Travel and duplicities
Casco Viejo, Panama City
This morning it’s just me, my complimentary coffee and the black cat with the amethyst eyes — she’s staring at me from the joint of two rooftops across the narrow city street. From my own perch, a curved second-floor balcony bolstered by thick embellished marble railings, I can peer into the crumbling stucco facade on the opposite block, through its punched-out window frames and grit-caked walls cordoned off to squatters with cinder blocks. Here at the Hotel Magnolia Inn, our hotel-cum-hostel in Casco Viejo (Spanish for “old quarter”), the staircases are also marble. Rooms are spacious and grand and upstairs there is an enormous, open dorm they've elegantly named, The Ballroom.
Apart from the disintegrating building across the road, if I stretch I can see down the street for several blocks, following a ping-pong of images, cared for and neglected: sidewalk café with new umbrellas, garbage heaped inside abandoned buildings, park with rainbow fence, mess of coiled barbed wire. Behind me, what I choose not to see, is the sexy, glistening skyline of Panama City, new Panama.
Despite its obvious double-mindedness, I choose this Panama over the one across the bay. Even these crumbling structures have their Gothic appeal with their stylish embellishments and their extravagant proportions — the ridiculous succession of window-door-window traveling the length of an entire block. These structures were built for a flourishing era, where there was a wealth of time and space and where life (albeit for some) was not so painfully economized.
It is worth remembering that the city was built following calamity, which, one would think, might debar flourishes. Casco Viejo is actually the second oldest section of Panama City. The oldest, Panama Viejo, all but burnt to the ground in 1671 when its own Governor, Juan Perez de Guzman, preemptively set it ablaze anticipating an attack by the notorious Welsh privateer (a sanctioned pirate, basically), Captain Henry Morgan.
This is an old city in the process of becoming a newer version of its old self. And that’s what appeals to us. It’s the thought of inhabiting the golden years. They’re just around the corner, in the restored plaza with the baroque church and the starched white hotel with the glass doors and smartly dressed valets.
It’s not as confusing as it might sound, except on another day. Perhaps there’s a bit more cloud cover, or maybe it’s garbage day. And that black cat in the joint of the roof? Instead of appearing beautiful and mysterious, today she's ominous. This isn't a stretch—a pair of vultures have just crawled from the upper annex of the collapsing building across the road and stand like animated gargoyles behind her. The other day, the building was a historical touchstone. This day, with its pungent waft of weekend garbage (a sharp blend of fish juice, shit and beer), it’s pitiful and poor. What a difference a day makes.
And a different entrance. Yesterday afternoon we crossed the viaduct in front of Casco Viejo, admiring it from the sea’s perspective; we drove around its stubby elbow, noted the old stone fortress walls, and slipped in through a side street on the south-west side. Immediately, we met a scene of rubbish and chaos. There were no auxiliary colonial facades to fall back on—not even an ailing old veranda. No romance, just rough and dirty city built for economy of space. Driving through, it was difficult to fixate on any one thing; the whole atmosphere was busy and cluttered, people standing on the street talking in front of towering apartment blocks with things you’d ordinarily find indoors in tidy neighborhoods—couches, TVs, women in curlers—out on what passed for a sidewalk (only because no cars could drive there) for all the world to see.
This was the ghetto. With all its revs and clanks, chortles and sputters and music at all hours. Its messy life, shared. But what did I know of it anyway? We zigged an Etch A Sketch line through it all and a handful of blocks later, found ourselves on the edge of the Casco Viejo that formed our first impression.
It occurs to me now that the first impression is perhaps the only one that counts to a traveler. We are after the abridged version; the CliffsNotes if we’re really tight for time. Had this been our introduction I might not have been able to overcome the sense of despair. I might have paid too much attention to the signs of neglect on the other side of town, the nice one, and how they but gesture to the gross neglect of the other.
But come to think of it, I had noticed things. The man pissing behind the row of garbage bins across the road, the dog crap that met us each day outside the hotel, the rubbish, the rubbish. And the young men on the street corner below my morning perch. By mid-day they were there, sitting on the curb, snapping selfies, taking photos of each other in distinguished poses—hand resting on chin, phone to ear as though on official business. I had already surmised that they were the youth from the other side of town, waiting on city streets of this one for some of the prosperous trickle-down. They had little to do but wait for some person or action to cross their corner and provide a moment of fresh amusement. But the instant would pass and they would go back to their concrete corner.
One afternoon I glanced down to see them slouching over something. When one of the boys shifted his head I could see what they were crooning over—a gun. They were excited, turning it over and over, but with a kind of affected macho swag—not the attitude of someone holding the awesome capability. Still, I was alarmed, so peered over the balcony with caution. I was hardly surprised when, moments later, one of the young men popped it open straight down the center to reveal two halves—just a toy. He then quickly reassembled it, snapping it whole before the spell was broken, before the jig was up.
I leaned back in my chair on the balcony. From this angle all I could see were rooftop bars, colorful umbrellas and the jutting columns and spires of numerous colonial churches. I couldn’t see who was waiting below for a fresh opportunity to cross the city corner, in the historic part of town.
