Juan Vasquez - The Secret History of Costaguana

Colón resembled a besieged city. In a way it was, of course, and would continue to be as long as the soldiers of the Tiradores carried on patrolling the muddy streets. Besides, the revolutionaries in Panama City were well aware that independence was only illusory while government troops remained on isthmian territory, and that was the reason for the phone calls and frenetic telegrams that went back and forth between the two cities. “As long as Torres remains in Colón,” José Agustín Arango said to Colonel Shaler, “there is no republic in Panama.” Around half past seven, at the time I was casually approaching a man selling bananas, Arango was dictating a telegraphic message for Porfirio Meléndez, leader of the separatist revolution in Colón. I asked the man if he knew what was going on in the Isthmus, and he shook his head. “Panama is seceding from Colombia,” I told him.

His skin was leathery, his voice worn out, his decaying breath hit me in a dense wave: “I’ve been selling fruit at the railway for fifty years, boss,” he said to me. “As long as there are Gringos with money, I couldn’t care less about the rest.”

A few meters from us, Porfirio Meléndez was receiving this telegram: AS SOON AS TORRES AND TIRADORES BATTALION LEAVE COLÓN PROCLAIM REPUBLIC OF PANAMA. Inside the Railroad Company offices the air was filled with bells and clatter and tense voices and heels on wooden floorboards. José Gabriel Duque, publisher and editor of the Star & Herald , had contributed a thousand dollars in cash to be used for the Colón chapter of the Revolution, and Porfirio Meléndez received it shortly before the following text made its way through the Company’s machines: CONTACT COLONEL TORRES STOP TELL HIM REVOLUTIONARY JUNTA OFFERS TROOPS MONEY AND PASSAGE TO BARRANQUILLA STOP ONLY CONDITION COMPLETE ABANDONMENT OF ARMS AND SWEAR NOT TO TAKE UP ARMED STRUGGLE AGAIN.

“He’ll never accept,” said Meléndez. And he was right.

Torres had made camp in the middle of the street. The word camp , of course, was a bit grand for those tents set up on top of the broken or missing paving stones of Front Street. Across the road from the 4th of July saloon and Maggs & Oates pawnshop were the five hundred soldiers, and what was stranger still, the wives of the higher-ranking officers. They could be seen leaving before dawn and returning with saucepans full of river water; they were seen chatting among themselves with their legs tightly crossed under their petticoats, covering their mouths with a hand when they laughed. Anyway, two messengers from Porfirio Meléndez arrived at this makeshift camp, two smooth-chested young men in rope-soled sandals who had to fix their eyes on the horse shit on the ground to keep from staring at the officers’ wives. Colonel Eliseo Torres received from their tiny hands a letter hurriedly composed at the Railroad Company. “The Panamanian revolution wants to avoid unnecessary bloodshed,” read Colonel Torres, “and in this spirit of reconciliation and future peace, we invite you, Honorable Colonel, to surrender your weapons with no injury whatsoever to your dignity.”

Colonel Torres returned the open letter to the younger of the two messengers (his greasy fingerprints remained on the edge of the page). “Tell that traitor he can stick his revolution up his ass,” he replied. But then he thought better of it. “No, wait. Tell him that I, Colonel Eliseo Torres, send word that he has two hours to liberate the generals detained in Panama City. That if he does not, the Tiradores battalion will not only burn Colón to the ground but will also shoot every Gringo we can find, including women and children.” Readers of the Jury: by the time this ultimatum reached the Railroad Company, by the time the most barbaric message he’d ever had to hear reached the ears of Colonel Shaler, I had already finished my conversation with the banana seller, finished my stroll through the port, I had already seen the silvery flash of the dead fish floating on their sides, washing up on the beach, crossed the railway lines stepping on the rails with the arch of my foot with an infantile delight, like that of children sucking their thumbs, and was walking toward Front Street, breathing the air of the deserted besieged city, the air of days that change history.

Colonel James Shaler, for his part, had summoned Mr. Jessie Hyatt, U.S. Vice Consul in Colón, and between the two of them they were deciding whether Colonel Torres’s threats should be believed or treated as the impetuous flailing of a man in dire political straits. It was not a difficult decision (the image of children slaughtered and women raped by Colombian soldiers came to mind). So seconds later, when I passed the front door of the offices — still not knowing what was happening within — Vice Consul Hyatt had already given the order, and a secretary who spoke no Spanish in spite of having spent twenty-five months in Panama was climbing the stairs to wave a red, white, and blue flag from the roof. Now I think that if I’d looked up at that moment I probably could have seen it. But that doesn’t matter: the flag, without my witnessing, waved in the humid air; and immediately, while Colonel Shaler ordered that the most prominent U.S. citizens be taken to the Freight House, the battleship Nashville docked with great noises from its boilers, huge displacement of Caribbean water, in the port of Colón, and seventy-five marines in impeccable white uniforms — knee-high boots, rifles tilted over their chests — disembarked in perfect order and occupied Freight House, positioning themselves on top of the goods wagons, under the arches of the railway entrance, ready to defend U.S. citizens from any attack. On the other side of the Isthmus there were immediate reactions: when he found out about the landing, Dr. Manuel Amador met with General Huertas, the man who had arrested the generals, and they were preparing to send revolutionary troops to Colón with the sole mission of helping the marines. It was not yet nine in the morning and already Colón-Aspinwall-Gomorrah, that schizophrenic city, was a powder keg ready to explode. It didn’t explode at ten. It didn’t explode at eleven. But at twenty past twelve, or thereabouts, Colonel Eliseo Torres arrived at Front Street and, as the bugle sounded, ordered the Tiradores battalion to fall in and line up in battle formation. He was preparing to eliminate the Nashville marines, to take by force the few available trains in the station and cross the Isthmus to put down the rebellion by the traitors to the nation.

Colonel Torres had gone deaf; the clock, faithful to its habits, continued its impassive ticking; at around one o’clock, General Alejandro Ortiz came from headquarters to dissuade him, but there was no getting through to him; General Orondaste Martinez tried at one-thirty, but Torres remained installed in a parallel reality where neither reason nor prudence could reach him.

“The Gringos are already under protection,” General Martinez told him.

“Well, they won’t be under mine,” said Torres.

“The women and children have gone aboard a neutral ship,” said Martinez, “which is anchored in the harbor. You’re making a fool of yourself, Colonel Torres, and I’ve come to prevent your reputation from sinking any lower.” Martinez explained that the Nashville had loaded its cannons and had them aimed at the Tiradores battalion’s encampment. “The Cartagena scampered off like a rabbit, Colonel,” he said. “You and your men have been left alone. Colonel Torres, do the sensible thing, please. Fall out of this ridiculous formation, save the lives of your men and let us invite you for a drink.”

Those preliminary negotiations — carried out in the dense midday heat, in an atmosphere that seemed to dehydrate the soldiers like pieces of fruit left out in the sun — lasted five minutes. In this space of time, Colonel Torres accepted a summit meeting (in the summit of the Hotel Suizo, just across Front Street), and in the hotel restaurant drank three glasses of papaya juice and ate a sliced watermelon, and still had time to threaten to blow Martinez’s unpatriotic brains out. The bugler serving as his aide, however, didn’t eat anything, because no one offered him anything and his position prevented him from speaking unless his superior officer gave him permission. Then General Alejandro Ortiz joined the delegation. He explained the situation to Colonel Torres: the Tiradores battalion was decapitated; Generals Tovar and Amaya were still prisoners in Panama City, where the revolution was triumphing; all resistance against the independence movement was futile, since it implied confronting the army of the United States as well as the three hundred thousand dollars the Roosevelt government had offered to the cause of the new Republic; Colonel Torres could assume the reality of events or embark on a quixotic crusade that even his own government had given up for lost. By the time of the fourth glass of papaya juice, Colonel Torres began to weaken; by three o’clock in the afternoon he consented to meet Colonel James Shaler at the Railroad Company, and before five he’d agreed to withdraw his troops (the powder in the powder keg) from Front Street and set up camp outside the city. The chosen place was the abandoned hamlet of Christophe Colomb, where just one man lived with his daughter.