Well the season of holidays and intermittent work has begun! November is the month of patriotic celebration and holidays. Then comes Mother’s Day and Christmas, followed by New Year’s and the Fair in Boquete, followed by Carnival, followed by Holy Week and Easter. In Panama folks work to live and don’t live to work. And from now until May you do what little work you can to have money to enjoy the celebrations. Some work will be done between celebrations, but, count on it, there will be many “morning after” days when folks aren’t feeling well so don’t bother to show up for work.
All of the incessant drumming has been leading up to this month and all of the patriotic parades and celebrations. Throughout the country, everywhere from Panama City to Boca Chica there will be parades with school children very seriously marching and beating on drums.
Sunday, November 3 – Separation From Colombia. After achieving independence from Spain in 1821 Panama joined with other Latin American countries in Simon Bolivar’s vision of Gran Colombia a kind of Latin precursor to the European Union. Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama, northern Peru, western Guyana and northwest Brazil. It was really a great idea but eventually the union fell apart and Panama found itself stuck with Colombia, geographically cut off by the Darien jungle, which still is a major barrier between the two countries.The French had failed in their attempt to build a canal and Colombia had rejected the US attempt to get permission for a Canal. Rumors were reaching Colombia that Panama was seeking independence, so they sent troops to Panama. Taking advantage of US interest in a canal, and with the US NASHVILLE anchored offshore Panama declared its separation from Colombia. The US got permission for a canal and Panama got US support in keeping Colombia from attempting to take Panama by force.
Monday, November 4 – Flag Day. US interests, led by Philippe Jean Bunau-Varilla who was pushing for Panamanian independence in order to sell French rights to a canal to the US, had put together a “country kit” for Panama which included a flag. Fortunately Panamanians ditched the “country kit” and the flag because Panama had been designing a flag secretly all along. The flag was first flown on November 4.
Sunday, November 10 – Independence from Spain. Falling on Sunday this becomes an even more grand holiday with Monday a legal holiday . So if you work it right, you leave work mid-day Thursday, join 
the millions on the Pan American Highway headed for the beaches, party over a long weekend, and exhausted from bumper-to-bumper traffic back to the city, take Tuesday off as well.
Panama, along with other Spanish possessions in the New World, grew tired of Spanish oppression and inspired by the Great Liberator, Simon Bolivar, joined Bolivar’s Grand Colombia and declared independence from the Spanish Crown.
The big Independence Day Parade is in Boquete with bands and school children from all over bused into town for a parade that pretty much lasts all day.
September has been a month of school children practicing marching, girls practicing playing glockenspiels, and boys drumming. Every town in Panama has been sprucing up, cleaning up parks, painting civil buildings, new plantings around schools and along roads. It’s really a grass-roots patriotism which appears to me to be very healthy. It’s not a patriotism inspired by government propaganda or the attitude that “we are the shining light of the world, the country with all the answers and the best of everything, the country which is never wrong and can be a rogue player on the world stage whenever we want.” It’s Panama. It may be the “center of the world” due to its geographical location and Canal. [Actually Bolivar said that if ever the world had a capital it would be Panama!] But the patriotism is simple, from the heart, lubricated by the best beers and rums in the world, held together by family, and appears quite natural and genuine.