Panama’s cartel de los sapos

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Martinelli's sapos try to kidnap union leader Andrés Rodríguez (click for a big version).

This picture, dear readers, is part of a series taken by Cristobal Ruedas that can be found on Google's Picasaweb. It shows how three men try to kidnap Andrés Rodríguez. Rodríguez is a school teacher, and also a union leader, and he was one of these leaders our heroic government had on its blacklist of subversives who needed to be arrested for harboring contra-revolutionary ideas.

So, when he attended a protest meeting last Monday at Parque Porras, after his speech a couple of sinister individuals tried to get him in a car to be kidnapped. There is this guy on the left, with the grey jacket, who is trying to open the door. Then there is a little weasel with a white shirt and a striped tie, standing half behind Rodríguez. And then there is the guy in front with the short neck, the pink shirt with Chinese signs on it, and he's part of the kidnap squad too, or so it seems.

It didn't work. Rodríguez, with help from others, wrestled himself away and took off running, jumped in a cab and escaped. And by now, most warrants have been suspended.

But we still wanted to run this story and this picture because, just as with a similar incident at the house of Juan Jované (where the Panamanian version of the Stasi came to "arrest" him), we 1) want to know who these three sapos are and 2) want you to keep this picture so that, if you see these thugs, you know to be prepared.

Again, for more pictures, go see the complete gallery, here.

2 thoughts on “Panama’s cartel de los sapos

  1. Interesting to see how the grey jacketed guy holds his compadre back. Seems he’s intelligent enough to keep things from really exploding.

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