Arrested in Panama |
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| Written by Matt Landau |
| Wednesday, 07 October 2009 14:01 |
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I've always enjoyed drinking beer outside and have done so for the majority of my adult life until, at the age of 24, I was arrested for it. This was in Panama, which makes the infraction all the more embarrassing. Tell someone you got arrested in Panama and they rationally assume that, after stealing someone's car in a drug transaction gone bad, you shot an innocent grandmother in the leg with a pistol, the last part, the unregistered firearm, being illegal under Panamanian law. "Anything goes," that's the impression I had, so when two cops came up from behind Casey and me for drinking in public, it was a true surprise.
Before our run-in with the police, we spent a morning having cheap beer at a local casino and watching sports. This was back in the days of Panama when hoards of prostitutes roamed with Serengeti-like appetites through the lobbies of casinos like the one we were in. Along the same wildlife lines, we enjoyed watching the prostitutes as if they were lions in a zoo. "Look but don't touch," I liked to say to myself. It was after the casino that we were in Obarrio with a beer in hand, when the cop car pulled up and threw us in the back seat. Obarrio's a nice neighborhood. It's not like Chorillo where you see people drinking in the street all the time. Which is to say, I tend to think that it was less the egregiousness of our actions and more the fact that we stood out that got the cops attention. Think Jed Clampett loitering in the lobby of Lutèce. It was my first and only ride in a Panamanian police car - spacious and smelling of pine - and when we arrived at the station, we sat down next to a terribly pathetic bunch of misfits. Street vendors, bonafied drunkards, and busty prostitutes (in fact, probably some that we'd seen earlier at the casino) all hobbled together. In a multiple choice question regarding common professions, these people would indelibly be the group labeled "other." I remember one moment when this delinquent tried explaining to the hookers the easiest way to get a residency visa. It was like the blind leading the blind. "What did we do?" I asked when a man, a discernibly superior officer, approached. The man pointed to a frame on the wall. It wasn't written in the normal type of Spanish that I'm familiar with - the simple kind of restaurant menus and road signs. This was a complex Spanish with lots of long words and judicial terminology. (The type of thing I probably wouldn't understand were it in English.) It reminded me of a time studying in Spain I made the mistake of taking Ancient Spanish Literature. When handed the mid-term, I understood no more than twenty percent of the questions, which accordingly spoke for my ability to answer them in essay form. "Drinking in public?" I said, and one of the officers pulled an imaginary beer bottle from his pocket, drank it, then threw it on the ground. "Breaking?" I suggested. "Are we arrested for breaking things?" The officer rubbed his fingers together suggesting a small bribe. I offered him a stick of gum. Casey, much more comfortable in these scenarios than me at the time, suggested we just be patient, that upon realizing we weren't willing to pay a bribe, and also that we were harmless gringos, they'd let us go. So I sat down and proceeded to be a good little prisoner until, maybe five minutes later, the officer man suggested we leave. "I'll take that piece of gum now," he said on our way out. "Do me a favor and come back when you get a chance and bring that gum."
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Comments (1)
  written by Jim Strummer , November 01, 2009 Hi - I know you talk about water but you do mention beer and I wonder: are there any microbreweries in Panama? If there are, where are they and how would ytou rank them? A friend told me about a small place mid-country that makes a beer called "chiriscoo" and wondered if you where it is? Searched online and found nothing. Thanks
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| Last Updated on Wednesday, 07 October 2009 14:02 |
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