The Christmas Reprobate and Scoundrel

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Georgie Porgie pudding and pie
Kissed the girls and made them cry
When the boys came out to play
Georgey Porgie ran away.

My irritation and the rashness in my attitude made me take a step closer to her as she, becoming uncomfortable with my approach, started to say, "No, no!" Suddenly, it was done, I’d kissed her on the cheek and she started to cry profusely. Her tears immediately made me regret my thoughtlessness, as the rest of our committee came to see what had occurred.

"He kissed me and I don't like it!" she whimpered. The more she cried, the more I regretted my imprudence. "Don't cry, don't cry! See what you did you made the girl cry!" said the other boys, all the while glaring at me who was visibly disconcerted by then. "I'm, I’m sorry… I didn't mean for her to be ... like that. I'm sorry I will never do that again for real," I said.

It had been intended as an adventurous prank designed to make the girl flee in childish fear to the other side of the room and leave me alone. The whole incident, however, turned into a disconcerting experience for both the lighter skinned girl and me. Soon they all got her to calm down and agreed not to report the whole incident to the teacher. We all remained in the classroom to put the finishing touches on an excellent job of prettifying the room that evening and the next day things proceeded as usual.

During the days that followed there were no reproaches from my teacher for my impertinence. However, I noticed that the little white girl never returned to school after that day. What started out as an “assimilating” experience on my part would not, it seemed, be marred by so childish an incident and did not, apparently, become a cause celebré amongst all the teachers which it could easily have been.

At the end of that school year, however, I would suffer a reversal in my educational progress which, in my view, would mar my reputation in that Barrio magnet school until my very last day there as a student. I was kept back in the fifth grade one more year. Although, my teacher gave no explanations, I attributed so severe a decision to what had transpired between the little girl and me since my academic performance was impeccable.

In researching The Panama Tribune for the month of November of that year of 1948, a little before my involvement in that foolish childhood prank, I found articles pointing to a parent teacher meeting between the teachers of the Pedro J. Sosa Primary School and the parents of Westindian children. The parents, it appears, charged the teachers with racism and racist acts against their children. The accusations, of course, were minimized by the vehement denials of the teachers, but were serious enough to be published in The Panama Tribune.

The following school year would, undoubtedly, become my worst setback since I would have to repeat the whole boring year with a sizably reduced number of Westindian counterparts attending that particular school. It would also be the year that growing up Westindian and speaking in Westindian English as fluently as I spoke in Spanish, would gain for me some acceptance and appreciation by the children in both groups.

My upbringing during those precious years, however, would find me, a black boy, more integrated into the Westindian community simply because of the political battle ground that the Spanish schools had turned into.

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"I Spent Time Just Like this with My Father"

A typical bush scene in Pacora.
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Although my father had taken ship and had pretty much left my life for the rest of my childhood, I was still the thirteen year old kid in search of those all important “good memories” of him. As cruel and heartlessly as he had acted with me, I could not help but reflect fondly upon my father. He possessed some qualities that were worthy and dignified to be useful to a growing man child as the year 1949 approached marking the end of an eventful decade as much for my people in Panama as for myself.

Cobert had been gone for about three years and my mother had stopped exercising her visitation rights for about as long as that; so that, my sister and I were left with those raw feelings of abandonment that had never quite healed.

Whenever I wondered about my father I recalled when he would talk about his father, Joshua. On one occasion when he and I had been sleeping over at the chicken shack he had built on a small parcel of land in the far away village by the name of Pacora he took me by surprise when he unexpectedly revealed something of his childhood. Those were the days before the divorce between my parents had become imminent.

"I spent times just like this with my father," he said suddenly that evening as we prepared to go to bed after spending the whole day together looking after the chickens and eating a rustic but filling country meal. I could pick up the longing in his voice for the days of his childhood spent with a loving father who would often take him into the bush to work the small piece of land that had been loaned to him to help his family.

In that year I was simply going through the motions at school daydreaming most of the time in my second round of fifth grade classes in Spanish School. My teacher had tried to redeem herself for keeping me back a whole year for my one and only sin which was having kissed a white girl as we prepared for the year’s Christmas party.

"Who will volunteer and take on the decorating of the classroom this year for Navidad?" asked the teacher. The incident that followed would be one of my most unforgettable memories of school. Three of four other youngsters and I volunteered to become the contingent of kids to stay over and work to get the job done. It was me, three other boys and one little white girl about my age who resembled my Nicaraguan next door neighbor and who could pass for one of the elite Panamanian nobility.

We all stood around the blackboards talking about what we would draw and the different colored chalk we would use. Some of the boys went off to one side and I, the competitive Westindian, started drawing a Santa from memory. I had been working alone, glancing from time to time at what the other boys were doing, for the space of about a half hour. The other boys were trying to start at the other side of the classroom so we would cover the decoration of the entire room. I was working silently feeling self assured of my abilities as an artist as my drawing started to unfold before me like magic.

Suddenly, I was interrupted by the only girl in our group who had started following my progress from one side of the board to the other. I was energetically trying to avoid her questioning which was now becoming more like pestering. I really wanted to be alone and she, in her enthusiasm and admiration for my work, had interfered with my thoughts.

In my irritability I stopped answering her silly questions, as I said to myself, "Why can’t she just go back to where she had been and leave me alone?" This only incited her and she came closer pointing to some area of the drawings that, by now, filled the blackboard.

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Running from Home and School

These types of tenements and
generally desolate residential areas
in New York City is what awaited most
Westindians who exodused out of Panama
beginning in the 1950's.

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The fact that a child had to endure six full years of emotions, mostly of the fight or flight nature, was enough to create a syndrome in any youngster. It was especially so for Black Westindian children in the Spanish schools which had turned into battle zones for conflicts encouraged mainly by the racist attitudes of the teachers. The school conflicts, however, would never be worse than the ones many children would be bringing from homes racked by racially harassed parents and family members.

My school experiences would make such a lasting impression on me that during my life journey I would witness the effects of the accumulated pressures of life on the Silver Roll in the lifestyle of the people from the Black Canal Zone and most of us who were linked to them somehow. The varied manifestations of this phenomenon would not only assume negative patterns in Panama but would follow them into the exodus to the North where age grade brothers and sisters would meet from all over the country of Panama.

The unsavory laboratory which New York City would become during this period, especially Brooklyn and the Bronx, would evolve from the maze of streets of one slum after another. The life awaiting them in their new found “promised land,” would eventually convert them into human wrecks completely addicted to alcohol and illegal narcotics. Their youth would turn to anything that would ease the pain of being born Black and trapped, falling into unstable patterns of life, ensnared by unstable relationships with no vision of a way out. Even the armed forces would become their perpetual enablers as many would enlist in the Service seeking “home,” safe haven and a modicum of stability.

At any rate, in Panama in the year of 1948, we were still children, just minors, looking for understanding and the nurturing spirit that all humans desperately seek to be able to thrive and do well as the family hunts for better and more prosperous days.

It was also the year that I was finally promoted to fifth grade at Escuela Pedro J. Sosa, but I could not shake the feeling of abandonment. I was supposed to be carrying my father’s name, and yet I didn’t feel a part of anyone or any place, especially since I had not seen hide nor hair of my mother for more than three years.

Although I had, by now, settled down to some kind of “home life,” my feelings of homelessness seemed to linger since being with my grandmother was oddly like being with no one at all- she was present but not present and she was certainly no protecting presence to me or my sister.

I secretly prayed that my aunts would be so caught up in their work that they would not come home to suddenly find themselves in the same house with the young slaves they seemed to hate. The fact was that both my sister and I felt like the slaves of the house since we were expected to do all the heavy chores in the home and not ever have our needs and feelings as children considered. Although I gladly did all my household chores, helped my grandmother with her laundry and Susú business and even did the cooking in the household, I never once received any praise or a word of encouragement.

School was only a temporary refuge from my frigid experience at home. In the fifth grade I came back to a classroom firmly believing that anything as terrible as what had occurred to me in the fourth grade with that wonderful example of the teaching profession, who furiously tore up my composition, could happen again; and that was too traumatic to anticipate.

I would say that this is when I consciously began planning my definite escape. At the first sign that manifested to me that I would be better off running away, I would take off. In my daydreams the peace of the bush surrounding the city of Panama sweetly beckoned me to a life in which I could have the freedom and mental stability to take care of myself and prosper, even if it meant going it alone living in a shack made with my own two hands.

The dream of achieving this state of perfect freedom from the emotional and physical abuse I was experiencing- I guess you could call that “home”- gradually grew more real and possible as I grew older and more skillful at fending for myself.

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Marked for a Lifetime

Blind Justice.
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Later in the revised 1946 Constitution some light of justice would shine through the blindfold of Señora Justicia, who, as late as 1948, stood by blindly allowing for the humiliation and harassment of little children and the outright violation of human rights. When the 1946 Constitution came along it gave an indication that there was a tiny sliver, a small crack opening beneath the blindfold for justice to have its day in the country of Panama for the Panamanian born Westindians. It would come in the form of Article 12 of the 1946 Constitution which stated in part: "the State is to make available accessibility for those proposing to obtain access to Panamanian nationality."

In those horrible years between 1946 and 1950 history would find us, the young ones, battling the tide of these exterior political issues as well as the issues of neglect and lack of love right at home. Love starved and often feeling abandoned I had, nevertheless, seen a modicum of progress in my life until the fifth grade when another “agony of defeat” was added to my life when my 5th grade teacher kept me back without really giving me any reasons for her decision. My primary school reverses had started, in fact, in the first grade and followed me to the fifth grade as our class neared end of year.

One such reverse marked me for life. It all started as a way to redeem myself I thought as I rushed around to complete the essay in the Spanish language the teachers were always insisting we speak at school. It turned out that I’d do all that work for nothing since, ultimately, what I considered my important contribution to the assignment was torn to shreds in my face by my enraged teacher who virtually accused me of plagiarizing the whole thing. She was absolutely livid as she read the composition on Simon Bolivar, The Great Libertador, I had so painstakingly researched and lovingly written, and she demanded I write it all over again. Apparently, she could not believe that a little Chombito could write a composition in Spanish with such skill and conviction.

My integrity questioned in the worse way, none of the other students in the class was aware of what had transpired between the teacher and me. What happened to me that day would remain a day of infamy in my hard earned literary life as flashes of myself scouring the garbage cans of our building hoping to find any old newspaper or blank pieces of cardboard to retire under my parents' bed for a round of quiet writing practice, came back to me.

That incident for me would cause me more pain than the merciless strappings from my father with my grandmother’s electric iron cord. But, it had given me an indication of how good a writer I could be since it had brought out the worst feelings of outrage in someone who was convinced that “people like me” could never write that well. The politicians and local press of the time had us pegged as incapable of assimilating or learning the Spanish language and my very best shot at writing about a Latin American icon was staring her in the face proving them all wrong.

The 1946 Constitution’s revision of Panama’s policies regarding dual citizenship has received a great deal of media attention lately, in fact, in the controversial case of Bosco Ricardo Vallarino C., the mayor elect of Panama City, who has had his recent electoral victory placed in limbo by the Tribunal Electoral. Although he was approved by the electoral court to run for one of the most important posts in Panamanian politics- the Mayor of Panama City- and won the election, his dual citizenship status (Panamanian-U.S.) is, all of a sudden, now grounds to question his Panamanian citizenship per se although he was born in Panama.

Several legal experts in constitutional law have rallied to Bosco’s defense equating his case with what was done to the population of Westindian children born in Panama before the Constitution of 1941 which basically took away our citizenship, making us nation-less.

It is a red hot topic presently and it will be interesting to see how it evolves as it reopens this almost 70 year old issue that so injured the Westindian generations of my time impelling the era of massive exoduses of Westindians to the United States.

You can bet that I'm following this case closely and rooting for our Mayor elect to have the victory.

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