Un Triunfo de Omar

No alarm this morning. Florence sneaked out and sat on the roof terrace, I woke up about 9:00 and found her note – ‘On The Roof’. Homemade breakfast is bagels and cheese, we’re a bit limited in our apartment. The American Trade Hotel can make coffee far better than we can so went to their cafe. On the way, we dropped off the laundry, oh the excitement of travel.

We had a good look round the old town yesterday so today we retraced our steps and had a closer look at a few buildings and museums. A substantial part of the area is out of bounds because the president lives here, he isn’t in residence today so a few more streets are open.

The Merced Church has a number of saints around the walls, one in particular stands out, we also saw her yesterday in San Jose church – St Hedwig. She is always portrayed carrying a church; people leave model houses as an offering in the hope that she will help them to get their own home.

The ruined church of St Dominic has an arch that allegedly played a huge part in the destiny of Panama. Although the church was destroyed by fire and abandoned in 1767, this unusually shaped arch survived. This convinced the French and subsequently the American engineers planning the canal that the area must be free from serious earthquakes and was therefore a good place to build. The arch actually collapsed in 2003 but has been rebuilt using as much of the original bricks as possible.

Next door to St Dominic is a small chapel that was used after the collapse of 1767, and is now a (free) museum of religous art. The captions are all in Spanish but the exhibits are interesting; much better than those we saw in Nicaragua.

Quick stop for lunch. I had a mango salad, Florence was happy with a very green and healthy juice – honestly!

Opposite the French embassy, there’s an area with 12 large stone inscriptions telling the story of the canal as well as a memorial to the French who died in its construction.

After wandering a few more streets, the lack of lunch caught up with Florence and we stopped at Granclement for ice creams. There was too much choice so we both had a double scoop – spiced bread and pineapple for Florence, rum and raisin and passion fruit for me – they were all very good.

Yesterday’s nativity scene was impressive but the church opposite our apartment has outdone them. The scene is large, very detailed and beautifully lit, no waterfalls unfortunately.

Next was the Panama Canal Museum. This is an extensive display of everything related to the history of the canal itself and the surrounding area. It’s housed in the building which was the headquarters of the Fench and American companies who built the canal. Everything is captioned in Spanish, you can buy an English audio commentary for $3 but we only have an hour so decide against it. The museum covers three floors of the large building and we have to rush round. The headline on the front page of a Panamanian Newspaper is Un Triunfo de Omar – ‘A Triumph for Omar’. We’ve seen a lot of references to Omar Torrijos around the city. He was leader of the National Guard from 1968 to 1981 and effectively the ruler of the country. His most significant act was the negotiation of the treaty with the USA to hand over the canal to Panama in 1999. The United States however, retained the permanent right to protect what they would as the neutrality of the canal, allowing U.S. administration of the canal as well as military intervention through the now-legalized U.S. bases in Panama. These aspects of the treaty fell short from nationalistic goals and the ratification ceremony at Fort Clayton was somewhat of an embarrassment for Torrijos. At the signing ceremony, he was very drunk, his speech was slurred and had to lean on the podium to stay upright. He died in plane crash in 1981, there has been much speculation that he was killed by the CIA, documentation about is death disappeared after the USA invasion of Panama in 1989 (source).

We watched the sun go down over the sea and then stopped off on the way home at a nearby bar for a quick cocktail – frozen passion fruit daiquiris, very nice they were.