The Long Wait Until Next Season

You can observe a lot by just watching.
Yogi Berra

Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things.
Robert Frost

I am convinced that God wanted me to be a baseball player.
Roberto Clemente


(This posting is an article I've written for The Panama Eagle, a recently founded English-language Panamanian newspaper)

The Panamanian baseball season is over. For the third consecutive year, the team representing the province of Herrera won the national championship. I attended two games this season, and both were memorable experiences. And now, when I've just started to feel at home with the culture of Panamanian beisbol, it will seem like a long time before the umpire calls out “Play Ball” again.

I had been to Rod Carew Stadium several years ago. I loved the experience, but I had gone alone. Since I believe that baseball needs to be shared with friends—and I could never convince anyone to join me—I hadn’t returned. And, besides, the baseball season in Panama is very short. I had blinked four years in a row, so I missed these.

Rod Carew Stadium is a lovely place, located on the road that leads to the Centennial Bridge. The building is carved into the slopes of Cerro Patacón and from the inside it reminds me of Dodger Stadium—a place that for me, at least, is as sacred as any temple. And there’s always a breeze running through the stands of Rod Carew Stadium, even on days when in the city below the air is dead still and muggy.

On my first visit, several years back, the crowd was sparse—a mere nine hundred fans in a stadium that holds 26,000. I could sit anywhere I wanted, and in comfortable box seats. What I enjoyed watching the most were the runners—boys and men who, for a cuara (0.25¢), will run to the concession stands to fetch anything a fan usually craves at a game: hot dogs, hamburgers, personal pizzas from Pizza Hut, chicken from KFC, beer, sodas, bottled water, popcorn, nachos, and the list is goes on and on.

Being there alone, as well as being new to Panama at the time—and thus feeling marginally outside of my cultural comfort zone—I didn’t avail myself of their services. Instead, between plays I studiously observed the Panamanian fans to learn their customs. And the game itself was terrific, ending in the ninth inning with a two men on, two men out home run. In terms of a quality, I couldn’t have asked for better experience.

Still, not wanting to go by myself again, I waited a handful of years before returning.

This year I was able to convince some friends who had recently moved here from Atlanta to join me. And they, in turn, were able to convince my wife to go along. From the moment we arrived we knew it was going to be a special evening: the parking lot was almost empty. Like the first time I attended a game, the crowd only numbered 900 and the night was beautiful. We sat right behind home plate, about eight rows up. (What’s more, if we had wanted to, we could have sat in the first row as Panamanians prefer to sit behind the dugout of their favorite team.) The best part was that we had a fleet of runners competing to fulfill our every wish. And although Panama Metro, the local team, won handily over Veraguas, we had a splendid time.

We had so much fun, in fact, that we decided to go again—this time to a playoff game. We had anticipated that the crowd might triple, but that still meant that we would be able to sit behind home plate and that the runners would, once again, treat us royally. But the instant we arrived we knew we had miscalculated—the parking lot was so full that cars had to park alongside the road. And, perhaps because it was also a double-header—Chiriquí vs. Los Santos, and then Panama Metro vs. Herrera—another ten thousand béisbol fans decided to join us.

But that experience was, in spite of the sizeable crowd and of having to get our own refreshments, delightful. Panamanian fans are passionate about their national sport. Most of those in attendance wore the colors of their favorite team, and every time they scored the fans would rise out of their seats, dancing to the music of brass bands or to the syncopated beat of talented and enthusiastic percussion sections. All evening, we—the American expats—watched the crowd in awe, enjoying the rhythms, sounds, and scents that make up béisbol as it is played and revered in Latin American.

Baseball has now gone dormant in Panama. The sport will reawaken in January of 2008, after the end of the upcoming rainy season. If you’d like to attend a game or two, I suggest you mark this on next year’s calendar and stay on the alert—the organizers of the local baseball league are not very good at publicizing the schedule.

But if you do manage to make it to Rod Carew Stadium—or, perhaps better yet, to any game in the interior—for the admission price of four balboas, you are guaranteed a marvelous time. If you don’t like large crowds, attend a regular season game. You’re bound to only share the stadium with only a handful of people. But if you want to see just how passionate Panamanians can be about béisbol, check out a playoff game. And if you happen to be from the United States, it will make you proud of being a fellow citizen of Abner Doubleday.

Saving the Dolphins: Or, Personal Impressions of a Public Demonstration

Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equals.
Charles Darwin

Some people are uncomfortable with the idea that humans belong to the same class of animals and cats and cows and raccoons. They’re like people who become successful and they don’t want to be reminded of the old neighborhood.
Phil Donahue

On Thursday, March 29, an estimated one thousand protesters lined both sides of Calle 50—just before the street reaches Vía Brasil—to voice their opposition to Ocean Embassy’s plan to open an aquarium where people can swim with dolphins. La Fundación San Francisco de Asís—a local animal rights group sponsored by the Catholic Church—organized the protest.

The demonstrators, wearing blue and white t-shirts, and holding blue and white balloons, came from all walks of life and they represented the spectrum of Panama’s social classes. Several US citizens, who reside full-time in Panama, were also there. One American couple had traveled all the way from Bocas del Toro to denounce a persistent rumor that Embassy Ocean also plans to build a similar aquarium in their province.

The controversy surrounding the project has drawn considerable public attention. In a poll commissioned by La Prensa, more than 80% of the respondents were opposed to the aquarium. In specific, those interviewed cite their objection to the capture of dolphins—a proposed 80 over five years.

When asked why she had attended the protest, Natasha Risseeuw, a high school senior, said, “Because I simply don’t want dolphins to be captured. It’s inhumane.” Her words echoed the sentiments of the majority of protesters. And many others also expressed their suspicion that some people, likely in government, are attempting to profit from Embassy Ocean’s enterprise.

But at least one protester stated that the demonstration could have been better organized. “Although I believe our cause is just, the leaflets being handed out contain misinformation,” said Brandon Poll, who also is a high school senior. “It’s important to increase public awareness about the capture of dolphins, but it’s also important to base the protest on the truth.”

Regardless of the young man’s misgivings, most of the protesters are determined to fight the plans to build an aquarium that would curtail the freedom of dolphins, and they’re confident that, in the end, they will win.

In the last year of Mireya Moscoso’s presidency, the environmentalists of Panama won a major battle when the government was forced to abandon the construction of a highway linking the communities of Boquete and Volcán through the highlands of Chiriquí.

Karen Dertien, a high school biology teacher was also a part of that protest.

“We learned many important lessons from that victory,” Karen said. “In particular we learned the importance of not letting up—even for a second. And this time we also plan to continue protesting until the folks behind the Embassy Ocean project close up shop and go home.”

And judging by the resolve of the protesters, as well as by the supportive waves and the friendly honking of horns that came from passing vehicles on that balmy Calle 50 afternoon, Embassy Ocean has a long, uphill battle ahead.

The Gift

What better place for those writings by Darío than the Republic of Venezuela, the homeland of Simón Bolívar? I’m sure that Rubén is happy at this moment; up in heaven, he is happy.
Daniel Ortega

What law, what reason can deny that gift so sweet, so natural that God has given a stream, a fish, a beast, a bird?
Pedro Calderón de la Barca


How would Americans feel if President Bush gave away, as a gift, an original manuscript of an Emily Dickenson poem, written by her own hand, to, say, Tony Blair? I suspect the President’s gesture wouldn’t be too well received.

Something like this has happened in Nicaragua.

Rubén Darío—born Félix Rubén García Sarmiento—is, to date, the only quantifiable genius born on Nicaraguan soil. He is, and I’m not exaggerating here, God’s gift to Nicaraguan national identity. Virtually every community—city, town, and village—has a monument in his honor. What’s more, Rubén Darío’s face graces the hundred córdoba bill, the nation’s most common monetary denomination.

Because in Nicaragua he is worshipped, one finds Rubén Darío everywhere.

This literary genius lived and breathed poetry, and he had the remarkable capacity to remember every single word of every single book he read. (As a young adult he worked for several months in the Nicaraguan National Library and he read every volume of the collection.) Moreover, throughout his entire life Darío was in the habit of reading the Spanish dictionary, claiming that this helped him learn his language intimately.

When Darío was still a boy, the cultural elite of León—the city where he was raised—recognized his extraordinary poetic talents. And at the age of fifteen, the Nicaraguan government provided the adolescent with a scholarship to study in El Salvador under the poet Francisco Gavidia because the youth’s knowledge of poetry already surpassed that of any teacher in Nicaragua.

From this point on, Rubén Darío lived a nomadic life and his prestige as a poet and writer grew as he traveled throughout the Americas and Europe. And in the ensuing years the Nicaraguan would revolutionize Spanish-language poetry. In fact, Rubén Darío founded the first autonomous Latin American literary movement: el modernismo. And in the process of setting the course for the future of Hispanic letters, he wrested away four centuries of literary dominance from Spain. As a result, the Nicaraguan’s vital contribution to Spanish-language literature is unquestioned, and his influence is felt, still today, far beyond the borders of his small country.

Recently, Rubén Darío’s name appeared prominently in the international press when Daniel Ortega, only a few weeks after his inauguration as president, presented Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s maverick leader, with the original manuscripts of two poems that commemorate Simón Bolívar.

This gift has angered many Nicaraguans. They claim that these documents are part of their patrimony, and as such they’re a national treasure that should not be given away. In a recent poll conducted by La Prensa, 91.8% of respondents stated their opposition to President Ortega’s gift. Admittedly, readers of this conservative newspaper tend to be anti-Sandinistas, but I suspect that in the results of an independent poll wouldn’t yield a much lower rate of disapproval.

(And President Ortega has not taken the criticism of his compatriots with stoicism. On March 26, he fired Margine Gutiérrez, the Director of the Instituto Nicaragüense de Cultura, because in an interview she had hinted at her disapproval of the gift.)

There are other ways in which Daniel Ortega could have honored his Venezuelan cohort. For the Nicaraguan’s inauguration, Chávez presented Ortega with an replica of the sword Simón Bolívar had at his side while he liberated South America from Spanish rule. Perhaps, then, Ortega could have offered stunning replicas of Rubén Darío’s manuscripts, finely etched in stone, or glass.

Without a doubt—at least in my mind—Rubén Darío’s manuscripts were never President Ortega’s to give away. In the same way that Emily Dickinson’s originals belong to the people of the United States, Darío’s manuscripts belong to all Nicaraguans. After all, when Rubén Darío was born in the small village of Metapa, God saw fit to bless Nicaragua with its one true genius. And this, fortunately, is a gift that can never be given away.

A Novel Yet to Be Written: On Reading Núñez de Balboa

People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them.
James Baldwin

History is one of those marvelous and necessary illusions we have to deal with.
Howard Nemerov

A letter by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez—the renowned twentieth century Spanish writer—constitutes the prologue to Octavio Méndez Pereira’s novel, Núñez de Balboa. Blasco Ibáñez is the author of Tirano Banderas, the first novel about the threat dictatorships pose in Latin America, and of Los cuatro jinetes del Apocalipsis (The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse)—the latter entered cinematic history as the first Spanish-language work of fiction to make it onto the silver screen. (The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse also helped make Rudolph Valentino a silent film legend.)

In the letter, Blasco Ibáñez reminisces about a visit to Panamá when, during an afternoon outing with the illustrious educator, Octavio Méndez Pereira, he visited the ruins of Panamá Viejo, the original site of the nation’s capital, destroyed by the Welsh pirate Henry Morgan in 1671. According to Blasco Ibáñez’s letter, the stories Méndez Pereira told him, the hauntingly beautiful tropical sunset, and the ghosts of Spanish colonizers walking among the vestiges of Panamá’s former capital inspired him to ask the Panamanian to collaborate in writing a novel about the city’s early annihilation. Blasco Ibáñez’s plan was for Méndez Pereira, a genuine scholar, to conduct the research, and then he, the imaginative writer, would take that information and turn it into a novel.

But the project was destined to never get off the ground. Shortly after his return to Spain, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez became ill, and he died only a few years later. Nevertheless, Octavio Méndez Pereira, his heart still ablaze from the Spaniard’s proposal to collaborate, decided to write a novel of his own. This literary venture, however, would not be about the topic the two men had agreed upon. Instead, the Panamanian’s work would tell a story that had haunted him since childhood—the life and death of Vasco Núñez de Balboa, the first European to set eyes on the Pacific Ocean.

After years of arduous labor, Octavio Méndez Pereira published, in Spain, his volume on Balboa. The book remains his most noted contribution to Panamanian letters. (His most remembered gift to Panamanian culture, however, was the founding of the Universidad de Panamá—an institution of which he was the first rector and that is often referred to as “La Casa de Méndez Pereira.”)

Núñez de Balboa is a noble effort at narrating—as “fiction”—the complex, yet fascinating, tale of this Spanish explorer. But if I am to give my honest assessment, Méndez Pereira, although a remarkable scholar, was not equipped to be a novelist.

The Panamanian’s scholarly background frequently intrudes in his attempt to write historical fiction. As a result, the narrative tug of war between writing a novel and the author’s natural inclination toward writing an academic biography weighs the work down. Ultimately, and without a doubt because of this, Méndez Pereira produced an unsuccessful literary hybrid, and only those readers passionately interested in the Spanish explorer’s life will find the book enjoyable. What’s more, Octavio Méndez Pereira’s indecisiveness with regard to his choice of genre is clearly reflected in the different titles he gave this work, all of which appear either on the cover or in the opening pages: Núñez de Balboa; Vasco Núñez de Balboa; or El tesoro de Daibaibe. Take your pick.

Still, in spite of the work’s shortcomings, if one thinks back to Vicente Blasco Ibáñez and Octavio Méndez Pereira’s collaborative dream—the investigative origins of this “novel”—Núñez de Balboa does provide the groundwork for any contemporary author who may be interested in taking the Panamanian’s effort one step further: to write an accomplished work of fiction about Vasco Núñez de Balboa’s life. The explorer’s deeds, as well as his misdeeds, are, after all, most worthy of the effort.

When seen through this lens, then, Octavio Méndez Pereira’s contribution to Panamanian literature stands proudly as a novel yet to be written.