Panama: between Comala and Macondo?

Comala is a “living hell”. It is a hell beyond the beyond, in space and time. It can be said that Juan Rulfo represents his dystopia (Comala) in a state of decay that ends in dust, in nothingness, in death.

The novel tells how the protagonist, Juan Preciado, goes in search of his father, Pedro Páramo, to the Mexican town of Comala, an empty, mysterious, lifeless place. There, the young man will discover that all the people in the town are called Páramo, that many of them are his own brothers, and that Pedro Páramo is dead.[¿Lo mataron los políticos?]. Corruption rules because of dark family alliances, everyone is family there and nepotism rules people… that’s ethe great hell, the “banana republic of the nouveau riche from the ghetto”.

The overlap of Panama, could mean that Juan Preciado is a foreign investor, looking for an honest and transparent investment (“a copper mine?” for example) and suddenly discovers that the entire isthmus has corroded because all part of the same corrupt clan. So eat [Panamá]without electricity, without water, without hospitals, with a power outage, without medicine and with a huge debt, a very warm and humid summer night disappears…

In his article on Rulfo García Márquez expresses that “an in-depth examination of the works of Juan Rulfo [le] finally given the path I was looking for to pursue [sus] books.” “They are not more than 300 pages long, but they are almost as long and I think they are as durable as the ones we know from Sophocles,” said the Nobel laureate.

In April 1971, returning to Paris from Bogotá, we could read in the Bogotá newspaper, the chronicle of García Márquez, who recited a Decalogue litany of literary virtues about Juan Rulfo, among which he said: ‘Pedro Páramo is the most beautiful novel I know. “First, I am a political man”: but I know that Juan Rulfo wrote only one novel, only one novel, the most beautiful novel that any author has ever written.

At that moment 53 years ago, we felt happy because for our high school graduation thesis, our professor MArcos Proaño Maya (Quito, 1968) gave us a choice between Pedro Páram and The City and the Dogs. We replied to our respected professor-writer: “We lived in the City and the Dogs of South America“We prefer to do our high school work with Pedro Páramo de los Mayas, where we come from geographically,” he smiled exaltedly and, batting his eyelashes with overwhelming emotion, recommended: “begin your graduation report with these words.” And when the jury day came, our highly decorated teacher commented on this episode between the two of us, pointing it out to the jury, who ended up giving us an excellent grade. That is why we respect Juan Rulfo and believe that they are not wrong. It is a work that hardened our neurons from the earliest age and marked us in life.

Juan Rulfo published Pedro Páramo in March 1955 under the seal of the Fund for Economic Culture. Novel It tells of two main plot lines, each with its own protagonist: the lineage and fate of Juan Preciado and his father, Pedro Páram, closely linked to the fate of the other characters.

For its part, One Hundred Years of Solitude is considered a masterpiece of Latin American and universal literature, it is one of the most translated and read works in Spanish. The novel was written by Gabriel García Márquez during eighteen months, between 1965 and 1966, in Mexico City, and was published for the first time in mid-1967 in Buenos Aires. Proaño showed it to us the same year with Pedro Páram. The words still ring in our ears the mystique of Juan Preciado, Pedro Paramo, the moon is brave, Aureliano Buendíaetc… And all these characters are part of the absurdity of life.

So we know that Márquez wrote his work in the country of Rulfo, another work like Comala ten years later. In the work of Márquez, Macondo is special and perhaps it may mean that it is the same way, and apparently the origin of the word in the countries Americans, it would be a phytonym of Bantu origin for banana and/or plantain.

Macondo would therefore come from makonda, which is the plural of likonda, a word used for the prenominate fruit in an ancient Central African language and which literally means ‘devil’s food’, perhaps because of its slender shape and rough harvest, with which the white man created a slave.

In short, “Republic of Makonda”. The copper mine is a classic example of a “Banana Republic” in the 21st century, run by monkeys, as Milei recently pointed out in Argentina. [¿Latinoamérica es una región de simios?] said the Libertarian. A topic to develop later.

Another example of Panama being in the in-between area Comala and Makonde, is Resolution # MIPRE-2024-1384 dated 1-15-24, where is the ministry Chairmanship through the National Secretariat for Energy, decides to recommend to ETESA (under the auspices of the representatives for negotiations 2024/29) the preparation and presentation to ASEP of the necessary documents for the implementation of the public tender for contracting electricity and energy to meet the demand of the electricity market throughout the country. That is why representatives should not be re-elected as presidents for ten years or more, or even ever again.

Everything must be finished in a month and approved before July 2024, when the mandate of this government expires according to the constitutional law. We have never seen that an award of this serious type can be
given in the middle of the election process, which will open with the completion of this job. Comala or Makonde again?especially at a time of widespread unrest around the world.
The Minister of the Presidency who postponed this tender is the PRD2024 presidential candidate (currently), and the National Secretary for Energy who worked together with this former presidential candidate is the minister today the new Minister of Trade and Industry? The one to solve the mine thing? This country is a general joke.

Interestingly, they clarify that it is takes place in the Palace, in the last days of Pompeii…. A foreign investor told us! “Because we will settle in Costa Rica, the Catalan-Colombian told us.”

With this dysfunctional or (“monkey-like”) attitude, Juan Preciados will not come to Comala, because times have changed and it is no longer possible to live like in “Makonde” during the viceroyalty. Are the parties of this Makonde government obsolete and its politicians and existing social castes on the brink?

On Friday 2-2-24, the Supreme Court of Justice of Panama with a fateful decision Given the above conditions, he decided to condemn the former president a few weeks before the election tournament.
All these shocks (“ADHD” of the Panamanian state) prove to us that we live in a disturbed society due to the 5 castes of the Panamanian society: legislative and environmental, Judicial, executive, electoral and press, radio and TV in general.

We are approaching Comala and Macondo in the 21st century. Will we return as desperate crabs?