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Lunchtime on Avenida Peru

Panamanian working people, including government employees, generally don't make an awful lot of money and don't get particularly long lunch breaks.

This has given rise to the culture of fondas, little food stands where people can get an inexpensive and quick lunch. There is a strip of them on Avenida Peru near the Ministry of Economy and Finance building, and they do a brisk business every weekday when public and private sector workers do lunch.

(No, you can't order three martinis --- or even one --- at any of these fondas. That may be one of the reasons why top public officials are seldom seen eating at them.)

From time to time the more prosperous restaurant owners complain to the city that these fondas are unfair competition and the general policy has been to close and demolish these stands whenever an excuse presents itself. This process, however, is limited by both the public demand for this style and price range of getting lunch and by the reality that the government has no economic alternatives to offer the proprietors of these fondas if they are denied this way of making a living.

The fondas do pay for permits and the spaces they take up and are regulated and subject to inspection by health authorities, and those institutional facts also limit the process of their elimination.

Photo by Eric Jackson

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Lunchtime on Avenida Peru

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