Afro-Latin@ Project - In Celebration of Afro-Panamanian Women

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In Celebration of Afro-Panamanian Women

Panama Vote 2004 (Successor of Ad Hoc Group) pays tribute to Afro-Panamanian Women and raises thousands in support of Martin Torrijos, March 2004.

Luntey Commons, Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus

George Priestley Speech

On behalf of Panama Vote 2004 I thank you and congratulate you for joining us in celebrating International Women Month and particularly in celebrating all Afro-Panamanian women. It is indeed a pleasure to be with you tonight to pay tribute and honor to our women folk, the pillars and foundations upon which we build, grow and thrive as individuals, and as a community.

I know that you would agree that the least that we can do to recognize the centrality of the role of Afro-Panamanian women in all of our lives is to acknowledge and celebrate their contributions in and outside of the homes: in private spaces and public places. In honor of these heroic women - our great-grandmothers, grandmothers, mothers, sisters, wives, girlfriends - a heartfelt toast of recognition and gratitude (lift all glasses in toast).

On the other hand, you also know that we are here to culminate our fund raising drive in support of the presidential candidacy of Martin Torrijos Espino of the Revolutionary Democratic Party and the Popular Party of Panama. Over the past several months the Coordinating Committee of Panama Vote 2004 has worked tirelessly in and out of the extreme cold weather to mobilize your support for his candidacy. The Committee members have held several coffee clutches at the Aries Lounge, the Michelle Lounge, Vulcan Hall on Eastern Pkway, Chez Dosita Bryan's, and at the home of Gregorio and Onida Mayers. At this moment I would like to introduce to you these trailblazers: Dosita Bryan, Melinda Del Rosario, Roberto Drummond, Silvia Fisher, Cynthia Brown Franklin, Carola Gittens, Josefina Johnson, Leonardo Johnson, Tito Johnson, Selwyn King, Winston Lawson, Byron Lee, Paul Martin, Humberto Williams and our legal consultant, Gregorio Mayers.

Some of you may still be asking why did the members of Panama Vote 2004 go to so much trouble to organize in support of the candidacy of Martin Torrijos Espino? This is a legitimate question, and I hope to shed some light on it. On November 4th, 2003 over 200 Afro-Panamanian state- side residents met and conversed with Martin Torrijos, who a year earlier had reached out to a few of our members, including myself. After that initial contact and during the months of September and October 2003, an Ad Hoc New York based group was formed and later elaborated a nine page document containing 16 demands which served as the basis of the conversation with Torrijos on November, 4th, 2003. Panama Vote 2004 has that document, we urge you to obtain and read it. But in short, please allow me to give two reasons why we support the presidential candidacy of Martin Torrijos Espino: 1.We want to exercise our rights as legitimate Panamanians by securing the Absentee Ballot or El Voto en el Exterior, and he has promised to deliver on this demand. 2.We want to effectively influence the economic, political and cultural development of Panama, our country which seems to have lost its way, and he has agreed to set up a High Level Commission, with representatives from our group, to deal with this demand.

Furthermore, we have worked untiringly to mobilize your support because we want to build on the anti-discriminatory and anti-racist campaigns started generations ago by Afro-Panamanians of the National Civic League, under the leadership of George Washington Westerman, noted anti-racist activist, scholar, journalist and diplomat.

We also turn to you for your support because we want to sustain the work being done by the Coordinating Committee of the Ethnic Awareness Day (Dia de la Etnia Negra) and the Foro Afro-Panameno which on 27 of November 2003 presented a 17 point Afro-Panamanian agenda to all of the presidential candidates, minus one that failed to show. We specifically want to show support for the legislative bill to be submitted shortly to Panama's National Legislature by the Foro Afro Panameno, a law when approved that would outlaw requirements that applicants submit a photo with job applications, an insidious and so far effective way of denying employment opportunities to blacks, browns an women over 35 years of age.

Our support for the candidacy of Martin Torrijos is therefore only one of many vehicles through which our demands are being sought. We believe that it is our historical obligation to carry on what our forefathers began. We must come together as a political force to push for those things that we care for here in the United States and in Panama. By organizing to vote on 2 May and by donating to Martin Torrijos’ campaign, and by collaborating with our counterparts in the Republic of Panama, we strengthen our demands, empower our community, and position ourselves to influence the political agenda in Panama. It is my contention that this is a step in the right direction. Now to conclude let me read to you a letter that Martin Torrijos sent to Panama Vote 2004 and to all of you present in which he supports some of those demands and aspirations.

(See Martin Torrijos letter)

In this letter, Martin Torrijos calls on all Panamanians to construct a Patria Nueva or New Motherland. We embrace that concept as long as it is constructed to recognize the existence of a needy but cultural and politically vibrant Afro-Panamanian community there and here; as long as it is constructed to include the demands raised by the Ad Hoc Group on 4 November and the Foro Afro Panameno on 27 November 2003, demands that we firmly stand by.

Finally, it is our position also that as a redemptive concept Patria Nueva should be constructed in such a way that it rejects all of the racist discourse and discriminatory practices of the present —particularly those committed against our fellow indigenous and black populations in Panama, and principally against Afro-Panamanian women. Patria Nueva as a redemptive concept should also confront and condemn past racist practices against indigenous groups and Afro-Panamanians, chiefly those whose Panamanian citizenship were summarily, illegally and immorally taken away from them in the early 1940s. To conclude, we support the building of a Patria Nueva or New Motherland as longs as it does not obliterate our historical experience but rather draw on that experience of exclusion to build a nation of true inclusion.

In closing Panama Vote 2004 offers its sincerest congratulations to Panama’s National Assembly for its recent approval of Chinese Ethnic Awareness Day to be celebrated for the first time on March 30th 2004. (Viva el Dia de la Etnia China Panamena).

Lastly Panama Vote 2004 offers a special thanks to all of you in attendance, to all donors and contributors, including our caterers Melida Yearwood and Alfredo Greaves. It goes without saying that without the trust, the commitment and generous offerings and cooperation of each and every one of you, Panama Vote 2004 could not have done it. Once again, thanks and may this be the beginning of a new political day for all of us. Have a wonderful time.