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This year's twenty-third annual Antillean Fair took place at the usual time and place, on the grounds of the Afro-Antillean Museum of Panama on the Saturday and Sunday of Carnival.

The event, which is the main fundraiser of the year for SAMAAP (the Society of Friends of the Afro-Antillean Museum of Panama), always brings visitors from the US. This year, however, it as expected did not match last year's centennial-related massive tourist influx. Nevertheless, this reporter had a lively discussion about US and Panamanian drug laws with a New York psychiatrist who, like me, was born in Colon Hospital, and met a number of other people down here from the states for family reunions and Carnival partying

There was plenty of food, drink, music, dancing and art. Inside the museum, there were continuous showings of "Diggers," a New York public television feature about the black people who formed the great majority of the multinational and multiracial Panama Canal construction force. A lot of Panamanians --- and Americans --- of West Indian descent came with their children and grandchildren to teach the youngsters who they are.

This little boy liked his new hat, but it seems that he'll have to grow into it.

This congo mask that adorned the stage is of colonial black rather than West Indian cultural heritage. The West Indian community came to Panama in great waves of immigration from Jamaica, Barbados and many other islands as well as from the Caribbean littoral of the American mainland, first to build the Panama Railraod in the middle of the 19th century, later for the French and American phases of Panama Canal construction and to establish the banana plantations of Bocas del Toro and Chiriqui. But long before that the Spaniards imported African slaves, who for example built Panama Viejo, Portobelo, Fort San Lorenzo and much of the Casco Viejo. Many black slaves escaped to the jungle, where they founded villages on the West African model and developed the Cimarron culture that today survives in congo dancing, the Atlantic side's version of diablitos and masks like this one.

Artist Victor Bruce, here doing a portrait at his booth, was the recipient of a special homage at this year's fair.

Ethelbert Mapp was this year's master of ceremonies.

The spirit of pan-Africanist pioneer Marcus Garvey --- who practiced journalism in Panama as a young man --- lives in Panama, and was celebrated at the Rastafarian community's booth. The Rastas, who assign a divine role to the late Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, consider Garvey a prophet because he predicted that a great black prince would arise and defeat a European army to signal the beginning of the end of white domination over Africa. Ras Tafari Makonnen (ras being the Amharic word for an Ethiopian prince and Tafari Makonnen being Selassie's name before he ascended to the throne) did indeed lead his army to victory over the invading Italians, and went on to found the Organization of African Unity and lead the movement for decolonization. The Rastas have a center in La Chorrera and play an important role in the coalition of groups pressing for a better economic deal for Colon. You can contact Panama's Rastafarian community by email through iastafari@cwpanama.net.

In the vendors' booths at this year's Antillean Fair it was possible to buy a flesh-colored doll for a black girl...

... or a dashiki for her grandfather.

You know it's an election year when the mayor shows up at the fair to press the flesh. But to be fair, Panama City Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro has throughout his years in office used his powers to oppose racial discrimination and in many other ways shown himself to be a friend of the capital's large black community. A number of other politicians from several parties provided tents to give people a little shade, folding chairs to sit on and other in-kind support. While at the fair Navarro was advised of the precarious state of the museum's archive of the Panama Tribune, an English-language West Indian community weekly that was published on acidic newsprint between the late 1920s and mid-1970s. The bound collection of the Tribune needs to be microfilmed at once lest it completely crumble and be lost forever. The city has a system of modest municipal libraries, and Navarro agreed to preserve this valuable historical archive for it. Navarro, who according to polls enjoys a big lead in his bid for re-election, has as his principal opponent a black woman, educator and former legislator Mariela Jiménez.

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