Chorrillo, located in the San Felipe district of Panama City in the Republic of Panama, is one of the most historically important areas of the city, but coincidentally also one of the most impoverished areas of the country. Hometown of Hall of Fame boxer Roberto “Hands of Stone” Durán, the people who live in the area of El Chorrillo exemplify the huge gap between the rich and the poor Panama possesses, one of the largest gaps per capita in the region, and even though they’re arguably amongst the hardest workers you’ll ever find anywhere, the reputation the area has earned tends to put a dark spot on any résumé.

Between el Chorrillo and Río Abajo, most of the origins of modern criminal activity can be rooted back to any of said areas. Dictatorships and governments come and go, and Chorrillo has always been ignored; this has been the case for decades. The last time there was any glimmer of hope for the people of Chorrillo, according to residents themselves (who were alive at the time, of course), was the time during General Omar Torrijos Herrera’s dictatorship. Because the General came from the slums and clawed his way up until becoming the de facto leader of the country, he paid special attention to the most impoverished areas of the country, going to said districts personally in order to make sure everything was in order and nobody needed a thing. With the death of General Torrijos and ascension to power of General Noriega, this particular sir’s dictatorship wasn’t nearly as colorful as his predecessor’s.

Chorrillo has always been in the center of civil unrest and turmoil, and a great example of this was during General Noriega’s dictatorship. A former CIA informant, during his time in the U.S. government’s pocket he used his status in order to abuse power, each passing month seeing more and more dastardly acts. Executions, money laundering and drug trafficking ran rampant in Panama as General Noriega made of Panama a criminal’s paradise… running all of his operations from the National Defense Force’s (Fuerza de Defensa Nacional) headquarters smack-dab in the middle of El Chorrillo. The infamous Modelo Prison (Cárcel Modelo) was also located in El Chorrillo, and both sites were the backgrounds for numerous “disappearances” and million-dollar drug deals with South American cartels, all of this while Chorrillo rotted all around them. Violence and crime escalated to the levels seen today, and the estimated 40% of the country’s unemployment rate can be seen most vividly here, thanks in large part to Noriega’s dictatorship. It all came to a head when during the night of December 20^th the U.S. Army executed the “Just Cause” operation to debunk General Noriega from power the best way they knew how: by bombing the hell out of El Chorrillo.

Many sociologists, among them celebrated Panamanian author Raúl Léis, have written several essays on El Chorrillo and how the “Just Cause” operation is such a defining moment in the neighborhood’s history. According to reports by the University of Panama, 442 significant explosions were recorded during the first 12 hours of the invasion… one explosion every two minutes; the shots fired by the brand-new Apache helicopters were aimed at the National Defense Force headquarters, where Noriega was suspected to be at the time of the strike. The fires that the explosions subsequently caused destroyed the neighborhood as Panama woke up in flames with sounds of explosions and gunfire. Over 4,000 homes were burned to the ground, and even though the official civilian casualties were said to be an estimated 200-600 (the numbers handled by the CIA), residents of Chorrillo and Panamanians at large agree that the real numbers are in the ballpark of anywhere between 2,500 to 5,000 as a result of the invasion and riots it inevitably caused. There are no official numbers though, and it’s very likely no one will ever know the truth of what happened. The U.S. troops positioned on the ground floor did not allow Panamanian firefighters to do their job and let the neighborhood be destroyed because of it.

Considering that El Chorrillo has always been a vital part of Panama City as a capital, a defining factor in the relocation of the nation’s capital after Henry Morgan’s pirate fleet ransacked the old city and home of many of the Panama Canal workers during the time of its construction, it has been mostly ignored by everyone with power over the last few decades. A working class neighborhood if there ever was one, El Chorrillo is currently a highly dangerous area for both residents and tourists alike… Panama’s own “City of God,” where all evil resides in. El Chorrillo’s residents wish every day for the glory days of the neighborhood to return, times that have been long gone since the construction of the Panama Canal, and perhaps that moment will come soon. For the time being though, it is an example of just how badly Panama’s wealth distribution is handled.

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Filed under: History on March 10th, 2008