Roberto is from Bastimentos Island a small located close to the border of Costa Rica in Panama’s Caribben waters. The island feels worlds away from the interior cowboy culture of Panama. This is little Jamaica, where you can hear more “guari guari,” a Jamaican style dialect of English, than you will Spanish. Caribbean migrants came to work on the previously bustling banana plantations over a hundred years ago, but when that industry collapsed a few decades ago there was nothing left for the people. The town of Old Bank on Bastimentos became dilapidated, another “sleepy Caribbean town” with development frozen in time…that is, untl the tourists started to come.
Unfortunately despite the recent exponential development of the tourism industry by foreigners, there are only a few ways for locals to take advantage of it. One may drive a boat or a taxi, become a tour guide, sell drugs, or as Roberto does, try to get whatever one can with a scam. Roberto is friendly and a tad sensitive, and therefore generally an unsuccessful hustler. He apologetically returns bikes he steals after he is found out. He steals cell phones from rich realtors, but as they recall the incident it is with a gleeful smile because Roberto is a charming guy. He manically shows you around the island for hours and then asks you for a dollar, after you have witnessed him randomly handing out dollars to his neighbors all day. He once told me he had all the marijuana in the world in his house and then told me he could take me to even more marijuana in a nearby field. He did not seem to mind too much when I declined his offer and happily returned to frantically attending his small flower garden with his machete.
Rose Marie Cromwell, 24, graduated from Maryland Institute College of Art, and traveled to Cuba after receiving the Meyers Traveling Fellowship. Her photographs from this trip appear 25 Under 25: Up and Coming American Photographers Volume 2 (powerHouse Books). In 2007, Cromwell went to Panama City, Panama, as a United States Fulbright Scholar to document the Afro-Antillean community. Her work from this series exhibited at Diablo Rosso Gallery, Panama City.
