The Private Club That Governs Panama

Monday, April 29, 2024
Sol Lauría
El Faro first published this article in Spanish in June 2018.

It is not easy to get into Club Unión. First, there’s the thin stucco wall, several meters tall, encircling the premises. Then the steel-slat fence, a security booth, and a guard who sets the rules: “Are you a member?” “It’s private,” “No, not everyone can enter.” Then you call ahead and ask if they can please let you in. They tell you the same thing: members only, private, not for everyone. If you’re a member, the doors to the Club will open for you, along with the business done inside. Perhaps this will entice you to join. With the right contacts and two members to back you up, you can submit your application to management and let the wheeling and dealing begin: hobnobbing with members of the Admissions Board; inviting them to private parties, to an afternoon on your yacht, to participate in a promising investment; asking them to put in a good word with the 32 voting members, then waiting patiently for the ballot box to fill up while praying that no more than five members will reject your petition, preventing you from joining.

It’s true, chances are you’ll never make it in: Club Unión is not looking for people just for the sake of it. But if they do finally grant you access, a new story begins: you pay the $100,000 membership fee, then another $180 every month, then $3,200 more in dues, and on top of the financial contributions you agree to abide by the Club’s strict rules. Only then do you get your membership card. And thus, as if ascending the stage to accept an Oscar, you enter the exclusive world of La Gente Conocida — Panama’s wealthy and famous.

If none of that works, there’s always a seat in the waiting room. Perhaps one day a member will invite you to a Sunday brunch, a pasta night, or a wedding: a brief taste of exclusivity. After greeting the guard, you cross the front courtyard with its large fountain and on the other end, after passing through the wide portico entrance, you are warmly welcomed in the foyer. Once inside, you might run into people with the same surnames that fought for Colombia’s independence in 1903, or who backed the U.S. protectorate. Or the owners of banks, law firms, insurance companies, casinos, media outlets, private schools, security companies, ports, or —less aristocratic but just as lucrative— pawnshops. You might also meet a handful of Panama Canal administrators, half of the current government ministers, several members of past cabinets, a former president or two, and maybe the current president himself.

That place on the other side of the wall brings together the few who define the lives of the many. Here, they are called rabiblancos (“whitetails”) to distinguish them, but they are all El Poder, The Powerful, plain and simple. This is their Eden, their paradise, their Olympus, and they call it Club Unión.

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Panama City is a place of contrasts. In ten blocks you travel from Singapore to Rwanda, from buildings made of mirrors and marked with international brand logos to others that look like the ruins from an earthquake. The most sought-after neighborhoods are on the coast, studded with steel and glass towers and speckled with square-plan mansions with large foyers and perfect palm trees: Casco Antiguo, Avenida Balboa, Punta Pacífica. Or the home of Club Unión: Punta Paitilla. Until 1957, Paitilla was pure, undeveloped scrubland and belonged, like another one-third of the country, to the United States. But when the gringos returned it, the Panamanian government decreed by law that it should become “one of the most picturesque and attractive places in the capital.”

More:
https://elfaro.net/en/202404/centroamerica/27313/the-private-club-that-governs-panama