Panamá City Local Customs

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OK, I´m a beer connosuer, I have to check out the local brews wherever I go. Panamainian beers were unknown to me before I moved here. I have found them to be a pleasant surprise.
They have an award winning beer now, Cerveza Panama was given a gold medal at the International Brewers Contest in 2008. It is my prefered local beer, but the others are also very drinkable and perfect for the climate, a real treat on a hot day! I love to sit on my patio nearly every evening, and listen to the forest and look at the stars with a local beer.
The locals generally get one of the five local beers; Atlas, Balboa, Cristal, Panama, or Soberana.
The first two are from Cervezaria National and Atlas is the most popular, sort of the Budweiser of Panama, but not really the best tasting, in my humble opinion. Balboa is better tasting, but not as good as the latter two. Panama is made by Cervezaria de Panama in Chiriqui. My wife tells me the brewmaster is German, and this beer is definetely a German-style Lager. It is the best tasting to me, and the one I prefer to drink. I didn´t try it at first because I read that it wasn´t that good, but now that I tried it, I think the person who judged this beer as substandard was all wet! Soberana, is also good, it is my second favorite of the locals. It is a nice, light beer and is great for a hot day! Cristal is a pilsner that is also made by Cervezaria de Panama, that is a decent pilsner, but not as good as Cerveza Panama.
I hope if you like beer and visit Panama, that you will try the local beers. For one thing, they are cheap. A returnable bottle is 35-40 cents, plus ten cent deposit. But they are only 9.5 ounces. They sell 12 ounce cans for about 55 cents, each, usually they are a little cheaper in the larger super markets than the local "Supermercados", which are convenience stores. Except in Panama City, the beers are sold loose on the shelf in bottles or just in returnable plastic cases, or loose or only in six-packs in cans; but now you can get blister-wrapped 12-packs of Atlas and Balboa. They only tend to come in the 9.5 oz bottles or 12 oz. cans. I have gotten 12 oz bottles of Soberana and Balboa in restaurants, however, I have not seen that size in the stores except for one liquor store in Panama City. That may be a limited thing.
Well, not all Panamanians are as depicted in the attached photo, but Panama is third in per capita beer consumption in Latin America, behind Mexico and Venezuela. They are also in the top ten in the world. Panamanians do love their Atlas beer! Also brewed here by license or because the brewery is owned by the parent company; Budweiser, and Guiness Stout.

Salsa is very popular in Panama, and among the most popular artists are the siblings Samy and Sandra Sandoval. They are like gods here. Sandra had a baby in February and they had hourly updates on the local TV stations when she was in labor! They also had a two-hour TV special on her pregnancy during this time!
When we were in Chitré for New Years, the Sandovals filmed a music video for Carnival at that time. We went to watch them film the video, which everyone was invited to, so they could have as many people there as possible to give it a Carnival atmosphere. Which wasn´t a problem as New Year´s Eve is like Carnival in Panama, anyway, with parades and floats and queens, etc.
The Sandovals have a very pop formula for their songs. Samy plays the accordion and Sandra sings. Most are love ballads or songs about relationships.

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The local native costume for women is the pollera. The pollera is worn at any festive occasion and all festive occasions here have a contest for a queen, who invariably wears a pollera for the occasion. Polleras are inticrately beaded and embroidered with floral designs on them. They can cost thousands of dollars. The traditional jewelry and pearl head pieces that go with them are also very costly and are handed down from generation to generation in a family. Some people rent out their polleras, jewelry and head pieces to other women to wear in paegants and fiestas, because there are so many fiestas and paegents throughout the year, they can make a good living at renting these items out. If someone who holds these items dies without a will, you can be sure the surviving family members will fight over who gets them!

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Besides polleras Panamanians have other traditional garb they wear for fiestas, or other special occasions, sometimes every day. It's not unusual to see men, especially, wearing guayabara shirts to work. They are cool, and dressy at the same time. They usually are light solid pastel colored or white, with plaits and embroidered strips on the front and back of the shirt. Very handsome looking, but a pain to iron, believe me! They also have a similar shirt that has thin blue and white stripes, multicolored buttons and a placate front with a skirted waist. These shirts are typically worn by folklorico dancers and by men on their wedding day. Men may also wear a purse or pouch with a long cord over the shoulder, cross-chest. Many men in Panama wear the sombrero montuno, it is a brimmed hat made of grass fiber that is woven in a pattern. Some of the fibers are dyed to enhance the pattern of the hat. Panama hats are not really Panamanian, they were invented in Ecuador, but like the so-called Panama hats, the finer the weave and lighter the color, the more costly the hat. Montunos cost anywhere from $10-over $200 depending on the quality of the fibers and the design of the weave.
In a traditional Panamanian wedding, the groom rides to pick up the bride on a horse, which they both ride to the church. The groom wears a striped shirt, as described above and a montuno with black pants and shoes. The bride wears a white camisa (blouse), printed skirt, and sandals. The groom carries an umbrella to hold over the bride to protect her from the sun or rain (depending on the time of year).
Camposinos (farmers) generally wear light-colored cloth clothes with fringes and the montuno. They also carry a pouch or purse with a cord over-the-shoulder and cross-chest. Sometimes they wear headbands as well.
One sees men wear traditional clothing more than women. The native, Kuna Yala, Ngobe Bugle women usually wear traditional clothes more than the Latinas.

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Panamanians eat as much rice as many Asian cultures, which means, nearly every meal. They have it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Every type of restaurant that serves Panamanian dished serves rice with them.
Usually Panamanians make rice with shredded chicken or guangou, a type of bean.
The Panamanians also love sancocho, which is a chicken soup that is made with chicken stock broth and vegtables, usually; carrot, ñamé, celery, and cilantro, with a chicken leg thrown in. One gets a side dish of rice with it (of course). To eat it traditionally, one takes a spoonful of rice and carefully lets the broth flow onto the spoon, soaking the rice. One picks up the chicken drumstick and uses the hands.
Panama has many types of exotic fruits and vegtables. Veggies include, ñamé and yucca, which are used like potatoes. Usually ñamé is used in soups, especially sancocho, and made into dumplings. Yucca is usually fried like french fries or chips, and is also used as a batter coating for some types of empanadas. When I first came here, I thought fried yucca were cottage fried potatoes! There is also otoé, which is also a root vegtable used like potatoes, and the above mentioned guangou, which is a bean that looks somewhat like a large, green lentil, usually cooked with rice.
Among the fruits are; maracuya, a fruit that makes a whitish, tart juice. guanabana, which is green and tart, and what inspired the quayaberra shirt for men, that has four pockets so one can pick guanabana and put them in the pockets. It´s juice is orange-coloured, it looks like orange juice, but definitely doesn´t taste like it!
Panamanians also loved grilled meat, there are parrilladas everywhere. There are street vendors who sell beef brochets for a quarter. It is considered a snack here. They finish them off with some picanté sauce over an open flame before they give them to you, to give them a spicy, smoky flavour.
There are also street vendors that sell barbequed chicken, from 1/4 to a whole chicken, it is very good, and very inexpensive.
Of course Panamanians love fish dishes. The most popular are corvina (choker), tuna, shrimp, langosto (like prawns), and lobster. One can also find dorado, grouper, snapper, wahoo and rooster fish on menus in some places or up-scale restaurants in Panama City.

Polleras aren't complete unless they have the pearl-laden headpieces displayed here. They are also ornamented with gold. These are very costly and families hand them down from generation-to-generation. Often families rent these headpieces out to augment their income. There are many parades and festivals in Panama, so there are many opportunities to rent these out to the queens and other pollera-wearing women of these local celebrations.

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On the east end of Panama City, are the ruins of the site of the original Panama City. It was first settled in the mid-16th Century, and was there until Captain Morgan pillaged it and the Colonial Spaniards decided to move the town to a more defensible site, where Casco Viejo is now. The area of Panama Viejo wasn´t really reinhabited until the 20th Century again.
The pictures below are of a moving, stageless play that was performed on the grounds of the Panama Viejo Museum and Cultural Centre in March, 2008. It depicted the original governor of Panama and other pioneer Panamanians who just arrived from Spain and how life was at that time. Panamanians love cultural or historical plays, their Passion Plays on Good Friday are legendary, and last all day! They do them in real time! But that´s another story. We were fortunate enough to find out about this event and go to it, as it is very close to where my wife and I live in Panama City (We walked over). The City and the Tourist Ministry put these events such as this on almost every month.

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Plenty of people spend a small fortune for trips outside the city to visit "authentic" native populations... the nearest to the city would be a day trip to settlements along the Chagres river to the Embera indians, while a farthest and multi-day one would be to the San Blas islands to spend some time with the Kuna indians,

I must admit that I was tempted to go to the Embera village, but my husband put a clear veto to my proposal... for no reason at all. He suggested that we'd spend a relaxing day in the city, just casually strolling about. On the map I saw that the Avenida Central would be a good place to go, since it's a pedestrian avenue. Well, it turned out that there were many Kuna indians walking about too, doing some shopping AND wearing their traditional clothes... obviously not for the tourists (we were possibly the only foreigners, there).

Kunas' traditional clothes, for women at least, consist in colorful skirts, red and yellow head scarf, long strings of arm and leg beads, gold nose rings, earrings and a panel in their blouses known as molas. Lesson learned. Don't look for artificial tribes when you have the real people migling in the city with you, and not for you. Look at my travelogue if you want to see more pictures.