Bocas del Toro: Quiet Living Together While Living Apart

On sharing space today and building different tomorrows

I thought in my youth that were you to mix distinct cultures in a small enough place, they would eventually blend. In my travels, I see a different scenario. People from different cultures live in proximity and without conflict, yet seldom build bridges across to each other.

The Bocas del Toro archipelago, in Panama, where we live, is an example. On the one hand, such a scenario preserves cultures. It can be beautiful. Diverse values and perspectives coalesce on an island to teach me the many ways to understand the same idea. On the other hand, it hides an uncomfortable truth of wealth disparity, opportunity, and uneven political and economic influence each group exerts, often disproportionate to its size.

The Ngöbe-Bugle community are the original inhabitants of the islands. They were here to greet Columbus on his fourth voyage in 1512, and for centuries or millennia before. The indigenous locals live in tightly-knit communities throughout the islands. They rely on strong kin networks and are beginning to make inroads with the state that has long marginalized them.

Afro-Caribbean Bocatoreños arrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The colorful buildings and roofs of the Old Bank on Bastimentos Island, across the narrow channel, mark the town where they live in our proximity.

Chinese Panamanians began arriving in the late 19th century as well. They established a diaspora anchored in retail, grocery, and hardware commerce. Most have integrated completely, speaking Spanish in business but Chinese at home, maintaining cultural links and heritage.

Latino Panamanians (mestizo) migrated to the islands later and more so in recent decades. Many have left the busy city, lured by the promise of the ‘tranquilo’ tropical life. They are the most closely aligned with Western culture, movies, and fashions.

The last group is the ex-patriates. Recall a map you may have seen in a coffee shop in a tourist hub somewhere - the world map onto which people place pins of their home locations. On such a map here, the plastic heads of the pins would cover the world. A few clusters from North America and Europe, a blob over South Africa, a solid coverage of the South American continent, then a sprinkle of pins everywhere else. In our volleyball games, you would have two people from the same country per side, at most.

So many groups on a small island, in a small town. The groups have to mix, right?

In daily lives, they do. In the work crews, in the aisles in the grocery stores, in a crowd watching fútbol. People from every group are doing similar things. Then comes the evening or the weekend, and everyone disperses to their own districts, churches, and their preferred beaches. The segregation is, of course, informal, following no law but cultural lines drawn by time, language, and heritage.

And, drawn by the economic opportunities gifted by past preferences, or taken away by past and current injustices. Not the overt Jim Crow segregation, but preferences dolled out by politicians in a patronage system of pay-to-play.

Clientelism is rampant in Latin America - support me, and your land document will pass the review. Or maybe you want a construction contract? The situation is improving, but is more overt and blatant than the shadow clientelism of the Western democracies.

The result is the same the world all over. The rich get richer. The less fortunate groups claw their way out of poverty at a slow pace of generational changes, if at all.

I see the embodiment of these strata around me. The local construction crews of indigenous people build from the architectural plans designed and approved by Latino mestizos, and often paid by Western expatriates, spending their Western incomes at Latin American prices.

I see it in the homes themselves. The indigenous settlements of simple single-wall construction, the one-room shacks on stilts in the swampy, buggy areas of Bocas. Modest homes of mestizos and Afro-Caribbeans throughout the town, and well-windowed homes of expatriates on, or with easy access to the beach.

Despite the disparity, I don’t see outward animosity. Afro-Caribbean boterros joke with the indigenous ones from the neighboring docks. People stand next to each other at the parades and celebrations. They buy each other’s food and dance to each other’s music. There is intermarriage, still uncommon, but present.

Yet, each group harbors prejudices against the other. One hears a story of shoddy work and waves the whole people off, “That’s just how lazy they are.” Another hears of a theft and shrugs with dismissal, “Malientes, they are all like that.” In each group, someone gripes about another.

Like everywhere else. Here, more direct. In my old home, in the States, it is dressed in a polite language of evasive but discernible contempt. You spot it once you know how to read between the lines. Sadly, you no longer need to - the prejudice is now in the open.

Here, the prejudice spans the spectrum of kitchen gripes to debilitating policies packaged into a photoshopped image of progress. Or a blatant denial of opportunity, when a fishing permit is yanked from a fisherman in an act of petty vengeance. And with that, yanking the schoolbooks from the fishermen’s kids.

Maybe it is an inevitable consequence of soft boundaries emplaced by cultural preservation? Such is the choice, some say, integration or division. Yet, another choice is respect and an even playing field.

The Western democracies have been aspiring to this ideal, but the record is dismal. In the democracies, we see the examples of diverse cultures co-existing without continuing violence. We also see the exploitation of cultural diversity by populist politicians, whipping up passion along the easily definable boundaries.

But erasing the cultural uniqueness and blending it into a grey uniform goo will not solve the prejudice. If not cultures, the populist will use geography. If not geography, they will use class. If not class, then the color of your football team’s jersey. They will zero in on how you are special and how others want to take it away from you.

Many will latch on, propelled by our millennia-long impetus to find a clique. The poison of the blind pull to belong by defining differences is the hardest to resist.

This afternoon, we are going to Coquitos and Bibi’s. Two beautiful places on the beach, owned by a successful Afro-Caribbean woman. I’ll ask my German bartender about his week. Sip a drink from the Colombian master of mojitos. Get a hug from a taller-than-usual local friend and a fist-bump from another. Then we will drink and watch people dance. People drink and mix, but at the end of each song, everyone drifts back to their own cliques.

We all co-exist in this bar with quiet acceptance and respect that people afford to another individual human. Yet, we are less charitable towards entire groups. Everyone belongs somewhere here tonight, but tomorrow, we separate again to build the future where not everyone will belong.