Patronales

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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.