After covering the one-all tie between the Jamaican and Panamanian national soccer squads at the Rommel I was back at the office and it was about 10:30 and lights out time for me. But then the cell phone rang.
It was a journalist from the New York Daily News, and he wanted to know what I knew about that day’s tragedy at Mariano Rivera’s house in Puerto Caimito. It was news to me. He said that according to sketchy reports, somebody had been electrocuted by an electric fence there. He wondered if I could go out there and cover the story.
Now that request implied certain presumptions about the economics of Panamanian journalism in general, my economic situation in particular, the information management practices of Panamanian public institutions, the nature of Puerto Caimito and my personal attitudes and work methods, all of them mistaken. But I told him that I’d help out as best I could.
That night, neither news radio nor TV had anything to say about the story. The next day the EPASA papers, La Critica and El Panama America, were alone among the dailies to report that two people had been killed and another injured in an incident that took place in and about Rivera’s pool.
It turns out --- and here I am relying on multiple secondary sources (largely by way of other journalists), and what I have observed over the years about Panamanian culture --- that local attitudes about technology brought great tragedy down upon the Rivera household.
Here, if somebody has a small stretch of sidewalk in front of his or her business, it is considered more sophisticated to use a hose, or better yet a mechanical blower, than to use a broom to clear it of litter or grass clippings. On a grounds maintenance crew, it is taken as a matter of course that the person with the most seniority and authority runs the biggest and most sophisticated machine --- the new kid works with a machete, the boss runs the big lawn mower and the guy in between uses the weed whacker. At the yacht club, only the rich foreigners have expensive sailing vessels --- Panamanians with that kind of money wouldn’t dream of using something so low-tech as the wind when there are more advanced power boats to be had.
And so it was that at Mariano Rivera’s house, the caretaker's solution to a problem of dogs urinating in the pool was neither to simply to get a cover for it nor to train the dogs to go elsewhere. Instead, a “more advanced” barrier was created, one that electrified the pool to keep the dogs away.
In another place, in another culture, there would be a building inspector or maybe a humane society to raise hell about it. But here it was just another solution that many a Panamanian would find fittingly “modern,” something to keep up with the gringos, as it were. No matter that to any reasonably prudent American this would seem expensive, inappropriate and way too dangerous.
Víctor Darío Avila, a childhood friend and member by marriage of Rivera’s extended family, was there that Saturday to clean the pool, and the man’s son, Víctor Leandro Avila, was there to accompany him. The electric dog repellent gizmo was left on, and when the 14-year-old boy jumped into the pool the result was fatal. The father tried to save his son, and was himself electrocuted. Another of the Yankee pitcher’s relatives --- his wife's sister's husband, the same man, who, apparently without Rivera's knowledge, created the death trap --- tried to effect a rescue, and was himself shocked and injured. Finally someone turned the power off, but by then the fishing village of Puerto Caimito had suffered a terrible loss.
For the New York papers, it was a “huge story” about the hometown hero of the moment, Mariano Rivera, who had struggled a bit earlier in the season, then ended up leading the major leagues in saves. The afternoon of the tragedy he shut down the Minnesota Twins to lead the Yankees into an American League championship series with the Red Sox. Then this happened.
My resources at that particular moment were not such that I could hire a car and go out to Puerto Caimito. To tell the truth, I didn’t even have round trip bus fare. Plus I’m really not the sort of guy to intrude upon people in their moments of grief. I couldn’t do what I believed the man from the Daily News wanted, but I was otherwise willing to lend a hand to fellow journalists.
So the paper flew in Christian, one of its sports reporters, and Debbie, one of its photojournalists, and asked if I wanted to tag along to lend such assistance as I might. I had a Monday free of commitments, so I agreed.
Meanwhile, from up in New York, a masterful bit of intercontinental telecommunications fixing and coordination was underway. The Daily News journalists on the ground found an impressive ad hoc support network in place for them, most notably in the form of an USMA architecture student who lives not far from Rivera’s house serving as a driver and guide, when they got there.
So on Monday morning I headed off to meet Christian and Debbie at the new Radisson Hotel in Paitilla, and we headed out toward La Chorrera.
Mariano Rivera’s house, which I last saw a few years ago when it was under construction, was unmistakable. In this town where virtually everyone who’s gainfully employed works for Promarina, either with the sardine fleet or at the fish meal plant, there could be only one person with a walled mansion like that.
A push of the buzzer next to the door elicited the explanation that Mariano Rivera wasn’t there. Then the gate opened, a car bearing two women emerged and there was a painful little interview, with Debbie’s camera clicking away. From these conversations emerged the claim that the famous athlete wouldn’t be back until later in the afternoon.
Then onward, just a stone’s throw away, to the little concrete block home of the deceased, people whom the Yankees pitcher describes as his cousins but in a more gringo way of describing relationships were Rivera’s wife’s cousin and the latter’s son. In the tiny back yard there were chickens, the scraggly remnants of a mango tree, some squash vines and a lone guandu bush. To the side a tent had been set up, with folding chairs underneath. Colleagues from AP, Reuters, Agence Press France and Panama’s RCM cable news channel were already there.
Of immediate concern to the Daily News contingent was the likelihood that the cross-town rivals, the people from Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, would be there to scoop them. They’d be along in a bit, but meanwhile there were interviews to be attempted. The widow and mother of the victims was inside the house and not disposed to talk to reporters. Her teenaged daughter, visibly traumatized by the simultaneous loss of her father and brother, was willing to talk but really couldn’t.
And some of the friends, relatives and neighbors were unhappy about the journalists’ presence. The word “paparazzi” was used. The point was made that if these deaths had not taken place at Mariano Rivera’s house, no reporters or photographers would be there.
It was a point well taken. Death by electrocution is quite common in Panama. Here the theft of electricity, generally by rigging up makeshift “telarañas” --- literally “spider’s webs,” but in local parlance illegal electrical connections from the power grid to a house or apartment building, bypassing the meters that may or may not be in place --- is ubiquitous. Actually, the practice is almost as common among the rich as among the poor (and the rich tend to steal more electricity per capita), but it’s the poor who take the risk of making these connections, either as a desperate means to turn on their own lights or having been hired by the rich to cut household costs. In either case, people from time to time get electrocuted installing telarañas, or more frequently by touching a faulty uninsulated illegal electrical connection. Were it not for the self-interested publicity efforts of the electric companies, such tragedies might receive no press attention at all, and certainly they never attract the international media.
I made my suggestions about the context for covering a tragedy in Puerto Caimito, but Christian and Debbie had their first priorities to get a photo of Mariano Rivera and to capture the sights and sounds of the grieving relatives, and as the skies darkened and then burst forth with seasonal rains they went about this task.
Meanwhile, the press pack began to grow. The dreaded rivals from the Post showed, up, as did someone from the suburban New York Newsday. RPC and TVN arrived, along with people from La Prensa, La Critica and the other local dailies. There were faces both familiar and unfamiliar in the crowd.
Like the great seasonal land crab migrations I remember from growing up on the Atlantic side, the pack would drift from outside the bereaved family’s modest home to the entrance to Mariano Rivera’s home and back. Rumors and reports about the athlete’s movements swept through the crowd of journalists, sparking speculations about possibilities of planted rumors designed to give one medium or another the exclusive scoop.
A few of the reporters drifted away by themselves, to talk with or photograph people in the neighborhood. Updates were phoned in to newsrooms in New York and elsewhere.
After the afternoon’s rainstorm, activity increased in and around the home of the deceased. First came the flowers, then the food. Then came two hearses, and as the coffins bearing the bodies of 35-year-old Víctor Darío Avila and 14-year-old Víctor Leandro Avila were borne inside the little house for family, friends and neighbors to pay their respects, the inconsolable wails of the closest relatives, and their tears and expressions of anguish, became the stuff of newspaper photos and TV snippets. It was truly awful, in more than one sense.
Then word spread that Mariano Rivera was definitely at his home, and a crowd of print journalists camped out before his gate. Meanwhile along the side, an SUV pulled up by the wall, a photojournalist mounted the roof and the pool in question was duly recorded for the curious. That peek above the wall, which is topped by bougainvillea rather than razor wire to give the famous athlete some privacy, brought out Mariano’s angry mother to protest the intrusion.
Finally a deal was struck. Mariano Rivera would come out, pose for photos and answer some questions if the pack would then go away and leave the family alone to mourn with some semblance of privacy.
The baseball player was composed and gracious. He didn’t care to discuss the details of the deadly incident, but he did talk of his departed cousins and what a blow their deaths have been to the extended family. He acknowledged that nothing he could say would relieve the suffering of the woman who lost her husband and son, but said that he’d do anything he could to alleviate the difficulties that their losses have brought and will bring upon her. He expressed his appreciation for the support and understanding that has come his way from his teammates and the management at the New York Yankees.
With that, the crowd of journalists began to dissipate for the evening, and the community gathered for a religious service in honor of the fallen members of the Avila family.
And I went away with my own set of questions, surely not unique to my mind. Were the facts gleaned on this day important things for the world to know about Panama, Puerto Caimito or Mariano Rivera? Was this exercise of freedom of the press an infringement upon grieving relatives’ right to privacy, and to the extent that it was, where was the proper balance? Does my reticence to play this game say good things or bad things about the work that I do at The Panama News? And what about my willingness to run with the pack in such circumstances?
Christian and Debbie would be back in Puerto Caimito the next day, to cover the burial and maybe, if they thought my suggestions worthy, to more fully explore the fishing village from whence the Yankees’ closer arose to fame and fortune. But me? I had a science lecture at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute to cover, an opinion column to translate from Spanish into English, and some questions about an alleged kickback scandal to pose to people in the government and the shipping industry.
So while my colleagues from the New York Daily News made their way back to Puerto Caimito, I’d be in the city, in my customary loner mode. I’d be running without the pack.
Also in this section:
Journalism, Running with the pack
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