celebrating the heritage of Portobelo

Another (rainy) day in Panama's short dry season, another provincial festival.  This time the Diablos and Congos festival which takes place two weeks after carnival every other year in the Caribbean village of Portobelo.

Well, technically it is a city, but with its current population of less than 3,000, it is only its ruins that hint of its past importance.  Founded in 1597, it became an important silver-exporting port for the Spanish after Francis Drake burned its rival port to the ground.  It was sacked by Henry Morgan (yes, him again) in 1668, and then captured by the British in 1739 as part of the War of Jenkins Ear.  Apparently this victory was greatly celebrated in Britain and is the reason that Portobello Road is so named.

The Spanish quickly recovered Portobelo but its importance declined as ships began to travel around Cape Horn.  Today one can still see the remains of three forts and the impressive old Royal Customs House where the Spanish used to store all the silver they had taken from Peru, but otherwise it is just a fishing village.

The festival, however, gives everyone the chance to dress up and to celebrate their heritage.  The inhabitants, the Congos, are descended from escaped black slaves and they are proud to maintain elements of their African heritage.  I say 'elements' because I saw little to remind me of Africa.  Just the drums, in fact.  The costumes appear to me to be either colourful versions of the Spanish flamenco dress (like the less colourful pollera worn throughout the country on festival days), or a collection of everything the wearer could find to somehow stick together!  More photos here than usual, but it really was a colourful spectacle and some of the costumes are hard to describe...

carnival

Unfortunately my boss had decided to organise a meeting in Madrid during the carnival week, so I only got to go to the first of the four days of Panama's carnival before I was off to the airport again.

I managed to take this one picture that gave the impression that our carnival was something like the one in Rio, but in reality there were only five floats, separated by groups of ordinary people in T-shirts sort of shuffling along to various different drum rhythms.

A section of the Cinta Costera, that part of the Panamanian highway which skirts the Bay of Panama, was cordoned off, with tight security for entrance (full body pat-down as well as thorough searches of bags).  Inside, there were countless stalls selling coca cola and beer, a few barbecue stands, large speakers belting out Latin music (I admit that I still can't tell the difference between salsa, merengue and bachata) and lots of Panamanian families milling about.  Everyone appeared to be enjoying themselves, so perhaps I just wasn't in the right mood that day as I thought it was rather boring!

There were also a number of people in red-and-black devil costumes wandering about and posing for photos.  I wasn't sure of their significance so googled them, and it seems that their origin is unknown but they generally represent evil (colonial conquistadors or perhaps slave masters), and that the colour of their costume reveals their seniority as a devil, with the beginners in red and the more senior devils with more black in their costumes.  Here in Panama they weren't really doing anything, they were just wandering about, but it seems that in some of the provincial towns they have far more defined and interesting roles.  Very clearly there are many provincial carnivals which are better than the one in the capital.  Maybe next year I will have the opportunity to attend one of those, so I shan't post a devil photo this time but instead the one I took of a costume lying ready on the ground, an hour or so before the parade started - coincidentally, it appears to be the same costume as in the photo above.

Panama Viejo

The city of Panama, founded in 1519, was the first permanent European settlement on the Pacific Ocean.  Today, however, the site of this settlement is just a collection of stone ruins, with the modern-day Panama City a few kilometres to the west.  I started feeling guilty this morning about just faffing around at home so decided to play the tourist for the day and take a look around the old ruins.

As with most other colonial cities in this part of the world, the damage was done by a British pirate, in this case the Welshman Henry Morgan, who sacked the old city in 1671.  It seems that everywhere I go in the region either his name or that of Francis Drake is raised as the culprit for burning and looting the old Spanish cities, with no amount of fortification seeming to be too much for them.  Both of these men were knighted - and are generally referred to in British literature as 'privateers' rather than pirates.  Of course Britain (England) was at war with the Spanish at this time so I suppose such behaviour was excusable.  Indeed I overheard someone's guide at the ruins today speaking quite admiringly about Henry Morgan, telling the tourist that he was a very clever man - it seems there are no hard feelings today.

A significant amount of restoration has been done to these ruins since I last visited them in 1996, apparently partly funded by Spain.  Perhaps it would have been a nice gesture for Britain to have found the money for this!

A week in the Dominican Republic

I always thought of the Dominican Republic as a place of all-inclusive beach resorts, sex tourism and a problem with food poisoning, but a quick holiday with a bird-watching group changed all of that.  I saw that the interior is mountainous, in the north quite lush and green with plantations of fruit, coffee and cacao, and in the south rather drier but with areas of cool pine forest.

More surprising to me though was the capital, Santo Domingo.  The city was founded in 1496 by the brother of Christopher Columbus and is the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the Americas as well as the site of the region's first university, cathedral, monastery, castle and fortress.  The old colonial quarter is reasonably extensive and contains some wonderful 500-year-old houses, solidly built of thick coral blocks with heavy wooden doors.  The city held a strategically important role in the expansion of the Spanish empire, with conquistadors setting off from here on their voyages of discovery including Hernando Cortes (Mexico), Diego Velazquez de Cuéllar (Cuba), Ponce de Leon (Puerto Rico) and Vasco Nuñez de Balboa (first European to see the Pacific Ocean).  The street running from the Plaza de España and past the old fortress still contains the old houses where they were based.

There are museums too, and other interesting remnants of history, including a cannonball lodged on the roof of the cathedral, fired there as part of Francis Drake's invasion of the city in 1586.  The city is not overrun with tourists, but there are enough to support a good number of decent restaurants and cafes.  A potential retirement spot?