| The Camino
Real was 50 miles long and nine feet wide at its widest points; beyond
the nine feet of trail there was nothing but jungle and cimmarones and
corsairs. Cimmarones or as the English called them Maroons were black slaves
that were able to break free from their Spanish masters and make their
way into the jungle.
Most of the
slaves would have arrived in Nombre de Dios and then broken free there
or along the Camino Real. The idea of breaking free from the Spanish
and running into the jungle took great courage as the jungle must have
been incredibly hard to navigate, since in the jungle you have no view
of the horizon or static points in the far distance such as mountains or
rivers. Also, the runaway slaves would have had no knowledge of the dangers
one might encounter in the jungle or how to survive, and the maroons knew
there were Indians living in the jungle that might be hostile to them.
But even with all these difficulties the maroons, incredibly, were able
to establish settlements in the jungle far from the Spanish. From these
settlements in the jungle they learned to navigate the jungle and waterways
better than the Spanish who were fearful of walking into jungle where they
might be attacked or disappear in lost confusion. From their settlements
in the jungle the maroons would run raids along the Camino Real
in the dry season which was the only time of the year the Spanish moved
gold and silver across the trail. The captured gold and silver was taken
by the maroons, not because they treasured its value, but because it was
for them a way to harass the hated Spanish who were known to be obsessed
with gold and silver. Legend has it that the maroons buried the stolen
gold and silver in river beds. The treasure could only be dug up when the
dry season came and the streams narrowed.
Another danger
on the Camino Real for the Spaniards was the corsairs: in this case the
corsairs were French Huguenots that lived in the jungle near Nombre de
Dios or sailed the seas east of the town. They knew the jungle and the
habits of the Spanish and were able to carry out raids against the Spanish
along the Camino Real and at sea. They were also friends of the
English as were the maroons; the anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic sentiments
created a very unlikely alliance between the French, Africans and English
in Panama. The personality that brought these unlikely groups together
in order to try to isolate Nombre de Dios from the Spanish and strip it
of its gold and silver was the Englishman Francis Drake who landed in Panama
in 1572.
Born in Devon
in 1540-43, Drake seems to have been made to go to sea as he spent his
youth sailing between Medway and Antwerp and other North Sea ports. His
hatred for Catholicism and particularly the Spanish was extreme and was
a product of his father’s teachings: his father was a harsh Protestant
lay preacher. Those prejudices against Catholicism were radicalized further
by the English disaster at San Juan de Ulua, Mexico. In 1568 at San Juan
de Ulua, six British slave-trading ships were attacked by the Spanish while
in harbor for repairs: only Drake and his cousin John Hawkins escaped.
The incident led not only to Drake’s bitter hatred of Catholics and Spaniards,
it also lead to the sinking of the Spanish Armada in 1588. The incident
in Mexico triggered the rivalry between Spain and England for control of
the seas. Drake became a kind of cult figure in Europe in the subsequent
decades following his raids on Spain’s holdings in the New World. His piracy
against the Spanish and the Catholic world made him a hero in those parts
of Europe where the Reformation had gained strength. His successes at sea
were the Protestant-world’s successes. He was a beloved figure in 16th
century Protestant Europe. To his enemies he was a terrorist that threaten
the security and wealth of the Catholic world. Though hated by Catholics,
he was a well-respected figure by his adversaries because of his great
abilities as a navigator. Much of the aristocracy in Europe was in awe
of Drake: many desired a picture of him as a souvenir.
Drake took
Nombre de Dios in July and August of 1572, but retreated out to sea after
being shot in the leg. After retreating from Nombre de Dios, Drake settled
on a rock island near the entrance of the harbor at Nombre de Dios, from
there he calculated his next move. The Spanish tried to negotiate with
Drake, but he refused; after turning the Spanish down, he disappeared from
sight, out to sea or along the coast, no one in Nombre de Dios really knew.
The inhabitants of the town were in mortal fear of Drake. Rumor and paranoia
gripped the town and Panama.
With the help
of some maroons who lived to the east of Nombre de Dios, Drake navigated
his way through the jungles of Panama to the Pacific coast. Drake then
carried out two raids on the Camino Real: the first raid was on
the Pacific side, closer to modern day Panama City; the other, and more
successful raid, took place in the hills above Nombre de Dios. The second
raid was carried out with the help of a French Huguenot by the name of
Captain Tetu and a maroon named Pedro who Drake had converted to Protestantism.
Drake was able to capture £50,000 worth of silver and gold, a fortune
for the time. Drake sailed back to England with the stolen treasure and
on August 9th 1573 presented his treasure to Queen Elizabeth. After Drake’s
raids on Panama the Spanish moved the Caribbean end of the Camino Real
from Nombre de Dios to Portobello where nature provided a more secure port
against pirates. Nombre de Dios languished and then disappeared under the
shadow of Portobello.
For Drake this
was just the beginning of his many adventures which would eventually take
him around the world; he would sail the globe and in 1596, while trying
to capture some of his old glory by raiding the Camino Real one
last time, he would return to Panama where he died of fever in the town
of Portobello. His dead body was submerged in the dark waters of the bay.
Visit To
Nombre de Dios
The road to
Nombre de Dios runs through Portobello on the Caribbean coast of Panama.
It is a beautiful drive. The road is perfect up until Portobello, after
Portobello the road is full of potholes and badly eroded. After you pass
Portobello, the landscape is green and hilly, but then opens up into cattle
pasture with the jungle in the far distance; a few houses can be seen in
the distant hills and along the road: this part of Panama is sparsely populated
as most of the land is cattle pasture. Recently, a number of Spaniards
have moved into the hill country near Portobello and Nombre de Dios to
raise goats. Friends of mine in the area tell me the Spaniards are buying
up property near the edge of the jungle and have begun farming. There are
French in the area as well. As I talked about earlier, there were French
Huguenots in the area during the time of Drake and there are French here
today.
After you drive
through Portobello the road will lead you in the direction of Isla Grande;
ten or twelve miles after Portobello there is a fork in the road; if you
go right you head in the direction of Nombre de Dios. At the fork there
is a pizzeria that a Frenchman opened; it is open on Friday, Saturdays
and Sundays. The pizza is very good and the bread is the best you can get
in Panama. They also have nice sweets. There is a special kind of dark
bread called Pan Bon that is eaten on the Caribbean coast that has
the most incredible flavor of cinnamon that you will ever encounter. The
bread is only made during Semana Santa or Easter week. The people
in the area also know how to make great fried sweets from ginger. Anyway,
the French pizzeria is fun; it is called Tropical Paris at least
that is what one of the colorful signs says in front of the shop. We drove
past the French pizzeria and decided we would stop there after we had made
the journey to Nombre de Dios. I was curious to see what the road would
be like as I knew the area from previous trips but had never traveled on
the road to Nombre de Dios. The road went up and down gentle green hills
and through a couple of small towns, each town had a very small and very
pretty church; hilly green pastureland dotted with cows could be seen on
the outskirts of each town. People walked along the road talking, scratching
themselves, and enjoyed the late day light. We drove on and after a half
hour we were in Nombre de Dios.
The harbor
is directly in front of you when you enter the town. Immediately, you can
see why the Spanish made it a settlement: the harbor is perfectly shaped,
but, there is one drawback: the harbor is too open so that ships could
be easily attacked from the sea. Looking at the harbor, the low hills and
the dense jungle and feeling the remoteness of the place, you get an idea
of why Columbus had decided things should probably end here and that he
should head back from where he had come. The beach is brown and grainy;
there are some houses along the beach and as I looked down the beach I
saw a few people sitting in white and dark green plastic chairs with their
feet in the water enjoying the surf. We drove through the back of the town,
near a small lagoon. The road took us through Nombre de Dios and further
east in the direction of the San Blas Islands. The land here had been cut
and cleared and was being used to raise cattle; we passed some small streams
as well. The rivers beyond Nombre de Dios I am told are great places for
panning gold. We saw a small one-room shack by the river that was built
on very high concrete stilts: a gold-panner’s shack, perhaps.
We turned around
after 20 minutes and headed back to Nombre de Dios. We drove through the
town and went by a small house that said “Elvin’s video”, or something
like that. And then drove around a small rectangle-shaped park; the people
in the town were friendly enough; they were indifferent to us; they looked
at us and talked amongst themselves. It was Easter Saturday so they were
gearing up for the great dances that occur before Easter Sunday. During
Easter weekend in Panama, everyone leaves the city and heads to the countryside
where they see their families, dress up and dance like crazy and drink.
The town was beginning to come to life for the party; music could be heard
from different parts of the town and buses and pick up trucks loaded with
people passed by, everyone seemed very happy.
We went to
the beach and took some photos, we then drove back to the French pizzeria
and had a pizza and bought some bread. There were some British travelers
eating pizza as well as a young American couple. We drove back to Panama
City; the ride was long but the sunlight was still visible as we drove
through the jungle before arriving to the outskirts of Panama City.
Some Thoughts
On Globalization In Latin America
The best way
to define globalization I think is to say that it is the process of expanding
the market to all corners of the globe. Expanding it to areas which have
rejected the market previously, or areas that have never been integrated
into the world market. I’ve always thought that globalization in Latin
America is wider than it is deep: it covers a large area but it doesn’t
go deeply into people’s hearts and minds. People in Panama like the idea
of globalization as they have always been traders and business people.
Trading was an intricate part of the colonial economy in the region and
that continues to this day. It has also meant that contact with the U.S.
has been more and more based on trade rather than security issues which
has allowed the region to reduce the level of violence in society and create
more prosperity for more people. And of course the market is a great thing
and people should want to participate in it: a great “discovery system”
as Fredrich Hayek put it. Immanuel Kant liked it also, because he felt
that world peace could be achieved by sinking peoples’ urges and impulses
away from religion, which caused wars, and into the market: the war of
economic competition, would replace physical warfare based on religious
beliefs. The hope was and has always been that through the market people
would gain a kind of enlighten knowledge, based on reason and liberty that
would be worldwide, and more importantly, peaceful, since markets need
peace to operate well. Religion and the market though in many ways having
the same goals are not really natural allies. The money-God and the spiritual-God
are very different is a statement most people I think would agree with.
Maybe it’s the friction between the market and religion that causes people
to react so strongly against globalization.
Of course peace
is always desirable though there always needs to be noise. In Panama people
don’t talk much about globalization but they do in Costa Rica, a place
I know and love as much as Panama. Life in Costa Rica is much harder than
in Panama – primarily because Costa Rica does not use the dollar like Panama
- although foreign investment in manufacturing is higher in Costa Rica
than in Panama. The fear of globalization in Costa Rica and other Latin
American countries I have traveled to is that it is an exported idea coming
into the region from another place and that always brings in the problem
of interpretation. What do I mean? Let me give you an example. During the
Cold War the dominant message coming into the region from outside Latin
America was get rid of the communists. The problem was that the message
was amplified and then flashed in front of a funhouse mirror during the
interpretation process, so that it was interpreted as kill the communist,
yes, but after having achieved that, lets kill the progressives and intellectuals,
and then finally we will kill anyone we don’t like – all in the name of
communism. And many innocent people died. Those days are over. There can
never be another Cold War at least not in my lifetime.
What about
globalization? For most of Latin America globalization has been interpreted
as cut the state and at the same time introduce a very deregulated market.
The message is a good one, but the cuts have been deep. The first cut entails
selling off state companies, which is good because they are inefficient,
expensive and not giving consumers good service, though Costa Rica has
bucked this trend to their benefit – telephone and electricity are still
controlled by the state and are relatively efficient and of high quality.
The next step is to shrink the state further, ok, so we need to cut the
state’s payroll. The state’s payroll was bloated and had too many invisible
workers and red tape. This helps to improve the business climate. There
is more unemployment but the state can now operate without being so deep
in the red with payroll costs and inflation can be brought down. But we
need more cuts, this time we are going to cut back on education, social
security, and healthcare. It's at this very deep level of cuts that the
public starts to cool to the idea of globalization. If you are barely making
it on $260 a month, which has to pay for you and your kids then the cuts
are difficult to swallow. Your wages stay low because that is a way of
attracting foreign investment. Now of course people will find jobs in the
areas where foreign investment is being placed, but they probably won’t
get health insurance or have access to loans or credit to make up for the
costs that are being passed onto them by the cuts in state benefits.
I’ve seen the
effects of state cutbacks in Latin America mostly in education. In the
1950s and 60s Panama’s public educational system spent more money per student
than the U.S. The primer high school in Panama at the time was the Instituto
Nacional, a state school. People graduated from the Instituto and went
onto to study at the best American and European universities; many, many,
many famous lawyers, doctors, engineers and economists in Panama were educated
at the Instituto Nacional. The best families sent their kids to study at
the Instituto; it was the best school in the country. The public school
system of Panama is not what it was in the 50s and 60s. Today the only
schools that people in Panama want to send their kids to are private, so
education is now a question of wealth and therefore state schools have
seen their budgets continually cut, because need for high quality education
has shifted from the public to the private sector and is therefore determined
by money, not merit. Access to education is probably the best determinant
of the health of a society.
Anyway on a
lighter note, a friend of mine who drives taxi in Panama – his name is
Darkman – told me that the U.S. brought everything to Panama, even the
dollar bill, but the one thing they forgot to bring was salaries – someday
soon I hope, believe me.
Other articles
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