For the first stop on our Azuero Backroad Discoveries journey we have chosen the small town of Paritilla, a corregimiento (township) in the Pocri District of Los Santos Province located in the Azuero peninsula of Panama. Paritilla, like many small towns, has lost population to larger cities. It had 840 people as of 2000.
Taking the road to Paritilla you pass through farmland with pastures full of cows, rice fields and ponds. This time of year, in the rainy season, the countryside is green and lush. A sight to behold.
As the Covid-19 virus visited all countries around the world, even the little town of Paritilla had two cases. We in the Azuero have been pretty lucky. With the lockdown we were able to keep our little peninsula relatively virus free.
With the pandemic most people were not able to work due to the 3 month lock down.
Many found themselves trying to fill their time with anything to ward off boredom. This brings us to our photograph of Boris Vergara. He told us this whimsical structure built out of 2 liter pop bottles had been in place as a peace corps project. After several years it was in disarray and taken down. It was fixed up and reinstalled as Boris’s Pandemic project. It features a building with a hammock (also out of pop bottles) hanging in the front porch area.
To find out more we called a friend, Maruja Quiros, from Paritilla to find out more about this quaint little town. She set up a meeting with a very interesting group of ladies. Maruja Quiros, Dalila Soriano (school rector and retired teacher), Massiel Maleck and Santa Ballesteros met with us to tell us about their community.
For a small community they are very progressive and forward thinking.
Their vision was to bring back the arts that were once common in their area, in part to provide an additional source of income for the townspeople. They got funding to start Asociacion de Agropecuario y Artesanales de Paritilla, a workshop where they can teach and anyone can work on their projects and buy supplies. This has been active for 9 years. Some of the funds came from the Banco Mundial through government programs. Meduca provided some instructors to teach some of these arts. They showed us some of the amazing work the people have done.
Another project – Infoplazas - was done in cooperation with the Fund For New World Development. With this they got computers for their school and for townspeople to use after school hours. In 2015 one of their students won the top prize in a computer competition put on by Microsoft, which brought attention to their efforts.
And yet another initiative had a group of 12 people agreeing to grow seedlings in their homes to supply Pro Eco Azuero for their mission of replanting trees endangered and native to Panama. They were asked to grow 1000 seedlings the first time. The second time around they were asked to grow 5000 seedlings.
This brings us to our next story about Paritilla – Cerro Marchena.
Like many places, Paritilla has a mystery. For them it is a Cerro Marchena, a hill on the outskirts of town. It is said there are places on the hill where nothing can grow. It all started with a man who said he was going to work on Good Friday. Since this was a religious day when no one was supposed to work, many people advised him God would not approve and he should not do it. He simply said “I will work that day even if I have to work with the devil”. Well, Good Friday rolled around, and true to his word, he went up to the hill to cut grass with his machete. Soon another man came to join him. This man was working behind him, and as they worked, this man kept getting closer. He sped up to stay ahead of the other man’s machete, but as hard as he tried, he could not pull ahead. It is said that it was the devil who came to help, as the man who worked on Good Friday died on Day of the Dead.
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