Hispanic Panamanians, and even those who are native speakers of indigenous tongues, are increasingly interested in learning English. Mastery of English opens up many job opportunities, especially in the one sector that’s really growing here, tourism.
At the same time Panama’s English-speaking community --- a substantial minority if one considers those who speak English as a first language, and a very large minority if one counts all Panamanians who speak it as a second language --- is hungry for literature.
When the US military bases closed and the canal reverted to 100 percent Panamanian control, many people in this country wrongly presumed that the English-speaking community was gone. The worst of it was that a lot of booksellers also bought into this mistaken impression, and either stopped stocking English-language material altogether, put people who don’t understand the English language and cultures in charge of ordering or tried to “dumb down” to the lowest English denominator.
The resulting paucity of good English-language reading material has strengthened many informal networks, from friends who trade books in certain genres to little literary clubs popping up here and there. It also brings people out to events where English-language books are discussed.
Recently this reporter saw two examples of the trend. One was at the monthly meeting of the Panama Historical Society, at which shipping agent and writer William Y. Boyd talked about writing historical fiction. The other was a talk at Excedra Books by Florida State University - Panama’s Dr. Benjamin Murphy, about this year’s best-selling “The Da Vinci Code.”
Boyd started writing books relatively late in life, after a bout with skin cancer and a bad back kept him out of the sun and away from playing sports. The doctors told him to take it easy but he didn’t want to die of boredom, so he got into writing a book.
“Anyone can write a book,” Boyd says. “The problem is getting it published.”
His first work was based on his experience with an infantry unit in the US Army in World War II. But generally the publishing companies don’t care to look at a book unless it is presented to them by an agent, and agents don’t care to look at a book unless its author has had his or her work published by a major company.
Boyd lucked out, however. A friend with close ties to St. Martin’s Press got his book considered, the publisher liked it and it was a success.
That opened the door to further publications.
Inspired by the statue of Simón Bolívar in New York City’s Central Park and by the knowledge that most Americans know hardly anything about the Great Liberator, he began a “dramatized biography” in English.
The bulk of the Bolívar book, though it was a work of fiction, was historical research, much of it conducted in Venezuela or in consultation with experts from that country. Boyd says that he’s scrupulously accurate in getting the historical facts of his works right, but that once such a framework is established he finds it more interesting to fictionalize.
After the success of his English-language Bolívar book he had it translated into Spanish, in which form it has been well received in Panama. Then he turned back to World War II for a couple more novels.
Most recently, Boyd has published a novella, “Panama and the Canal: 1903-2003.” While doing the research for this book he says he was surprised to learn how vicious the turn-of-the-century Thousand Day War really was. Panamanian accounts note that the Liberals were run out of Panama City in a skirmish over a bridge in Calidonia, but few people realize that some 500 Liberals were killed in that confrontation. The devastation of that war is often ignored by people considering the circumstances of Panama’s separation from Colombia, but Boyd pointed out that the fact of Colombia’s prostration and exhaustion after the conflict was one of the keys to why things turned out as they did.
But will people read Boyd’s new book? He has published it locally, with Editoria Sibauste, and he’s now finding out how difficult book distribution is in this country.
Over at Excedra, Dr. Murphy wasn’t promoting a book, but analyzing one.
Murphy, who teaches philosophy at religion at the local campus of Florida State, said that he became interested in Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” at the suggestion of some of his students --- and found it refreshing to have students recommend a book to him, rather than the other way around.
“It isn’t really a great work of literature,” Murphy opined. However, he said it’s an exciting read, with a carefully crafted plot.
“The Da Vinci Code” is based on various conspiracy theories, non-canonical gospels and a hoax by a French reactionary who wanted to create a secret society to rival freemasonry and did so by planting bogus documents referring to his creation’s supposed existence in the Middle Ages.
The book casts the conservative Catholic order Opus Dei in a sinister light, and in reality Murphy does find the group scary. However, he warned the three dozen or so people who showed up for his talk against confusing the work of fiction under discussion with serious history.
Taking the audience through the steps of Biblical analysis, he pointed out the discrepancy among the four accepted gospels about the arrest of Jesus at the Garden of Gethsemane, in which one of the high priest’s servants had his ear severed. Noting that the tale of how Jesus healed the smitten slave’s ear only occurs in the Gospel According to St. Luke, and Luke’s emphasis on the theme of forgiveness, Murphy concluded that the ear healing bit was probably invented by Luke. (The four gospels of the New Testament were, historians believe, all written decades after Jesus, Luke’s probably about 80-85 AD, about a half-century after Jesus’s crucifixion. These were written by people who probably had not known Jesus personally, but some of the earlier ones were perhaps by people who knew some of Christ’s apostles.)
Murphy then noted some of the unaccepted gospels referred to in The Da Vinci Code, to the rumbles between the Gnostics and the Catholics, and to the Dead Sea Scrolls --- which the novel mistakenly calls Christian rather than properly attributing them to the Jewish Essene sect --- and concludes that the author “never lets the facts get in the way of a good story.”
At Murphy’s talk a sign-up sheet was circulated, with the aim of creating an English-language literary club. It will not be the first or only of its kind. Also on the English literary front, the Panama Canal chapter of the National League of American Pen Women is now about to get into the judging phase of its Anona Kirkland Writing Contest.
The bottom line? Panama’s interest in English is not just a matter of people wanting to get jobs guiding cruise ship tourists or working the phones at call centers. A substantial part of the renewed interest is by people who always spoke English, and who want to become more sophisticated about its literature.
