Panama not Puerto Rico, the latest victim of President Trump’s bullying tweets is in the running for the title of the most corrupt country in Latin America.

The country has the highest per-capita income in the region according to scales heavily weighted in favor a minority of robber barons who continue to plunder with impunity the assets of the state while leaving the payment of taxes to the less well-endowed subservient majority. Meanwhile  another  set of scales wielded by a compliant judiciary  blind to anomalies and  under a perpetual “for sale” sign ensures that the balance of power remains where  it has been since the Spaniards first landed on the Isthmus while the descendants of the flock of lawyers they brought with them continue to benefit from maintaining the status quo.

Recently the Concolón group of journalists organized, within the framework of the FIL Panama, the presentation of the book Lost: Who wins the corruption cup in Latin America? , edited by Argentine journalists Diego Fonseca and Martín Caparrós.

The book, composed of 19 stories of journalists from all over Latin America, includes a profile of Ramón Fonseca Mora written by the journalist Sol Lauría, which portrays the lawyer within a context and a cultural construction marked by "exclusion."

"In Panama, the elite manages to build a State that is confused with a law firm or a law firm that ends up being the State," says Diego Fonseca, columnist for The New York Times .

In that sense, Fonseca continues, "Panama ceases to be a nation to become a huge offshore bank ."

"And that opens up the possibilities (...) that Panama's corruption could be endemic, caused by Panamanians themselves, or indirect corruption, which makes it easier for other corrupt people to be able to hide their money in a paradise," he comments, referring to the profile of the lawyer of the controversial firm Mossack-Fonseca, which closed operations in 2018 after the Panama Papers scandal now the subject of a Netflix movie.