degree. Why? Drug humor is inappropriate in America and that kind of question even in jest is inappropriate in Latin America even though I'd never dream of mixing in with drugs and Americans.

It was all so far out of left field, how was one to respond? However I did, it surely wasn't any good, but if anything good fell out of it, a sense of some vigilance among American bloggers seems to be the right approach. I don't just mean make sure to keep drug humor off your blog. I mean political commentary if it gets to the heart of the matter, can cause problems.

That doesn't mean I'll stop writing about what I think is important and neglected. I have been on one topic for a while: What is the role of the American Jew in the poltiical life of the country? I have been flirting with another one: Why is America so ANTI-CAPITALIST?

But I've come to realize how much I enjoy the laid-back way of doing things here and also that I am not really the kind of guy who likes to stick the boot in. I like being a "caballero" or someone "super-especial" who can get along with anyone. This kind of thing happened here some months back. A card-room manager asked me to procure drugs for him to give to some customer. I freaked the fuct out on him. I said "not in a million years and how dare you ask me such as thing?" He said "oh come on, it's nothing." My response: "I agree. So, go outside the hotel and ask one of the cabdrivers." He said "Oh but I can't do that. I have a reputation. I am the manager of the poker-room. What if someone saw me?" I said, "the 'manager of the poker-room,' huh? Wow! That's really dignified. I'm nobody but it's a job I could have gotten at 18. How dare you treat me like a low-class scumbag? How many Masters' Degrees do you have?"

So, because to request drugs from a stranger is such a breach of etiquette down here, I cannot help myself from getting angry when put in that position.

Oh yeah, contemplation and reflection part. Lately, I've taken the notion which many of you have just how useless baying at the moon in Blogville is. Surely, it is because those with power don't care. For my part, though, I've come to the realization that it's not only useless, it's also a problem of my inability to really stick the knife in.

So, I press on with the thought that I'm leaving behind some record fot my son to read when he's old enough. Just what did his Dad think about things in a time of familial and global upheaval. What was The Old Man all about? For me, that's plenty.

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