As you may or may not be aware, the 7th Summit of the Americas is taking place in Panamá this week. It’s very very exciting for all of us down here. The Cinta Costera (the road in front of our building that all you regular readers, ie. Mom, know about) will be completely closed. Actually most of the major roads in the city will be completely shut down. All government workers are off tomorrow, and most private businesses are closed too because people simply can’t get to work.
Last night, my friend Jessie from capoeira, the one from DC who was featured a few weeks ago flying through the air during the presentation, was driving home to Casco Viejo and was stopped by the police. She explained that she lived there and had to get home, but then she saw several guys in suits walking…with Bill Clinton! She sent the cutest voice message to the CDO (capoeira) group via WhatsApp and was so excited! Big names in politics from all over the western hemisphere are in what’s becoming my city, and I’m excited.
As a side note, there’s a joke within CDO about this seedy strip club called La Mayor. I think a few of the guys have been there, but most just joke about it because it’s really really shady. But someone sent a photo of what was supposed to be Obama’s car in front of La Mayor yesterday. After the Bill Clinton sighting, it was decided that it was most likely the former president that was there, rather than the current.
Even more tangentially, people down here evidently refer to Obama’s car as “La Bestia,” or The Beast. Have you ever heard of such a thing? They also call it Cadillac 1. I can see that one more than the others, but not since they changed over to giant SUVs. There are also rumors going around that they carry around in the car a bag of Obama’s type of blood, just in case. Not completely far-fetched, but it’s a rumor I had never heard. How often would you have to get a new batch? Interesting stuff. What is everything security related and presidentially related so cool?!
Anyway, if you are not following the Cumbre, the Summit, I can’t really in good faith urge you to do so because if I were there I wouldn’t care too much, honestly. But from here, it’s going to be really interesting. I even fired up the old Twitter account that hasn’t seen any action in probably a year so I could see which president is arriving when and who is talking to who about what. As you’ve likely heard, one of the major things is that Obama will be “interacting” with Raúl Castro this week. I love the quotes that have come out of that whole deal. A deputy national security advisor has been quoted all over the place saying “I’m sure President Obama will be interacting with President Castro at the summit events.” Thanks, guy. That’s really informative.
There have already been some protests here, and that has really upset the Panamanians. Some Cubans stopped traffic yesterday – like this city really needs more traffic problems – in some kind of protest, and my friend Lourdes went off saying how rude it was to do that when they had invited these people into her country and were hosting them in an effort to work on international relations, etc.
All this to say, I’m really excited to be here during all of this. I don’t expect to pass Obama in the street or anything, but we did see an aircraft carrier out our window yesterday! Turns out, from Eric’s googling, that it is a Brazilian carrier. Not sure what it’s doing. I was also surprised to hear that the US has only 10 carriers, with two others that are in reserve, and the countries with the next largest number of carriers have only 2. Italy and India. Here’s a link if you’re interested.
So, that’s my attempt at politically-minded writing. I hope you didn’t miss it, cause it don’t happen often. 🙂 And you’ll notice that it didn’t actually involve me writing about the issues, but rather writing about people who will be talking about the issues. That’s about as good as it gets.
