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The whole country parties during Carnival, and the Atlantic side is no exception. In Colon, they even have a "weekend after" Carnavalito. However, source of the cultural mainstream, the place from whence "cultura tipica" in the narrow, particular sense of the concept comes, is the Azuero Peninsula. It's not just a random fact that the biggest Carnival celebration is in Las Tablas.

Las Tablas has had its big day, although there will be many more opportunities to appreciate the cultural traditions of the central provinces this year. The Antillean Fair has come and gone, even if that doesn't exactly mean that all of the West Indian influences on our way of life will go into hiding until next year.

But the long holiday season that began with patriotic parades, continued with Panamanian Mothers Day, Christmas, New Years and the Day of the Martyrs, and culminated in Carnival and Ash Wednesday is over. Traditionally, peak tourism season is over too, even if there are new dynamics at work that bring us more off-season visitors every year. It's "back to business as usual" for Panama's cultural scenes in two main senses.

First, there is the business sense from the performers' and promoters' perspective. It's harder for most of the bands to find big crowds as at Carnival. They're back to playing at the bars, clubs and casinos, or if they're lucky (and good), maybe playing warm-up sets for international acts giving concerts at larger venues. The school vacation is supposed to be ending (although thanks to our maladroit Ministry of Education it won't be, just yet, for the public schools) and people are back to work so a theater scene can function more or less normally. The "regular" cultural season is therefore upon us.

From another point of view, the audiences for Panamanian culture shift after Carnival. Yes, there's always a mix and by demographics, our Carnival is a very Panamanian event. Still, there's a sense that now it's not a matter of showing off for visitors but of entertaining and enlightening ourselves. Generic kitsch and crummy imitations may have crept in during holiday season, but now the audiences are expected to be a bit more knowing and even more demanding.

There are so many cool things to do over the coming weeks that you can surely find something to suit your tastes. But one of the outstandingly cool things to do will be happening in Portobelo. There, on March 14, the older of Panama's two black cultural currents will be celebrated.

Have you visited Panama Viejo, or Fort San Lorenzo? If you had a guide, I would expect that she or he never told you that these ruins, which were so impressive centuries ago, may have been for the most part designed by Italian architects but were built by black slaves. In those times, moreover, an African brought forcibly to these shores to be pressed into involuntary servitude for the Spaniards had more opportunities to run away into the jungle, to join or set up a remote village on the West African model. The people who did this were the Cimarrones and some of their culture --- modified by degrees of absorption into the Panamanian mainstream culture over the centuries, to be sure --- does survive. As in congo dancing, as shown above. As in the Atlantic side's diablitos, whose masks bear striking similarities to those of some African cultures. There's a cuisine, a set of artistic sensibilities, and even a remnant of the fishing and gardening economy. All of this will be celebrated in Portobelo, now a sleepy little town northeast of Colon city but once a mighty commercial center and military objective in the wars of the Reformation, on March 14.