Congos y diablos en Portobello

This past weekend, I traveled all the way from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic side.  It's a lot easier to do in Panama than in the U.S., that's for sure!  Even with Panama roads, driving from Panama City to Portobello, which includes a bunch of driving along the Caribbean shore, took about 2 or 2.5 hours.

I was going as part of a road trip to see Portobello's annual "Congos y Diablos" festival, which celebrates the history of the area from the point of view of the formerly enslaved people. It's a raucous celebration.  The "Congos" part of the title refers to the Congolese who were brought to the country as slaves, and the "Diablos" are the Spanish overseers. 

Before the festival started, we got to explore a bit of the history of Portobello itself, a city founded in the 1500's.  One of the beautiful old buildings has been preserved and turned into an interactive museum.  

Clearly, we need to play the drums.  We did it. 

"El fin de la esclavitud" -- The end of Slavery.
The U.S. (in the right hand column, listed as "EE UU", for "Estados Unidos")
was late to the party when it came to abolishing slavery. 

After the museum, we got to visit the well-preserved ruins of Fuerte San Geronimo, designed to protect the town from marauding pirates.

The entrance to the fort includes a wooden walkway
and colorful flags.

Inside the fort, large grassy yards. 
Along the seawall, there are openings where rows
of canons poke through.

Through the openings, the bay.  

Coming down a walkway away from the sea, 
we can see the town of Portobello ahead, 
including the spire of the Purple Church that contains
a famous Black Jesus statue.  There's a whole
history of this statue, but I didn't grasp it very well.

There was a little blue crab hanging out under an overhang
in the fort.  It made me smile. 

The town is picturesque.  We ducked into this shop
to buy a t-shirt for one of our road trippers.  I love the
colorful artwork (the crown of the woman in the mural
has mirrors for jewels, apparently to keep the devil away).
Her skirt is a traditional skirt for this region.

We had lunch at a lovely little restaurant tucked behind some houses. 
The woman in the photo was one of my road trip mates;
she's wearing her newly purchased t-shirt and eating "pipa" --
that thing in front of her is two halves of the same coconut. 
Coconuts don't always look like the pictures we see in the U.S.!

While we were at Fort San Geronimo, we saw a bunch of diablo masks lined up along a wall; their owners were touring the fort just like we were.  On of my road trip mates urged me to ask if I could try one on.  

A line-up of diablo masks.

I needed very little urging.  I jumped at the chance!
In fact, I danced at the chance.  There's a video below.

After we had lunch, we went to the festival with performances.  

Many audience members had their umbrellas up,
not for rain, but to guard against the sun.  
Man, it's hot here in Panama!

We went up on to the hill, where there was uneven terrain
but better visibility and shade.  The stage is decorated in red and black.

The first group to perform drummed and sang,
and there were dancers in the grass below
doing some nifty dancing.

I didn't get pictures of the rest of the singers and/or drummers.  After the first group of dancers left, the diablos came out onto the grass.  The Panamanians among my road-trip group were all grooving and going "isn't this great?!", and the U.S. members of my group were all really confused and wondering to ourselves "um, . . .when is it going to start? Is this it?".  What we saw was the diablos wandering around through the field randomly, with other men following them around blowing whistles at them, like referees.  The gringos kept expecting a dance.  A dance didn't happen.  

Rather, the diablos are supposed to be relatively disorganized; they represent the evil oversees, after all.  They carry whips and threaten the whistleblowers.  

Here's a bit more of a close-up in the street, after the show. 
The guy in the red shirt is one of the ones blowing whistles.
The diablos where large shoes that make it hard to walk; 
they have bells on their legs, and they carry whips.  

There singers on stage also danced, but not in a choreographed way; it was all very ad hoc.  The singing was great.  The cumulative effect was not at all what I was expecting, but of course that's what it means to experience whole new cultures and to challenge assumptions. It was certainly a memorable experience.

This instagram reel captures the music and costumes better than I could. I love the music!

I'm not sure if I can get this video below to work: if it does, it's about 7 seconds of me dancing in a mask.  When I'd seen the masks before, I assumed they were wooden and couldn't imagine wearing one. I'm glad I got to see it from the inside!  It's paper mache with foam padding inside, and held on with an adjustable velcro at the back.  It actually wasn't uncomfortable!  (Although I could imagine it might grow cumbersome if you're wearing it for a long time in the heat and humidity, like these diablos did).

So much fun!

Our road-tripping crew, at the corner of Fort San Geronimo.