PANAMA-CULTURE: Saving a Chunk of History

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Silvio Hernandez

PANAMA CITY, Sep 15 1998 (IPS) - Founded in 1519, six years after Spanish sailors became the first Europeans to see the Pacific Ocean, Panama City became the pride of the Americas in the 16th and 17th century.

As the first Spanish fortified town on the Pacific coast, Panama City also was the location from which an expedition led by Francisco Pizarro sailed off to conquer what is now Peru and from where the first mission set out to spread Catholicism in South America.

The city’s days of glory ended in 1671, when it was invaded and torched by English pirate Henry Morgan. Now, more than three centuries later, three foundations are working to restore and reorganise the museums and ruins here in a bid to save a chunk of Panamanian history from oblivion.

One foundation that specialises in architectural studies is devoting itself to rebuilding Panama la Vieja or ‘Old Panama’ – as the original city is called to distinguish it from the new one built to replace it.

The Foundation for the Restoration of Panama la Vieja – the oldest of the groups working to preserve museums and historic monuments in the country – intends to rebuild the old city in the style it had before Morgan destroyed it. It also hopes to have Panama la Vieja declared a national monument by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), according to Foundation president Alberto Vallerino.

A second foundation founded the Panama Canal Museum, inaugurated in September 1997, while a third has begun to reconstruct the Queen Torres of Arauz Museum of Anthropology, also known as the Panamanian People’s Museum, the largest and most respected one in the country.

The foundations are financed with donations from businesses, individuals, the state and international organizations.

Ana Elena Porras, in charge of the reconstruction of the Panamanian People’s Museum, explains that the foundation system makes it possible to “de-centralize and de-bureaucratize state institutions, thus allowing funds to be administered after the manner of a private company.”

“The philosophy behind the foundation … is mixed in that it uses private administration techniques while conserving the mystique of the public servant that works for the welfare of the country and not for self-aggrandisement,” explains Porras, an anthropologist who headed the state-backed National Institute of Culture (INAC) in 1996-1997.

Those working to restore the Museum of Anthropology hope to salvage a collection of pre-Colombian pieces that were exhibited in the museum before the building was abandoned due to structural and architectural damage.

The collection of pre-Colombian pieces, on exhibition until 1990 when the museum was closed, is stored in poor conditions in a room in the building where the walls are cracked and the ceiling is about to collapse, says Porras.

The impressive structure, built in the neo-classical style, was inaugurated in 1913 as a central inter-oceanic railway station and used in a variety of ways throughout its long history until 1970, when the nationalist government of the late Omar Torrijos had it converted into a museum.

Porras notes that the first phase of the project has been completed following the establishment of the foundation that will direct the restoration process and later manage the museum. In the second stage of the project, the group will focus on doing reconstruction on the building “so that it can recover its former beauty.”

Rebuilding the museum’s facade alone will cost close to two million dollars: the work will be financed from a 900-million- dollar special fund that Panama’s government set up with the proceeds from the sale of public companies, she says.

Porras expects the third phase of the project – the opening of the first exhibition of pre-Colombian art since the museum was closed – to start in March 1999 if the restoration of the museum is not delayed unexpectedly.