In retrospect, this story would have been better as a photo feature, but for the fact that my tripod was at the beach on the night in question.

The holiday season is a time for parades, and the last major one of the year, the Panama City Mayor's Christmas Parade, was underway as this issue of The Panama News being uploaded. However, this reporter caught the capital's penultimate major procession of the year on November 27, an evening event in which the Cuerpo de Bomberos marched by torchlight down Via España from the banking area to the firefighters' monument in Plaza Cinco de Mayo.

Cinco de Mayo is a major Mexican holiday, the anniversary of Mexico's victory under Benito Juarez over the French and local puppet forces supporting Emperor Maximilian. In the US grocery market, it makes May 5 the biggest day for avocados, as Mexican-Americans and those who celebrate with them make oceans of guacamole.

Panama's Plaza Cinco de Mayo has nothing to do with the Mexican holiday. Here May 5 is the anniversary of El Polovorin, an explosion at an illegal fireworks factory touched off when a blaze at an adjacent building spread, killing and wounding many firefighters in the line of duty. The bomberos (firefighters) celebrate Cinco de Mayo as a somber occasion, and their bands put on their spiffy dress uniforms and are among the main attractions in the nation's patriotic parades. The coolest bombero parade of the year, however, is on November 27, when they march by torchlight through Panama City to mark the November 28, 1885 establishment of the Cuerpo de Bomberos.

Why not march on the 28th? That's the anniversary of Panamanian independence from Spain, and thus an inappropriate occasion for the bomberos to claim exclusive dibs on a day that all Panamanians should rightfully celebrate.

Anyway, my tripod was at the farm on the beach in Las Uvas and my flash was dead. Had I had both my flash and my tripod handy, I would have used the latter and probably not the former. True, my photojournalist colleagues from all the dailies were there, and they were using their flashes but not tripods. These guys are in general much better photographers than I am, and their shots of firefighters marching in line holding aloft torches, or of President Moscoso and the two children representing the 20/30 Club telethon for the Children's Hospital at the head of the procession, all turned out well enough. (If you want to see those, go to La Prensa or El Panama America, click onto their archives and pull up their November 28 editions.) But I'm different and The Panama News is different, and to my eye, standing on the south side of Via España in Perejil where the Calle Tercera ends, the really cool scene was looking west once a substantial part of the parade had marched by and reached the point where Via España bears slightly left and turns into Avenida Central.

I was reminded of a magma flow. It looked like a river of fire coursing down the street, a scene that would have looked even more so had it been recorded by a camera affixed to a tripod with its shutter held open for a few seconds.

Ah, but if wishes were horses....

It was still a fun parade to watch and report, with various interesting nuances and social statements, representations of the Cuerpo de Bomberos and the work they do, and bands that make just about every Panamanian kid want to grow up to be a bombero.

With an unpopular president in her bombero uniform at the head of the parade, nobody booed, but nobody cheered. For gringos disrespect is part of the national culture, but for Panamanians it's a misdemeanor. Still, had the president been marching alone there probably would have been some expressions of derision. However, beside her were the telethon kids, and behind them were representatives of the heroic New York Fire Department. The kids and the NYFD merited applause, but unfortunately the president's proximity cheated them out of this.

But on came the rest of the parade, officers dressed in blue, rank-and-file firefighters in red.

Panama's Cuerpo de Bomberos has 13 companies, each with a core of full-time professionals and a mass of volunteers. All companies were represented on this occasion, each in their somewhat different working uniforms, most of them wearing their helmets.

But this is not all there is to the fire department, and it wasn't all there was to the parade.

Behind the president's contingent were the women in polleras and men in montunos. The companies marched by numbers, with Company One toward the vanguard. Interspersed among the numbered units, however, were the various specialists.

There were a couple of orange-shirted contingents from SINAPROC, the nation's disaster relief service. There were the search and rescue teams that respond to emergencies like planes going down on jungle-covered mountains. "Operaciones," the fire department's phone dispatchers, marched in their white uniforms. The Emergency Medical Teams, decked out in their scrubs, marched behind their ambulances.

Several squads of dalmations went by, receiving wild applause and dishes of water from people along the way. The Fire Scouts, a mixed boys' and girls' scouting organization sponsored by the Cuerpo de Bomberos, also got plenty of cheers.

The biggest shows of approval were for the three bands and for volunteers from the neighborhood. No doubt it had been the same when the parade had passed La Cresta and other areas up Via España, and would be the case later when the bomberos made their way down Central. People turned out in force this night to support those upon whom our lives may very well depend in an emergency.

Finally the last band --- the men and women from Chepo, who wore spiffy black berets instead of helmets --- flowed on with the river of fire toward the monument to the Martyrs of El Polvorin. Then people went home. There was no big traffic jam. People had come on foot, and went home on foot, greeting neighbors as they went. The Cuerpo de Bomberos protects the community, depends upon the community for volunteers, and brings the community together during their annual torchlight parade.