Superbarrio: Panama

sb4>Photo essay originally published online at Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at New York University
PREMONITORY PRECEDENTS
Manifest Destiny and El Tamal’s Counter-Attack (or the future weapons of mass destruction?)
George Bush senior, in his war against drugs (chemical substances that would cross north of the border and sustain the cocaine addiction of the upper class right?) invaded Panama. The evidence: Mexican tamales found at Noriega’s freezer. ACORDING TO AN INTERNATIONAL NEWS AGENCY, THE PENTAGON INFORMED THAT THEY HAD SPENT ONE MONTH DOING DETAIL LABORATORY TESTS OF THE SUBSTANCES WITHIN THOSE BANANA LEAVES.
In an emergency response, alarmed that Mexico would be the next target, and given the fact that Noriega’s tamales were of Mexican origin, Superbarrio and the Asamblea organized a tamalada, an action against US intervention in Mexico. Why wouldn’t Mexico be invaded (again) when it is the country with the largest, uncontrolled, unmonitored, domestic and regional production of green, red, sweet and fruit tamales? (photo of tamales should have a text saying: “this is a dramatization”). Marco Rascón, then one of the Asamblea’s leader, inaugurated the event:
“Today, one month after the US invasion of Panama, the killing of thousands of people, the violation of all international laws, and a proved prepotency, the Empire’s judges lack legal evidence to sentence Noriega because what they had found in Noriega’s house [refrigerator] was not cocaine but tamales.”
Luckily for Mexico, tamales were still prepared with national, un-chemically altered corn; after NAFTA, and the US hyper-processed corn invasion of Mexico, tamales have become chemical weapons of mass market destruction!