{"id":987,"date":"2019-07-29T15:17:31","date_gmt":"2019-07-29T19:17:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patrickokens.com\/?p=987"},"modified":"2019-07-29T15:17:33","modified_gmt":"2019-07-29T19:17:33","slug":"they-raved-paradise-observations-from-a-societys-periphery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patrickokens.com\/?p=987","title":{"rendered":"They Raved Paradise: observations from a society’s periphery"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Even before the electro-dance beats boomthunked\naround the valley, they told me what was coming; the pony ride guy at the\ncrossroads chapel who went on, at length, about fiestas and drinking getting\nout of hand. The nearby hotel manager admitted to blocking off rooms to prevent\nrevelers from impacting his older, family-oriented guests. Friends moaned about\nthe noise and traffic. Before dusk I walked over to check it out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cValle Bash\u201d, set with the spectacular\nbackdrop of the Cerro Gaital National Park, is a yearly summer all-nighter for\nPanama\u2019s rich kids. SUVs lined the roads, and party-ready jovenes<\/em>  lined up to get past\nsecurity and amble through the broad lawn to the party enclosure. I didn\u2019t stay\nfor the predictable cocktail of youth, money, booze and drugs. As I turned to\nleave, I saw a drone circling in the sky where I usually saw hawks. Late into\nthe night, DJ-orchestrated Latin pop drowned out the customary croaks and\nchirps. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Small towns expose people. You know your place\nmore definitely than in a city. In El Valle, pop. 6,000, those rich kids and\ntheir parents, Panama\u2019s elite, are derisively called rabiblancos <\/em>(white assholes). They own most of the land, built extravagant\nestates on it, and show up on weekends to party. The people who work those\nestates – the women who cook and clean, the men who wield the weed-whackers \u2013\nare smaller, browner, uneducated, poor. El Valle is infamously tops in teenage\npregnancies in Panama. Few of the campesinos<\/em>\nbreak that cycle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And what of the foreigners? We\u2019re kind-of part of this place, but transient. Here are snapshots of the expatriates I met over three months;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  • Massage therapist, Italian, splits his time between here and Rome with his Panamanian wife and children. Smooth as only an Italian massage therapist can be. Compresses all his appointments into a small number of days to have more free time for his family. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
    • Ex US Army Ranger. First time in Panama, he landed by parachute in the \u201989 invasion. Now a contractor often away doing what former Special Forces types get hired to do. In his free time writes, meditates, eats healthy, travels with his family and finds reasons to pick fights with local petty thugs.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
      • Central American yoga\ninstructor-agronomist with a world-famous surname, albeit distantly-related.\nHere with her husband raising a young family and building a business in\nsustainable local agriculture and promoting an active lifestyle.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
        • Tennis instructor, American,\nmaking a living here in the hospitality industry after doing time in the\nU.S.  for drug smuggling. Happily mentoring\na young North American woman just-released after serving her own four-year jail\nterm in Panama for similar reasons.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
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          • He\u2019s a retired antiques dealer.\nHis partner (also a he) worked in health care administration around the world.\nTogether they have places here, in the US and in Europe. As is often the case\nwith couples, they don\u2019t equally love their location. Too tranquil, not close\nenough to lakes\/rivers, says one.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
            • Easily bored, he\u2019s built\ntourism and local development initiatives in El Valle. Divorced, he is\nsearching for companionship and is prepared to go international to find it.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

              Everybody has a story more complicated than the above conveys. Everyone is from elsewhere and looking for a change of pace and to grow. For them all, El Valle is that place, for now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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