Chombo!

This is a typical board building tenement

that still exists in the poorer "Barrio" neighborhoods
of Panama City. This one is among several in
this area of Santana, slated for
demolition soon.

It was not until the decade that began with the year of 1940 in which an event such as the devastating fire that would virtually destroy the Atlantic coast city of Colon, that I would awake to who I really was in the world into which I had been born. The conflagration that left thousands of people homeless had also prompted the racially hardened U.S. Canal Zone to show some empathy for the Silver Roll community they were responsible for creating; a community of people who in those years had mostly existed while living in areas under the jurisdiction of the Panamanian government.

Recalling those years of my childhood, however, even I had come to recognize the American Canal Zone as a foreboding place, as a place for my young aunts and me to take leisurely walks but an area to generally to avoid if possible. A long walk from our home on Third Street and Melendez Avenue to the Clubhouse, movie theatre and Commissary Store where the Black people congregated, it, nevertheless, remained a place that you only went to for a precise reason.

Still too young to be in school I was my mother's young sisters’ little charge and they, as well as my grandfather Seymour lavished much attention on me. My first haircut, in fact, is impressed upon me as clearly as if it had happened yesterday. Papá and I entered a Japanese barbershop somewhere near Front Street in Colon. It was a shop owned by some Japanese brothers and the barber who assisted in my first rite of passage- my first haircut- was as gentle and patient as he could be until I was duly trimmed. He handed me a remarkable toy, a colorful contraption made of different colored wooden balls all arranged in rows that could be slid back and forth. Little did I know that the wonderful gift was a small Abacus.

At that time I did not know what to do with such a thing, and I think I pestered my young my aunts mercilessly in the hopes that they might know how to play with it. It eventually broke from so much handling and for a long time I lamented the fact that the Japanese barbers had not taken some time to show me the first step in counting with the ancient Asian calculator. All this fussing and attention from my beloved Colon family, however, was to end with our transfer to the City of Panama to live with both my young parents who were caught up in their own problems and frustrations. It would also bring into our lives a new feeling of isolation.

The series of events that I’ve already described in our different reality outlining the flight of many Zone families to Panama’s barrios of the two main cities led to some subtle and not-so-subtle reactions on the part of Black Westindian Panamanians. One phenomenon that few of us will talk about is how our parents used isolation as a way of fighting back. Since the children of parents who had been survivors and pioneers of the construction of the Canal were suddenly under attack primarily from the Panamanian government and the elite classes who’d begun sending out signals that Blacks were unwanted, young parents of the new generation of kids growing up in the Barrios would often sequester their children home and forbid them from intermingling with the “Paña” children, the Spanish kids.

Panamanian Westindians born and raised in the Barrio neighborhoods of the cities, who had been living in the old spirit of cooperation with their neighbors, were now met with their newly settled Panameño neighbors who appeared to arrive to dislodge them. Many Westindian neighbors, in a sincere effort to maintain the peace, isolated themselves, some knowing fully well that they had no papers to show their citizenship or legal entry into the country. Nevertheless, as lies and cruel stereotypes about an unprotected people got circulated by the press and political opportunists, the Panama Tribune would find it necessary to publish rebuttals to the fabricated lies about the Westindian lifestyle.

A word they had never heard before to describe them as Westindians, of Jamaican birth particularly, began to be heard everywhere it seemed- "Chombo." It was a word that would serve as the gringo appellative -Nigger- used to describe the colored races of the United States. This term not only had the immediate effect of causing offence towards the person of color but became a trigger for many arguments and fights among especially the younger people.

Its origin has been disputed but according to some it has been traced to the mispronunciation of the word “jump boy” by the Spanish Panamanians. The jump boys were, supposedly, the petty thieves that kept the Zone Police busy at times as they were quite deft at jumping over fences and escaping their clutches. One famous “jump boy” was the legendary Peter Williams, the Robin Hood of the very poor amongst the Westindians.

The mood in many neighborhoods or Barrios changed from one of respectful cooperation to a more antagonistic one. The blacks who had once embodied the thriving nerve centers of the large cities and had served as the only welcoming committee for the mostly impoverished newcomers from the Panamanian countryside, now felt safer in their isolation in the tenement buildings. During this period the increasing episodes of harassment had the effect of making the Westindian people fear the people arriving from the interior of the country.

Ironically, and this I will take up in a future post, the same “Chombo” that would invite a volley of punches from a young adolescent, would become an almost welcome term of endearment once the hordes of Westindian Panamanians started their migrations up north to New York City a decade and half later. The same term that in their youth had caused so much hurt and feelings of fury then became a more identifying term between the newly arrived Panamanian Westindians to the Big Apple. What's more, in its cultural evolution, the Spanish people of Panama have also turned Chombo into a term of endearment, even naming some of their children Chombo.

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If the Story be Told

An early Silver Payline in the Canal Zone
Image thanks to Afro-Panavisions

If not to anyone else, it has been proven to me that, without a doubt, the Silver Men absorbed most of the psychological damage of working in an oppressive segregated system and in a generally difficult work environment. The legendary Silver Men who comprised the vast majority of the Panama Canal Zone labor force earned the honor of being unique workmen- tough, versatile, resilient and loyal. They were, however, just human beings whose role, as it turned out, was to provide the greatest sacrifice. They were then summarily ignored as the world witnessed the creation of such wonders that transformed into reality whatever came off the drawing boards of mere dreamers.

History, in fact, would, for centuries, extol the exploits of men of the European race who, tired of exploring, dreamed of realizing a shorter sea route to the commercial bounties that the Asian shores offered. The once congenial, soft spoken, intelligent and eager Westindian workmen, however, would hardly receive a mention. The feats of these black dynamos and what their arms, shoulders, hands, legs, intellects and imaginations accomplished would remain largely ignored by historians and the lofty chairs of the Black Studies departments of respected universities.

This collective amnesia points to the hidden side of the story of how the heads of great multi-national corporations came to be financial geniuses on the stock markets around the known world. There have even emerged Nobel Prize scholars, acclaimed intellects in economics, who have received more international applause for their Keynesian theories while the psychological downside of the story behind the real laborers remains untold even into our present 21st century.

If the story be told then it must come from the surviving generations. The story must be told of how men saw their fathers work and die as young men from the rigorous pace of work that would eventually revolutionize the world; men who had known nothing but work from as young as fourteen or fifteen years of age, sacrificing their lives to assist their parents with some income. Their jobs may have ranged from just carrying water and supplies to laboring down in the dirt pits, but, more often than not, they worked at hard, exhausting work for sixteen to eighteen hours at a time with little or no relief in sight for their bodies or their psyche.

A good example of how Westindian workers had to draw upon their own versatility and strength is embodied in the story of Edward Howell who worked for the Canal for 47 years and went from ditch digger on the dynamite fields to water boy to many more occupations until he wound up in the Cristobal Treasurer’s Office where he, eventually, became a clerk and money counter. His testimony points to the kinds of perilous working conditions men had to put up with and still remain ever trustworthy and vigorous for the work at hand. It is an interesting narrative, to say the least, and quite descriptive of the times.

There was no form of psychological or emotional consideration for men who after having worked, slept and ate alongside their fellow co-workers would one day wake up to discover that their companion had breathed his last during the night and that the surviving workers had little else to do but bury him oftentimes without knowing how to contact family members in their distant island homes. Their all-male world braced itself to deal with untreated disease, dementia and alcoholism, issues that these groups of men had little preparation or time to confront. Periods of labor unrest were not uncommon but all too often the workers internalized their well founded and unresolved maladies bringing home their baggage of frustrations.

As I’ve related before in the lives of my grandfathers, for men who had started families or were thinking of starting one their economic expectations would remain virtually unchanged throughout their lives, the only change being that they would have a female as dependent with the ability to shop regularly at the company store called the Silver Commissary. In fact, a wage earning Silver Man with a Commissary Book to offer in those times in Panama that lacked shopping facilities was quite a catch, even if his wages were inadequate to maintain a family. I do believe, though, although I have no statistics to back me up, that this is the reason why many Westindian men remained single and never did make many lasting commitments with women. This was one way they could continue to survive and cope.

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The Sacrifice of Silver Families- A Bitter Cup

A Bitter Cup

The deleterious effects of a segregated work environment would invariably exact its toll on the emotional climate of the Silver workers’ home front. What had become a bounty to Gold Roll families would become a great sacrifice for Silver families and the dynamics of the entire picture would not be so clearly perceived until the works in the Great Ditch had come under control.

The dream of Chief Engineer John F. Stevens back in 1905 of seeing his Silver workers well taken care of -laborers who he, early on, recognized as very important to the Canal enterprise-had become a frustrated hope. Even this gifted civilian administrator who transformed the Canal Zone into a fit place for working and living in only two years would have to cave into the pressure placed on him by the powerful gatekeepers of American politics.

Stymied in many ways from realizing a more equitable work environment in the hostile climate of Panama, Stevens would eventually turn over all administration to the racist American Army who would totally comply with their political constituency putting into effect a more racially segregated system akin to that found in the southern parts of the United States. And that is how the system endured basically until the Canal was reverted. In fact, right up until 1999, America’s little gilded corner of the empire here in Panama was still called “The Plantation,” by blacks and whites alike.

The segregated Gold/Silver payroll system which was transferred from the (American) Panama Railroad days, when most of the employees were from Jamaica, now took on a severity of race and class that made the sacrifices once seen as contributions by Silver families in later years become impositions akin to wartime concentration camps.

As early as the first three years of renewed construction on the Panama Canal which were the years of the hardest labor, there were artificial distinctions placed on Silver families- some were “recognized” and others were “unrecognized.” Whether recognized or not, however, for the Silver men their needs would never again be so recognized as in the times of Mr. John Stevens.

Stevens had been the only white Chief to recognize how those Black men would be producing the bulk of the hardest and most crucial work called for in the mega construction. He had been down in the muddy, mosquito infested, and danger ridden trenches with them and had listened to their opinions and complaints and saw how they sickened and died by the hundreds of disease, malnutrition and accident. However, even as early as the first two years of renewed construction of what the French had already started, social changes would take a back seat to the job at hand.

Even in those early times Silver families had few reasons to show outward elation whether they were newly arrived or seasoned, living on or off the Canal Zone. Issues such as housing would show little change for single or married Silver Men as construction advanced, and towards the date of the perceived inauguration of the colossal project, very little in terms of better working conditions and encouragement for the Silver workers and their families would materialize to reward their efforts from a more segregated and entrenched Canal Zone administration.

By 1940, the year in which I would come to have an inkling of what was occurring to my family and/or with "the White man," as my grandfather vehemently referred to them, I would begin forming a picture of what it was really like to be a “Child of the Silver Roll.” By the early 1950's both my grandfathers, as with other Silver Roll employees of the Panama Canal Zone, would have been dead and have left their widows homeless and penniless.

Were it not for the meagre resources here in Panama my grandmother, Fanny E. Reid, for example, who secured a tiny pension from the Zone after working at the Ancon Laundry for over twenty years, would have been obliged to live entirely under her children’s charity. That, in fact, is what befell my grandmother, Marcella Green, who was left without widow’s benefits or pension of any kind. Although their lot could have been much worse as with the story of my dear Polly (about her in another post), theirs was a far cry from a dignified old age for women, Silver Women, who had worked just as hard to make the Panama Canal what it is today.

By the time I was an adolescent in the 1950’s I would also have had many experiences at funerals either at Corozal Silver Cemetery or at Mount Hope Cemetery in the Atlantic City of Colon. My last experiences with those pioneering Silver Men and Women would give me sharper insight into what I would want out of life. What’s more, my experiences with people like Polly, the maid, another vivid example of what would be my lot if I even dared to dream of working on the racist Panama Canal Zone, would be enough of an incentive to seek better horizons. Otherwise, I would wind up drinking from the same cup of disillusionment that had befallen my Silver people, the Westindians of Panama.

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A Different Reality

This was how Central Avenue looked in 1940.
Image thanks to our friends at czimages.com

This is an image of how Calidonia looked in 1940.
Thanks to our friends at Afro-panavisions.

For someone like me, who experienced life as a Black Canal Zone Silver child and also a black Panamanian child, I can safely say that the insight I gathered from what it was like to be a Silver laborer came from my brief experience with my maternal grandfather, Seymour Green. But, the bulk of my experience as one of the Silver children would also be acquired from my early childhood experiences in living with my parents. Throughout that process of growing up, we who were Panamanian born of Westindian parentage, members of the second (and often third) generation would, even before we were ready to seek employment on the “golden” Canal Zone, meet a constant attitude of rejection.

This revelation, in fact, was born out after conducting my own personal research. I discovered that the day and month of my birth the Panama American newspaper dated 17 April of 1936 carried a story regarding so-called rumors about the “Canal Zone Young People” which were utterly denied by the Canal Zone Governor. The byline read:

"Zone Governor takes Exception to Stories on Panama Canal Learnerships. Denies Ban on Employment of Zone Children. Service Bureau Does not oppose Employment of C.Z. ‘Young People.’" The story goes on to say, “Takes exception to stories published in the Panama American with regards to opposition by some officials to employment of Second and Third generation Canal Zone Children,’ -Taken in a statement issued by the office of the Governor on Thursday.”

Whatever truth there was to this story the facts were that the Canal Zone kids seeking work were, in the majority of cases, from the Black Canal Zone and those like myself whose families had been forced to move to and live in the poor barrios of the urban areas of a still very young country that was unable to provide work for its own population of workers, were no longer welcomed on the Zone or even treated as if we had a cultural heritage there as descendants of laborers that the American government had once encouraged to come to the country. In the years following my birth, however, waves of people were still coming from within and beyond the borders of Panama seeking, somehow, to gain employment from the Canal Authority.

In those years Westindian laborers and their families were increasingly coming to settle in the country under the government of Panama. The children who had been born during the inauguration of the Canal, most of them born in the urbanized portions of the country like Panama City and Colon and the areas on the Canal Zone reserved for Silver Roll workers and their families, had now come of age and had their own children. Most of the blacks were now residing in the lower economic barrios surrounding the fenced off areas of the Panama Canal Zone.

This very large group of black people was now coming to reside under Panamanian laws and customs and their children were being born in Santo Tomas General Hospital founded to serve the poor people of Panama and not Gorgas Hospital. The birth of these children within Panama’s infrastructure, in fact, had come on the heels of another recent round of labor unrest and sweeping moves to “whiten” the Canal Zone.

Many black families were consciously being driven from their Canal Zone housing either through employment “downsizing,” or through subtle and not-so-subtle maneuvers on the part of Canal Zone authorities to evict them from their quarters. There were the notorious housing spies who, if at one time they served the practical and benign purpose of maintaining the living quarters orderly and minimally liveable, now served to pit one neighbor against the other and keep the entire Black Zone population in constant dread of being expelled. Often, an unsubstantiated accusation against a neighbor of having housed a visiting relative or friend for a short while would be enough cause for the entire family to be summarily evicted with their children and belongings out of the Zone.

Added to the employment downsizing, the tense living situation in Zone housing, and rent increases in Zone housing, there was also the general harassment on the job which had only been continued and intensified since the days of our immigrant grandfathers. All of these factors during this period would explain the movement of vast numbers of Westindians coming to live in large buildings constructed of wooden slabs with corrugated zinc roofing- buildings very much like the one my parents settled us into by the middle of 1940.

Their flight from the Black Canal Zone, equipped with the world’s most modern shopping Commissaries, as modern as the supermarkets we have today, would mean sudden adaptation to what was available or unavailable in Panama. During this period, in fact, we would see the proliferation of Chinese Shops- Chinitos- which we would learn to appreciate even until the country’s entrance into the 21st century.

Thus, as more and more Black Westindian families were now having to cope without their accustomed Canal Zone “privileges” and were now reliant upon the meager public health and educational resources of a country still struggling to become a respected and recognized republic, the psychological strains and tensions on these families would begin taken a serious toll on the second and third generation.

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The Scowling Stranger

This is an image of 29-47 Mariano Arosemena Street
where my father and mother eventually came to settle in a
one room dwelling- the four of us- in the heart of Calidonia.
Our home is the downstairs unit, second to the
right-only one window.

My first experience with what Mr. George W. Westerman later called "The Westindian Problem"-a set of problems that I feel we all, directly or indirectly, encountered as Westindian people and were somehow related- would unfold at the tender age of four. It would prove to be an unforgettable morning in that same year of 1940 as my status as a member of the Green Family of Colon would end abruptly- too abruptly- at a time when I most needed my family’s love and care.

It would turn out to be one of the first times in life that I'd be thinking about finally settling down with my grandparents and forgetting the world around us. I remember that according to the banter I heard from my aunts that it was a Saturday morning and that for the past two Saturday mornings my grandfather Seymour had made it a ritual to take us for a dip in the ocean at the nearby beach.

Usually he would only take Aminta and me to the beach with him and there he would meet some of his friends. For us kids it was a very pleasant experience because we would, invariably, become the center of attention to all those folks, as both Westindian men and women alike made a big deal out of us kids. We would, from time to time, call out from the beach, "Grandfather, Grandfather, come!" just to recapture his attention it seemed. But, he never did become annoyed or treat us as a nuisance. He seemed ever loving, gentle and responsive in all his ways with his first two grandchildren.

At any rate, this particular Saturday morning we would not be going to the beach, I thought, as I was conscious that Naní had dressed me as if we would be going out together as usual and not for the beach. I heard my Papá talking to someone in the receiving room in rather hushed tones. Then, the moment I walked into the room and got close to my grandfather this person, who I didn’t recognize, scowled at me in an intimidating way. The man continued to look my way with a pronounced scowl on his face all the time we were together. My reaction was to think, "Why is he mad at me, I don’t even know him?” I was only four years old and he seemed to be a grown man already. “Why is he so mad at me?" I pondered again.

By evening all my maternal aunts had congregated downstairs in front the entrance to the building on the side walk to see us off but my grandfather was not there. My Aunt Hilda, the one that followed my mother in age sat in the back of the car with Aminta, three years old then, and me. My mother, Rosa, sat next to this man whom I was soon to learn was my father and we were off to Panama City by road taking a route I didn’t remember taking before. The trip was a long one and it would be night before we would come to a stop. We disembarked in a place that I would later learn was called Calidonia.

I was very sad, to say the least, because no one spoke to us kids about who this man was or where we were going. I had fallen asleep for most of the car ride lying down on the seat next to my aunt and, upon arrival in the city, she more like dragged us up the steps of this strange wooden or "board building" and put us to bed as soon as we entered the place.

The morning light brought the revelation to us that we were in our new home and that, as I saw it, I would never see my Naní and grandfather again. Even more saddened by my new surroundings I wanted to get away from the ill tempered Westindian man they, my mother and aunt, referred to as my father. The man had not even acknowledged me, in fact, as all his attentions were centered on my mother and aunt all the time.

I was aware that they had started talking about a pigeon coop and making Ice cream as I wandered away from them seeing the flock of pigeons on a ledge right outside the wrought iron balcony that I was still too young to look over. In fact, I had a better view of the birds and soon got bored with watching the pigeons. I wandered down the wide wooden floored balcony space and soon met up with a neighbor, a Westindian girl, much older than I was at the time. "Who you?" she asked friendly like and I answered, "I'm Juni!"

She looked me over then told me her name, which I forgot immediately as she said, "Want to play house?" "Ok!" I answered as she led me into an enclosed area of the balcony were she had her toys already laid out. She served me a cup from her toy tea set and said, "You're the Daddy and I am the Mommy, all right? Before I could think that she seemed to me too old to be playing with such toys and games, I heard my mother call out, "Juni, Juni come here right now!" "I got to go!" I said, and ran to meet my mother who, for the first time in my young four year old life, had had anything whatsoever to do with me.

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The Terror of the Silver Roll

Image on top : Bust of Doña Aminta Melendez that
sits in Colon's Parque de la Avenida Central.
Middle: Aminta Melendez
and her father, Porfirio Melendez, circa 1904
Bottom: My sister Aminta and I.

After the notorious Colon fire of 1940, the Green family would return to a normal life with the appearance of the first buds of their second generation in the persons of my sister and me, Cobert Junior, or Juni for short, having been named after my father. My sister, Aminta, who was one year younger, had been named by my mother after Aminta Melendez, daughter and notable personage (although under mentioned) in the short revolutionary history of the City of Colon.

Aminta Melendez (1886-1979) had been a key player in the independence of the Republic of Panama in the 1903 revolution which prompted the separation of the Department of Panama from Colombia. In 1903 Aminta was going to turn 18 years of age, when her father, Porfirio Melendez (Chief of the Revolutionary Junta in Colon), at a supremely dangerous moment in Panama’s history, sent her to Panama on an important mission.

Traveling by herself on a cargo train from Colon to Panama, she carried with her a secret letter penned by her father requesting that the American military intervene in preventing the Colombian army from invading Panama and seizing control, a request that was granted. Aminta accomplished her single and most important mission without flinching, having managed to avoid rousing suspicion. Thereafter, however, she would become an almost forgotten figure in the annals of Panama’s history.

Little Aminta and I resumed our places again amongst what was one of the first Silver Roll families to become habituated to life and the dual identity they had in the country of Panama. Attached as our people were to the United States Canal Zone, in my perception, even as late as the year in which I first wrote the story of my family in Colon, that my people seemed to be unaware that both countries, the United States and Panama, acted as though we were cast offs, superfluous, a group of people only to be noticed as long as we were useful.

In the meantime, those first years of life with our maternal grandparents would be a first stage in my awakening. It would be what I would come to identify as the moment of the awakening of my Soul or Spirit, and it all had occurred to give me a brief taste of urban life in the interior of the country of Panama.

For me, Cobert, Jr., the historian, however, the time of my sojourn in Colon occurred at a moment in Panama’s experience when it was just emerging from the throes of Spanish colonialism, and now began to feel the heel of North Americanism. Those years between 1930 and 1940 were the years in which the powerful United States regarded its growing population of Westindian Blacks as mere pawns to be utilized, exploited actually, in the world political games of domination and mega planning.

They were moments in which the Silver People needed to remain as invisible as possible. We had been the most visible Blacks in the country due to our having been forced to live under the Panamanian government jurisdiction on the other side of the fenced portions of the U.S. Canal Zone. Nevertheless, we sang the same tunes and celebrated the same American holidays as the Blacks on the Black Canal Zone.

I remembered as I wrote down my childhood fears that, "On all the occasions I visited the Silver Clubhouse I felt terror at ever meeting the bad ‘gumshoe’ my aunts were always talking about face to face. In fact, every time my young aunts or my grandfather mentioned ‘the white man,’ I never did actually see one at the Silver Commissary that I could have mistaken for a ‘gumshoe.’ It would be many years later that I would understand that the ‘gumshoe’ was the house or store detective employed or engaged in detecting lawbreakers or in getting information on the Silver employees.

Come to think of it, every time we had to pass white people’s homes on our way back from the Zone and I’d notice kids’ toys thrown about all over their lawns, I never did see any white kids. There was this great mystique surrounding white people which soon became a ghostly presence for me- a presence to be feared although they couldn’t be seen.

That was eventually brought home to me. That some of those white children’s toys would make it to the paved areas of the walkways we had to cross was inevitable. So, one day as my Aunt Minnie and I were making our way back home from an errand, I picked up a little toy bus made of lead; it was a really nice miniature replica of an American type school bus. It was right in my path along the walkway so I picked it up to examine it enjoying the heaviness of the feel of it in my small hand.

My aunt Minnie, however, who noticed what I’d done, tugged at me so brusquely that I said, "They don't want it!" half complaining. She answered sharply, "Shut up and come on!" and we hurriedly continued on home. All the way home I was absolutely intrigued by the little toy school bus and was conscious that, apart from the abacus that a Japanese barber in Colon had given me as a reward for my first haircut, I had no toys. That small lead school bus had become the second toy that I ever owned in my whole life and it took up all my attention. The whole incident, however, had impressed me with the general reaction of panic and fear from my aunt, and most Silver People, in any matter related to ‘white people.’”

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Searchlights and the Gumshoe

This is how the search lights looked to us from Central Colon.
Image thanks to a fascinating site called skylighters.org

“At any rate, the city-wide fire would not touch the dwelling my family and I lived in at that corner of Third Street and Melendez Avenue in the historic City of Colon. As I wrote my memoirs describing the scenes, I remembered that our Papá-abuelo (granddad) came home during the fire relieved to find the family settled across the street from the home they knew. Then, he and some of his Westindian co-workers moved us all down the street where he felt we would be safer.

We spent some days and nights there in the open. The nights offered some excitement because we could see the starlit sky and search-lights in the distance searching for I- don't-know-what. Those were the first Colon nights I remembered experiencing as the noise of explosions heard in the distance made some neighbors comment about what the "Bomba'ros" (fire fighters) were doing to put out the fire. I wrote precisely the way I remembered how the Westindian neighbors would have sounded pronouncing the word Bombero. I then settled back to read my handy work. I read for a while ignoring the teacher as she, once again, took control of the class.

“The sun came out and I awoke to find that we had been moved into a tent and that it had been made into a whole city, or so it seemed. People caught busses to the Silver People’s Commissary from that “tent city” and I remember that we watched the chivitas come and go into the tent neighborhood. Then I thought for a while that we never would go back to live in the wooden building I loved so much at Third and Melendez.”

I stopped writing momentarily in order to pay attention to the teacher, although she ignored me, she continued with her lesson that I cared nothing about. Just to throw off the teacher, less she get curious as to what I was writing, I feigned interest in the class and the conversation she was having with the rest of my classmates. My mind, however, was on what I was writing in my Balboa notebook.

As I struggled to stay focused on the class, my mind wondered and flashed back to a time in Colon City I had almost forgotten. The memories now rushed in to fill the void left by boredom, which seemed to have settled in so long now at that school.

With the teacher at her desk I looked back at the class that surrounded me on all sides and I noticed the look of relief on their faces as they had instantly forgotten whatever it was the teacher had been discussing seconds ago. As a budding writer I remembered how long ago it had been that I had taught myself to read and write both in Spanish and English. The book I started to take out, a Pio Barroja novela entitled Sonata de Estío, had lost its charm as, on second thought, I reached for my trusted notebook now filled with interesting memories and proceeded to write, forgetting my immediate surroundings.

I took up my tale again. “Soon after the fire had been put out we were back in our apartment and again I followed Naní around all day. It seemed that our interest was focused on the evenings and nights when my Papá would get home from work with the day’s newspaper. Those evenings for the three of us would end with my grandfather reading about the ‘cussed white-man,’ as he was always referring to them, while my grandmother sat attentive in front of him and I settled between his legs, with my little arms draped over his legs listening and trying to follow his reading and comments about The War.

During the day, however, I would invariably be chosen to accompany one of my young aunts to shop at the Silver Commissary which was not far from anywhere in Colon. In fact, we had all been born in Panama and had never lived on the Black Canal Zone, but we were as much a part of the Silver People as those Westindians who lived on the Canal Zone. The trip home from the Silver Commissary would force us to pass by white people's homes as we left that Canal Zone. In fact, I still had not encountered or caught a glimpse of any white people at all at that time in my young life. The only white person I had always been secretly afraid of was the ‘Gumshoe’ my aunts always talked about in Colon.

I was also unaware, at that time, that we had lived with my parents in Panama City, and, later on, when my mother’s sisters would come to care for us after moving back to Panama they would remember that I had been born in Casa Galvez which I passed by daily as we entered and exited the school on Avenida Central.”

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Fire!

The strange "rainbow" that I watched dance from building to building
was probably some kind of back draft activity as the Great Colón Fire of
1940 got started in April, the week of my fourth birthday.

It was my first story and I was almost sure that it may have been Cuadernos Balboa’s first Westindian story of that year of 1950 or any year before. As the class suddenly became quiet, I noticed that the teacher had returned to her desk at the front of the class. Tarrying some at her desk she then left the room again as activities in the back of the classroom became louder. The writing paper I had been examining, while my memories of early childhood flashed back and forth, was almost new. I caressed the page with my sharpened pencil intent on practising writing a story.

The story took shape as I remembered and wrote, "I was sure that I had just returned from accompanying one of my young aunts from a commissary trip. So sure because I remembered sitting on the short steps of one of the neighbors’ room eating a candy bar I had saved. The candy had been my reward for accompanying my aunt who had virtually dragged me back home. I remembered that they were all excited telling me it was my birthday that day. "You are four years old Juni!" they said excitedly.

Then I remembered the rush of activity amongst my young aunts as the alarm of a fire, which had me intrigued at the time, did not seem to interrupt my view of the strange “rainbows.” In fact, my aunts were too busy raining down clothing to the sidewalk below, while one of them would gather them in a pile to safety somewhere on the street.

All this time I had thought that I was the only male heir of the Green clan, until I noticed the appearance of Uncle "Cirril" or Cirilo, who seemed to just show up. Uncle Cirilo didn’t live at the house with us and my Papá, my grandfather.

I, Cobert Junior, became engrossed with the story I was writing as I felt a nudge from my seat mate. "What are you writing?" she asked trying to get my attention, but I motioned to her that I would tell her if she desisted from questioning me at the moment. I remembered and wrote, "They called me Juni or Junior from ever since I could remember awakening from the times I had no memory." At this time I was writing about how I, at age four, really did recognize my grandfather, Seymour Green, as my only Papá because everyone else called him that.

But my grandmother, whose real name was Marcella, I only knew as “Naní” and she was the one I spent most of my time with at home. “She had been the first to call me ‘Chuni’ as I remember it now," I wrote and paused to think and try to explain my writings to my seat mate, a girl by the name of Teresa, who lived not too far from where I lived on San Miguel Hill. At any rate, I continued basking in the memories of the times when I had perceived that I had some importance to the celebrities of my Clan.

Before I could continue with the story of the 1940 fire I thought about how safe I felt living with my maternal grandparents and my mother’s sisters, my first recognized “aunts.” I considered that I really did not know my father's side of the family until my parents’ divorce. I opened the notebook again and, like a newspaper reporter, I wrote, "Through it all I had been reluctant to move from my vantage at the other side of the side street where I had witnessed the beginnings of what would soon be reported as "one of the largest conflagrations in the history of the City of Colon."

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