https://www-laestrella-com-pa.translate.goog/nacional/220926/libros-instituto-terminaron-vertedero?_x_tr_sl=es&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc

El Señor Presidente , the novel by the Guatemalan Nobel Prize winner for Literature (1967), Miguel Ángel Asturias, published in 1946. El Canal Barato by Federico Tuñón. 467 Lotería magazines serialized from 1941 to 2012. Common birthplace of Rogelio Sinán, from 1963. Nalu Nega , by the late Panamanian author Alfredo Cantón. Conversation in the Cathedral , third novel by the author Mario Vargas Llosa published in 1969. These works were part of the list of books, or at least the latest inventory, from the Eusebio A. Morales library of the National Institute that ended up in the dump on Cerro Patacón in an inexplicable action by officials of the Ministry of Education (Meduca).

On Saturday, November 2, 2019, when Panamanians commemorated All Souls’ Day and the new government was preparing to celebrate its first national holidays, several Meduca officials, guided by Raquel Rodríguez, advisor to the entity’s superior office, arrived to Nido de Águilas to comply with a specific order: to carry out a day of cleaning and disinfection (fumigation) in the library to contain the dust caused by the mites and the larvae of the moths that produce tunnels in the paper.

That day they arrived punctually, at eight in the morning, the lawyer Jacob Atencio of Heritage Assets, manual workers from the school, the rector Rosana Casanova, the library assistant, Milissen Carrera and staff from the Foundation for Social Welfare (Fubis).

Nobody imagined that almost three years later this matter would become a media event. At least for a few days – as scandals in Panama tend to attract attention – the name of the library that is located in the historic building of the National Institute. resonated on the radio, newspapers and television.

The disinfection was preceded by a week of protests (October 21 to 25) by teachers who denounced imperfections in the school, including the library area. At that time, the request was attended by a high-level Meduca delegation made up of Mr. Rodríguez and Mr. Antonio Farrugia as a representative of Patrimonial Assets to inspect the state of the campus and the books.

On October 31, Rodríguez informed the library assistant that he had to appear the following Saturday morning, November 2, All Souls’ Day, to collect the books and proceed with the fumigation.

During the day, the staff concentrated on removing the books that were defective due to mites and discontinued, which were later transported by the Patrimonial Assets staff, but without saying where.

What seemed like a mystery in the Meduca, had an answer in Patacón hill. “Those that were flooded waste were taken to the Patacón landfill, they were full of bacteria and mites,” revealed the Editorial Supervisor of the Superior Meduca Office, Santos Bonilla, in an interview with La Estrella de Panamá in which he insisted on the fate of the books.

The Meduca maintains two inventories of the library’s bibliography. One that details the titles of the works and the number of copies that totals 9,059 works in which there are books (2,604), brochures, dictionaries, yearbooks, novels, poetry, encyclopedias and special collections.

In the other of 2017, the gaps that classify the works predominate, a total of 6,455 texts that are broken down as follows: novels 1143; magazines 1936 and 3376 that groups dictionaries, brochures, loose leaves and poetry. In one of the boxes it is specified that “for 2019 there was no inventory because they were so deteriorated.”

Only eight medium-sized boxes remain from this extensive inventory, stacked on a table in the center of the now-empty library room used by students to study or read. The boxes contain yearbooks and charts. The entire library is still empty. At the bottom of the wall there are three wooden pieces of glass with a collection of huacas.

In the adjoining room, there are three French-style windows through which rainwater is usually filtered, preceded by unoccupied metal shelves lined up one next to the other. The water leaks not only left their mark on the wall, they also rusted the books until much of them were unrecognizable.

From the day of the cleanup, until the promoter of culture Ileana Golcher raised her voice about the disappearance of the books, three years passed, including a pandemic.

It was a Thursday in the month of March 2022, she has it marked on her calendar, because that day, motivated by an essay on education that she was writing, she went to the school to look for some sources from the beginning of the century that she could only find there or in the National Library. Her surprise from her was “capital”. On the back wall of the library there was only the portrait of Eusebio A. Morales.

When he went to the library the door was open, but with empty shelves. Nobody – neither the rector of the National Institute, nor the educational authorities – gave him an explanation for the loss of the books. Golcher was not willing to sit idly by, she wanted an answer.

Faced with the silence of the Department of Patrimonial Assets, after requesting information covered by the Transparency Law, Golcher filed a habeas data appeal with the Supreme Court of Justice (SCJ), which triggered a meeting with the Minister of Education, Maruja Gorday, and other officials. In said appointment, Golcher continued narrating, the office adviser, Raquel Rodríguez, explained that the “transfer of the books was coordinated directly by her, but without saying where.”

Three months after Golcher demanded a response, the Minister of Education spoke about the case in the media and the issue became belligerent. She stated at a press conference that the yearbooks and historical books “were” there, that is, they had been recovered, unlike the 98% of the texts that were deteriorated and had been discarded.

This made it clear that almost the entire inventory, which included 467 copies of Lotería magazine and historical texts from the early 20th century, was thrown away. The only thing that could somehow be replaced is the Lottery magazine collection, an entity with which Meduca has made approaches to replace the collection that translates into a million pages that will be printed again.

Although the National Institute replaces the magazines, for Golcher the damage is irreparable because many of the editions had been donated by former students of the school since its foundation in 1911 and that symbolic value is “irrecoverable.”

“What is valuable and irretrievable is that these are collections donated by ex-instituters since its foundation” in 1911, says Golcher indignantly.

One of them is former president Aristides Royo (1978-1982) who is part of that group of graduates and library donors. The list delivered by the current minister of the Canal is made up of the laws from 1904, a year after the beginning of the Republic, until 1964, the year of the January 9 deed led by the institutes as part of the national struggle for the recovery of the interoceanic route. Royo said that he completed the donation with a collection of books from different countries of the American hemisphere.

However, these texts, as well as thousands -which may not have accumulated that historical value-, are part of the abandonment in which the place was left. It is not only the structure, “or the sample of the ruin in which the library has fallen, regardless of which copy was damaged,” exclaimed Guillermo Quintero, president of the Fundación Pro Instituto. “It is a subject that is also permeated in education,” he said indignantly.

It is impossible for the ex-institute to separate the carelessness of the books with the “proper meaning of education.” I have compared the training I have received to what new institutes experience. He recalled that in his time he taught him stimulated critical thinking, intellectuality. It was the first college of higher education in the country from which men and women have graduated who have contributed to the development of the country who at the time participated in the patriotic deed of the recovery of the Panama Canal in 1964.

Later, in 1971, the five buildings that make it up were declared Cultural Patrimony of the Nation. Its structure, guarded by two sphinxes, is an architectural jewel that has stood the test of time and the indifferent gaze of various government administrations.

During the visit made by ‘The Dean’ to the campus, he confirmed that the vast majority of students between sixth and ninth grade said they had not set foot on the site, they had not even read a book there. Only Heidi Márquez, a student who loves reading in the ninth year, answered that she did.

“I used to come every Friday,” he exclaimed from the stairs that lead to the library. “There were interesting books. I read Moby-Dick , The Fifth Avenue Penthouse, and other books,” she says puzzled. There were also other classics such as: The Little Prince (11); Uncle Tom’s Cabin ( 9), One Hundred Years of Solitude (4), Pedro Páramo (5), The Girl from Guatemala (9) and hundreds of other novels.

Quintero is referring to this transcendental leap.

In the Meduca amphitheater, Santos Bonilla offered the version of the institution supported by an extensive volume, which is part of the internal audit of the entity, documented with photographs in which several people are observed carrying black bags towards the exit. of the campus.

The receipts from the Cleansing Authority are also observed as proof of the reception of “waste”, at the time the material was deposited in the landfill. “In the inventory there are no historical books, what is not written does not exist,” Bonilla defended. Next, he questioned: “Who knows that they were historical books?”

The loss of the books from the library of the National Institute also had an echo in the Administration Attorney’s Office. Prosecutor Rigoberto González requested a report from Meduca as part of an administrative investigation that was archived, but a copy was sent to the Public Ministry and the Comptroller General’s Office.

Quintero and Golcher agree that books are part of the country’s heritage assets. This condition requires that the discernment be carried out under a discard process endorsed by a competent authority, even though the books have been donated.

But Santos insisted that the discard was unnecessary, since the material was not plated. “The waste that was removed was totally damaged, it was taken to the area where it had to go, to Patacón,” he stressed. He described that the damaged state of the books, moldy, wet, and moth-eaten, made it impossible to even determine what type of article it was. Which gives an idea that it is not known for sure what went into the trash.

This is what Quintero refers to when he speaks of a “deeper issue” that he summarizes in the quality of education, the appreciation for history and culture, which is reflected in the teaching of yesterday and today.

What happened?

That Day of the Dead, the director of the Institute, Rosana Casanova, opened the campus door to give way to the staff who would be in charge of cleaning. People went up to the first floor of building number two while she decided to stay in the gym. As a result of the teachers’ protests, Meduca had opened a process against her and disqualified her from her duties as director.

Although she was separated, she was there that day and witnessed the events. “I saw that the prisoners were throwing the books out the window.”

For the transportation of more than nine thousand books, the Meduca was supported by personnel from the Foundation for Social Welfare (Fubis). A non-profit organization in which people deprived of liberty collaborate in social projects in schools.

“As there were so many books, they began to throw them out the window to make it easier and not have to go down the stairs,” he said. He said that the Patrimonial Assets staff was in the library, which would give them the power to know “how to handle that.”

Realizing what was happening, he went up to the library a couple of times.

“I asked the girl who was in the truck, the director of Patrimonial Assets, why they were taking the books if they were supposedly coming to do a cleaning. She answered me: superior order”.

Golcher added, as part of what happened that day, that the library manager told him at a previous meeting that “they started burning the books.”

But someone unidentified from the group warned that this could cause alarm and fear in the Santa Ana neighborhood, because it could be thought that the institute was burning. Immediately, she indicated, “the librarian suggested stopping the burning” and they decided to group the books in black garbage bags. After a few hours, the staff lowered the bags down the stairs and put them in two trucks for official use without informing the destination.

Responsibilities

Santos Bonilla and Rosana Casanova blame each other about who should have done the discarding or the method that should have been used to select the texts. The first ensures that the Meduca complied with the government’s internal control standards. “The person responsible for this is the director of the school, who should have had a manual,” emphasized the editorial advisor.

For his part, Casanova justifies that the administrative condition of disabled prevented him from participating in what was happening in the library. He points to the Meduca commissions as the ones that led the cleanup, “took control” over the campus, he said during the interview.

That Saturday, Carrera, the library assistant credited with recording the inventory in 2017, was also present. According to unofficial versions, the young woman contracted an infection due to mites. This newspaper tried to talk to Carrera, but she declined the interview.

El Meduca has promised to restore the library and organize a booklet to replenish the inventory.

On September 9, under the presentation of Judge Olmedo Arrocha, the CSJ refrained from hearing the habeas data appeal filed by Ms. Golcher, considering that the Department of Patrimonial Assets does not have jurisdiction in two or more provinces. Two magistrates differed and saved their vote, Ángela Ruso and Carlos Vásquez. Both are of the opinion that said department “has functions at the national level.” However, the CSJ left the door open for it to refer the appeal to the First Superior Court.

The contempt for the importance, or the value of the historical wealth accumulated in the books is an indication of the consideration that occupies education in general and of the cultural values ​​​​that we adopt as an integral part of our teaching. Just as moths eat away at books.