Panama recorded 90 homicides in the first two months of 2023, an increase of 37%  over the same period last year report’s El Siglo which carries out monthly monitoring.

authorities The authorities have reiterated that 90% of the deaths are associated with organized crime and rivalry between gangs. But it is also part of an institutional decomposition that lacks norms, emphasizes the sociologist Enoch Adames, a researcher and professor at the University of Panama.

The professional sums up the diagnosis in the “pressure of a crisis of an institutional nature”. That is a weakness of the government structures, with an absence of norms and the ability to socialize around them, starting with the family.

The bad news is that in the short and medium term, this situation is not easy to reverse, especially due to the lack of a strategic national development plan capable of encouraging private investment to generate decent jobs.

Adames points to two key issues, recurring in all analysis forums on the security issue: education and employment. Two elements that allow a person to ascend. Both are in crisis, “education does not weigh socially. In addition, they fail to insert themselves into an economy consistent with the educational system”, underlines the sociologist."It is not a single cause," says Adames, "it is the expression of a multiplicity of factors that come together and have been creating a social fracture that confronts violence."

PASSIVE ACTION 
For the sociologist, it is inconceivable how in a province like Colón, which generates 18% of the country's gross domestic product, and is home to one of the most important free zones in the world, there is such a situation of inequality and scarcity., what is happening in Colón – one of the entry points for drugs in Colombia and which in turn distributes to the world in a containerized manner, which registered 14% of homicides last January – is a consequence of the disaster of a passive action by governments.

The highlighted numbers are not reconciled by putting a policeman on every corner.  Adames is clear that as long as the market continues to generate informality and does not create jobs commensurate with population growth, "we will be creating the conditions for a strong social conflict in the medium and short term.