Visit to Panama (continued) | The Montreal Journal

Panama is a relatively stable country, as I said in my previous column. This is undoubtedly due to its economic prosperity, coming largely from the income generated by the canal which crosses the country from the Pacific to the Atlantic. It looks like a middle class country, judging by the good housing conditions. Only the Indians seem to have been excluded from this windfall. They live mainly in old wooden houses, often dilapidated, on a small plot of land where they grow what they need to eat. Everyone seems busy in economic activities, and unlike Montreal, we don’t see any of them begging on street corners or in front of businesses. The government has created entire villages here and there for the local mixed-race population, with neat row houses. New kind of HLM. But this initiative does not suit everyone. The new city dwellers, although they have gained in comfort and health, have lost a certain autonomy, their space, their land where fruit trees and various vegetables grew. And as progress has a price, they must now pay rent to the government for their new home.

The Bocas del Toro archipelago, which I visited with my daughter and her husband, seems, with its numerous islands, a separate territory, a sort of Venice in Quebec but exotic as can be. My daughter and her husband ran a restaurant there for a good fifteen years. There is a large colony of expatriates from all over the place. From the United States, Quebec, Canada, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Argentina, Holland, South Africa, China, France, like Philippe who still works for Médecins sans frontières and who between two trips to risk areas, peacefully cultivates his garden on the island. Among them, some artists, sculptors, musicians. All these beautiful people – some of these expatriates have been here for thirty years like my daughter and her husband – communicate in French, English and Spanish and live in real harmony with the local population who find their benefit there. We greet each other in the street, we invite each other to the restaurant or home to comment on the latest news, we check in on the children, we celebrate around a well-stocked table, with plenty of beers and Abuelo rum.

Everyone has their own little personal story to explain their arrival in these green and enchanting islands, in the middle of an exotic fauna populated by howler monkeys, sloths and talkative parrots: need for a change of scenery, taste for adventure, work, romantic encounter , desire to start a new life, or simple chance. But everyone owns a house, a piece of land, a B&B that is rented to passing tourists. As for the Chinese, who have been settled for several generations – it is said that several fled Mao’s communist China in 1949, then Fidel’s socialist island, ten years later, to settle here in Panama – they almost all own the food stores of the archipelago and they of course speak the language of the country, Spanish, which contributes to their perfect integration.

Here, in Bocas, as we say colloquially, we move from one point to another like in Venice, on the water. But two major differences: firstly, the gondolas are replaced by motorized rowboats which can accommodate around twenty people. These shared taxis cost one or two dollars, depending on the distance. Secondly, the motorized boats do not take narrow, quiet canals but navigate the high seas, sometimes with its treacherous waves, like the one that almost swept us away the other evening on our way to a restaurant.

Living in Bocas or in the mountains (two or three hours by boat and road from the archipelago), has many advantages. Here, zero stress. Everything is bathed in a healthy and joyful coexistence, surrounded by a warm sea and sandy beaches. Will this calm and simple joy of living still exist when greedy real estate developers transform the archipelago into Wall Disney, with its McDonald’s and Subway? The mountain will always remain, with its moon rainbows, as a last refuge.

Havana is cinema

Yesterday, December 8, the 44th International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana was inaugurated. The festival, which will last until December 17 – movie buffs, you still have time to get there, especially since Air Transat has resumed its direct Montreal-Havana flights – will offer some 199 works in different categories, from feature film to short film, between fiction and non-fiction, documentary, contemporary panorama, animation, screened in five cinemas in the capital: 23 y 12, Acapulco, Yara, Charlie Chaplin and La Rampa. Among these works, 39 are Cuban. Brazil, Mexico and Argentina are the most present countries, followed by Colombia and Chile. There will be a tribute to the Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel. French actress and director Agnès Jaoui will be on site. You can get a passport, which gives you the right to 8 entries, for a ridiculous price, in these five cinemas. As in any good festival, several prizes will be awarded in the different usual categories. Happy festival!