London, 01.19.2013 – My distrust of Wikipedia is well known: essentially, I don’t trust encyclopedias edited by individuals whose references and academic credentials no one verifies. That said, I will quote a fact that I know to be true:
Federico Boyd (Panama, Republic of New Granada, September 24, 1851 – May 25, 1924) was a Panamanian politician and the fourth president of the Republic of Panama.
He dedicated himself to business and made a fortune. He ventured into politics, known as a patriotic lawyer who fought for his homeland despite the consequences it brought…
This gentleman was my paternal great-grandfather and played a significant leadership role in the independence of Panama and the isthmus, along with subsequent negotiations of Philippe Bunau-Varilla with the government of Theodore Roosevelt for the construction of the Panama Canal. From family stories, I know that Federico Boyd was quite uncompromising regarding the defense of Panamanian sovereignty. His son, Julio Enrique Boyd, was also involved in Panamanian politics during the time of Arnulfo Arias. My father, as far as I know, was never involved in politics, neither in Panama, where he was born, nor in Venezuela, where he passed away.
However, I listened to discussions about independence and the need to maintain and defend sovereignty at home from a young age. This reflects personal independence, critical thinking, and collective freedom. The right to decide on matters of one’s own jurisdiction belongs solely to the individual. Both from my paternal and maternal sides (my grandfather was a gudari who fought for the right to self-determination and Basque culture against the Franco regime), this perspective was a constant that I take pride in maintaining.
What motivates me to write all this today is the embarrassing attitude of the current president of Panama, Ricardo Martinelli. Mr. Martinelli, who falls far short of being respectful of freedom of expression, took an attitude regarding the intervention of Panama’s Ambassador Willy Cochez in the OAS that can only be described as submissive. I can confidently assert that my Panamanian ancestors did not fight for the independence and sovereignty of Panama, so that a cowardly leader could come to power, making decisions dictated by the fear of communist dictators from Cuba, and the unpatriotic lawyers from Venezuela supporting them, to the detriment of our nation.
What Ambassador Cochez stated in the OAS about the chavista regime is merely a reiteration of equally true past interventions. Venezuela is not a democracy; it is a Cuban protectorate. How can a country under a dictatorship call itself a democracy? How can a government operated from a foreign capital claim to be independent or sovereign? It is, we must emphasize, a shameful state of affairs. Historians will hardly find a better example of the abject cession of a country’s sovereignty, like that carried out in Venezuela by the coup leader Hugo Chavez to his communist idols from Cuba.
The entry OAS: criminal club was first published on El Faro del Morro.