Where I Go: Seeing Panama City Through the Eyes of Elders

Experiencing the History of Black Life in the Country Where I Was Born

In 2001, I made my first visit as an adult to Panama City, Panama. The city was both familiar and alien to me. My family migrated to the United States when I was 11, but our home—where my great-grandparents, cousins, and aunts and uncles resided, where I attended elementary school, and where I made my first best friends—had been in the province of Colón, on the Atlantic side of the isthmus. Still, I recognized the sounds, smells, and bustle of the city. I spotted the same type of diablos rojos …