On January 9, 1964, significant events unfolded in Panama concerning the flag. The American flag was flown daily at Balboa High School. On January 2, students returned from vacation to find their flag missing. In response, they organized a protest and raised the flag themselves, standing guard at the flagpole. Local authorities and school administrators asked them to lower it, but they were ignored. On January 8, three high school students went to the area to find out why the American flag was still flying. They explained that they didn't care if both flags were flying; they just wanted theirs at the front of their school. Some parents even supported the students. The archbishop at the time, Monsignor Marcos Gregorio McGrath, explained it this way: “The burial presented us with a great moral dilemma. Some of the dead were not patriots at all; they were thieves who died while robbing, like those who died in the Pan American building… I presided over the Mass in the Cathedral Church, and we had the problem that the coffins were brought into the Church without identification; we then had to accept the lesser evil and bury them all together as patriots and with honors, without being able to distinguish between them.” This in no way diminishes the great heroism and bravery of the nearly 200 students, men and women, who risked everything marching to the area and who inspire us to this day. There were also more troubling cases. Ascanio Arosemena, who was shot while helping another student. Rosa Landecho, 13 years old, struck by a stray bullet fired by the U.S. Army in response to a Panamanian sniper. Maritza Alabarca, a baby from Colón just a few months old, who died from asphyxiation caused by tear gas, rescued by her brother as they ran through the streets of Colón in search of a hospital.
