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March 2013
Last week was Piedras Gordas’ Patronales (celebration of Piedras
Gordas’ patron saint San Juan de Díos
[John the Baptist]). In Piedras
Gordas the Patronales is celebrated
by nine days of evening church services.
Each service has a different theme. One evening the service was dedicated to protecting the
environment. Although I’m not
Catholic or particularly religious, I was asked to speak during the service
about protecting the resources we have been given and explain to community
members about the various opportunities to partake in environmental
conservation activities. On the
second to last night of Patronales
there is an evening procession that goes through each sector (neighborhood) in
town. Each sector is responsible
for giving a presentation and creating an “idol” for procession’s arrival to
their sector. After their
presentation the residents join the procession and continue on to the following
sectors. The final religious
celebration is a mass held on Friday.
A priest from a Penonomé holds the service, and it is attended by people
from all the neighboring communities.
The
Saturday, Sunday and Monday following the final mass are non-religious fiestas (parties). They are filled with drinking,
fireworks, bull fights, cantaderas
(singing competitions), nighttime discotecas
(DJ’s playing various types of music), and típico bailes (dances to with typical Panamanian country
music). Piedras Gordas’ Patronales is the largest in the area
and as a result it’s also attended by people from various nearby communities,
and family members living in the city that come back for this particular
weekend.
On Saturday there was a discoteca in the casa comunal (communal meeting building). It was the least busy evening in the casa comunal, and predominately attended by teens and young
adults. Most of the older
Panamanians in Piedras Gordas aren’t too interested in dancing to electronic
and reggae music. In an effort to save money I drank at my with a couple
friends at my house before going to the casa
comunal. However this plan
definitely backfired.
When I arrived I found my friends Pedro, Digna, Alexander, Alberto, Tito,
Lichi, and number of their extended family relations hanging out outside of the
discoteca listening to the music and
drinking. They didn’t want to pay
to go inside, and it was actually busier outside of the discoteca. Upon my
arrival I was immediately handed a bottle of seco (sugarcane liquor).
(In the Panamanian countryside the concept of drinking in moderation
doesn’t exist, once you start you don’t stop until you’ve passed out or can
barely walk. There’s also no such
thing as turning down a drink, so once you start you don’t stop. Regardless of having money for drinks
or not, someone in the group will make sure you always have a cold beer or a traigo (shot) in hand.) Once we hung out outside of the discoteca for a couple of hours I was in
the mood to dance. After failing
to convince the owner that she should reduce the entrance fee for us from $3 to
$2, I decided to pay for all of my friends (and their friends) to enter the
almost empty discoteca. So much for saving money!
I spent the rest of the night dancing with my friends from the community and
gorging myself on arroz con pollo
(rice with chicken), and barbacued flank steak. The night ended up being more expensive than I had expected,
but we all had a really good time!
Around 5 pm in the afternoon Alexander, Pedro and I went back to the casa comunal to watch the bull
fights. As we were passing the
main store in town we saw two young men passed out in the sun. They had clearly been there since last
night/early this morning. Although
this isn’t an uncommon scene in Panamá, I couldn’t help to think how miserable
they are going to feel after sleeping in the sun on the hard ground after a
night full of drinking beer and hard liquor.
This was my first time ever seeing a “bull fight.” Although they call it a bull fight
here, I would call it a bunch of really drunk
guys in a small fenced in area trying to annoy and occasionally ride bulls while
not getting themselves killed by them.
Although nobody was seriously injured this year a bull did knock one guy
out, and a couple years ago a young man from the community died from a horn
through the chest. My community
members were encouraging me to participate, but I was plenty happy to enjoy the
event from outside of the corral.
The bailes on Sunday and Monday were
much more popular than Friday’s discoteca. Two of Panamá’s most famous típico artists (Alfredo, and Sami y
Sandra) performed until 5 am.
After attending both nights my típico
dancing is starting to improve but I still have a ways to go. To be honest I don’t particularly like típico music but I always have a lot of
fun attending the bailes and spending
time with the community members in a different environment.
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| Evening Procession |
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| Friday Mass |
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| Cantadera |
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| Outside the Casa Comunal during the Sami y Sandra baile |
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