User:Thamus/Public outcry as 24 get killed in bus accident in Panama

Monday, August 17, 2009  {{stale}} {{sources}} {{cleanup|This does not meet the style guide requirements; mainly, the tone needs to be reworked for a more formal news-style. Also, needs correct formatting, especially with use of {{source}}}} Panama Republic, 19:17 Friday August 14 2009. As I prepare to write this article, my wife leaves the television set to inform me that the death toll was just raised to 24, with the passing of Carlos Moreno, earlier diagnosed with severe encephalic trauma. Telemetro, a local channel so light on content that is usually lobotomized, dropped its regular programming and has been reporting on the accident since the wee hours, stopping only to comply with its heavy commercial agenda.

22:45 13 August 2009, Las Garzas de Pacora, Greater Panama City area. It's a raw new cement road, servicing yet another newly developing community in the wide vicinity of Panama City's Tocumen airport. The road is so new there aren't any lamp posts or sewage yet. The tropical winter has been raining on it – the sky is still very close and utter darkness reigns. Abruptly, the lights of two very fast vehicles approaching from the east open four parallel gashes in this shapeless blackout. Beside the 4x4, a heavy lorry with four paid and seventeen unpaid offences on its record accelerates in an incomprehensible manoeuvre to overtake it. It never will.

Because of the late hour, only three people on the eastbound “red devil” travelled unseated. Red devils, American and Canadian school busses declared unfit for service and adapted for the public transportation “system” in Panama, are notorious for numerous reasons, not least of which their usual Luna Park style driving. This time, however, driver Javier Vergara may have been guilty of no more than a little excess speed. It’s a long way from the city centre and this is the last run, - everyone wants to get home, but most of them never will.

Among Vergara’s passengers, his own two small children are on the initial count of 23 that were left dead by the horrifying frontal collision with the lorry.

La Prensa, arguably the most reputable local daily, says the following about the rescue labours on its online version: “the works to separate the vehicles have taken several hours. In fact, members of the Panama City fire brigade and the support personnel who attended the spot concluded separation of the vehicles around 4:00 o’clock.” These volunteers later described the scenes they witnessed as “heart rendering”.

(Elizabeth Garrido A. from prensa.com) (http://mensual.prensa.com/mensual/contenido/2009/08/14/uhora/local_2009081406373640.aspegarrido@prensa.com)

Around 6:00, TVN, another local television channel, broadcasted a brief rendition of what happened by one of the survivors, by the name of Manuel: “It was all very sudden, a matter of seconds”. “The lorry crashed onto us and we were going round and round”. He sat at the rear end of the bus, thus escaping with only mild lesions. In very few words, he explained how a small child escaped his grasp, while her mother begged him to save her life. “I was very sorry that I could do nothing for her”.

The lorry driver, one Carlos Huertas, also died. However, before hitting the bus, he had already collected a victim; by provoking a collision with the 4x4 vehicle he was so desperately trying to overtake. It rolled over and one of the occupants was killed.

Early on the scene was newly elected President Ricardo Martinelli. My wife tells me there were tears in his eyes when Telemetro reporters interviewed him. Maybe they were an expression of sheer emotion, thus embodying to perfection his role as the representative of all Panamanians. There’s no doubt this is a nation overtaken with grief, frustration, and contained rage. Even if this time it was not the fault of the bus driver or owner, it’s hard for most Panamanians to maintain a neutral stance when the last transportation strike was only 2 days ago, offering images of capital city denizens walking the streets with dejected countenances, standing in anarchic crowds at bus stops waiting for whatever improvised public transportation they might cram into. Barely 15 days have passed since the last bus accident, which killed 3. And even if collective memory seems to be even shorter in the tropics, there were numerous references to 23 October 2006 - 18 people burned alive inside a bus – not a red devil, but a “modern” bus sporting a malfunctioning air conditioning which seems to have caused the fire.

These images may have crossed the President’s mind while he watched the rescue works. He may have recalled his Presidency Minister’s words of 4 days ago, when, referring to the thug of war between the government and CANATRA, the National Chamber of Transport, he recalled the “victims of the Panamanian public transportation system” and asked for firmness. Or he might have remembered, very vividly, that it was in this proletarian neighbourhood, Las Garzas de Pacora, that only ever so recently he held his first privy council, in direct opposition to established protocol, which appoints the presidential Palace of Herons (Garzas) for the occasion. One of his most rotund campaign promises - that may have been instrumental to his victory - was to reformulate the collective transportation system and, more specifically the promising of a monorail system.

04:36, 17 August 2009 (UTC)04:36, 17 August 2009 (UTC)04:36, 17 August 2009 (UTC)04:36, 17 August 2009 (UTC)04:36, 17 August 2009 (UTC)04:36, 17 August 2009 (UTC)Thamus (talk) 04:36, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

In my mind, the image is of a map of the city hung on a wall of an air-conditioned office on trendy Calle (street) 50, within the limits of the banking area, housing a Japanese consultancy firm. It is way too cold for my skinny bones frame, but the British gentleman that sits across the table doesn’t seem to notice. Of a more sanguine constitution, he looks rather comfortable with himself and the world around him. My presence in that office has to do with a completely different project, (the cleanup of Panama Bay) but my attention is irresistibly drawn to the map on the wall, even as we perform the rites whereby two strangers get acquainted. He is on his way back to Singapore, where he has had his abode for quite sometime, and he is a specialist in some arcane matter essential to the planning of collective urban transport.

So for the next half hour I got, through mere accident, the privilege of having Panama City’s projected monorail system for public transportation explained to me by one of the few individuals who knew all about it. Now, this must have been sometime between the beginning and the middle of 2007. It may be that the unbelievable rate at which construction work of all sorts was sprouting everywhere in and around the city, much of it government mandated, influenced my judgement, but I confess I became convinced that this time it was the beginning of the end for red devils. I was wrong, of course. President Torrijos, then in power, would never implement the system. He later came up with a plan for a massive substitution of red devils for a fleet of “new” buses, but that idea seems to have met some sort of silent opposition, for it never materialized either.

04:36, 17 August 2009 (UTC)04:36, 17 August 2009 (UTC)04:36, 17 August 2009 (UTC)04:36, 17 August 2009 (UTC)04:36, 17 August 2009 (UTC)04:36, 17 August 2009 (UTC)Thamus (talk) 04:36, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

On the newspaper archive of Simón Bolivar library at the University of Panama there rests, rarely disturbed by curiosity, a charming, richly illustrated article occupying the cover and central pages of the June 26, 1954 issue of “Siete” magazine. In nostalgic overtones, the author deplores the imminent demise of the popular “chivas”, which are by then almost completely displaced by Red Devils, in a blind process of natural selection. The new conquerors, however, as is usual in similar cases, absorbed from the “chivas” many of the characteristics that rendered them dear to our writer, thus perpetuating what he considers to be, almost explicitly, a fascinating manifestation of urban folklore. Those characteristics range far beyond the garish, but fascinating decorations and the loud music to include a palette of behaviours that together form a living portrait of the collective imaginary.

Earlier in this article there’s a mention of school buses being “adapted” to serve on the Panamanian transportation “system”, whereby they beget their patronymic of Red Devils. I guess there is a system, but more in the organic, spontaneous sense of the word, just as creepers may form a complex system of highways for ants in a fully grown rainforest. A comparison more apt when you think of Panama as city growing at a grotesquely accelerated rate and almost entirely innocent of urban planning. There never was a government controlled public transportation company or any massive monopolies to do any planning, at least not in the sense a European or a US citizen would use the word. Theoretically, any private individual with the means and the inclination may acquire a bus, or several, and apply for an exploitation licence called a “cupo”. These small and micro impresarios then compete on the streets for the passenger fares.

This wild competition explains, in part, the mad driving they are prone to and is also, in part, what motivates them to spend several thousand dollars on the decoration of the bus. One would think that school busses would be adapted with passenger comfort and speedy flow in mind (load/unload). But, this being Panama, appearances take precedence in the value scale over efficiency. The original seats, designed for school kids, and the space between them, are never altered. Same goes to the school bus rule that the back door is to remain closed except for emergencies, so gruesomely illustrated last night. This means passengers sitting, or standing near the rear of the bus will need to make liberal use of elbows and swear words mingled with “!disculpe! on their way to the front door. And if they manage to get near there while still at their stop, that will only be because the driver is waiting for the crowd trying to get in… you see the picture. Contrary to popular belief, most engines are properly inspected and serviced, for it would be a crass economy error not to, besides being totally against macho pride. Exceptions do occur though. I remember one white Red Devil that had smoked glass windows and a wickedly cold air conditioning, catering for the perennial Panamanian love of cold temperatures. But strangely enough that concept didn’t prosper, and that one bus remained an exception. The highest priority is given to the decoration instead, producing spectacular, colourful vehicles that American students certainly would have liked to go to school in. The paintings most resemble a page from a graphic novel, and themes may vary from the religious to the almost obscene. The bus back door is usually adorned with a portrait, and among those featured I have seen the owner’s child, Speedy Gonzalez , Osama Bin Laden, Vim Diesel, Pancho Villa, Jesus… but the whole carcass is usually covered in pictures, sayings of all sorts, picturesque names of women (one for each window) - presumably the driver’s girlfriends … a detailed description and explanation of one would take several pages. The bus involved in the accident last night was entirely covered in paid advertising for a popular supermarket instead, showing that economic concerns can be a higher motivation than the expression of the owner’s personality or preferences, the second motivation behind the decorations. Collectively, these buses have become an unofficial icon of the country. They have inspired miniature makers, postcard designers, conceptual artists, fashion designers, decorators, photographers, and they have served as the leitmotiv for at least one art contest, several documentaries, and a zillion small and huge controversies, each generating it’s own torrent of newspaper articles. The largest was probably the one in 2001, when under newly elected President Mireya Moscoso the capital was the scenery of a fiery riot before the fare could be raised to 25 cents. Thamus (talk) 04:36, 17 August 2009 (UTC)