I thought back to how this had begun ten minutes earlier.
Lief and I had just finished a conference call with the marketing team for our publishing business in Panama City when we heard Dalys call out, “Come quick, Señor Lief, Señora Kathleen!”
I looked up to see her running down our front path. Dalys isn’t easily ruffled.
I’d never seen her run anywhere before. She stopped at the twisted tree in our front yard, the one we call the spirit tree, where she could see me looking out.
“There’s trouble at our gate. You need to come, please,” she shouted so I could hear through the closed window.
She cut through the garden where our allamandas are in full bloom. I don’t have the heart to cut them, so they overgrow the path.
Rising amidst the masses of yellow blossoms is the spirit tree. While the rest of the garden is thriving, the tree could be mistaken for dead. Its gnarled trunk is black with rot and every limb is leafless.
Dalys had my attention, but I couldn’t help searching the tree for proof of life as I do every time I look at it. I counted three small sprigs of green, same as yesterday.
The tree will resurrect, I reassured myself. It always does.
Lief and I jumped up from our laptops to respond to Dalys’ cry for help, but we weren’t surprised by it. Nearly a decade-and-a-half into our adventures at Los Islotes, we take trouble for granted.
We’ve come to this Veraguas coast to create a resort. We’ve cut roads, dug wells, brought in electricity, and installed fiber-optic internet.
Now we want to build a beautiful gate that announces our intentions and showcases the beauty of this place, welcoming people and inviting them to join our community.
Smoothing The Path Of Progress
Our Los Islotes master plan calls for a grand arch with a bell tower and, between the arch and the gate, a wall and a fence. The problem is that Roberta insists that the land where we intend to build our entrance is hers even though we have the title document to prove it’s not.
I’ve sometimes wondered whether, in the interest of keeping the peace, we could do without the fence in front of Roberta’s house. Then I’ve reminded myself that this is our land. Why shouldn’t we build a fence on it?
With Dalys as our emissary, we have been trying to reason with Roberta for months. Dalys has stopped by Roberta’s house every day for two weeks to remind her of our plan. It’s our land. We want to improve it with a fence. Roberta responds every time simply to say no. She will not allow a fence.
She’s been certain we wouldn’t defy her. No one in these parts goes against Roberta. They call her bruja. We aren’t from these parts, and where we come from people don’t believe in witches.
I’ve encouraged Lief to give Roberta the benefit of the doubt.
We’re the invaders. We could have landed here from Mars. That’s how much we have in common with the people of this Veraguas coast. They don’t think they can trust us. They don’t understand that we’re well intentioned. They’re afraid to let us in.
All they know is that we’re making big changes in a place that has remained largely unaffected by outsiders since the Spanish landed on these shores five centuries ago.
We’ve assured Roberta that we want to be good neighbors. We’ve offered to send crew and equipment to create a new path to her place from the public road, but the more we’ve cajoled, the angrier Roberta has grown.
Finally, this morning, as Dalys had promised her they would, our guys appeared in the road in front of Roberta’s place to dig more post holes. That’s when the trouble began.
Dalys had driven us down the hill from our house in a hurry. Just before we reached the gate, I’d asked her to pull off to the side, behind our front wall. Lief and I wanted to take in the scene. I’d hoped Roberta wouldn’t notice us. Now that we knew she knew we were watching, I felt cowardly. We needed to act.
Roberta turned again to face our men and raised her machete over her head as though to charge them.
“Dalys is right, Lief,” I said. “We’ve got to stop this. Dalys, let’s have these guys join the crew working on the stables. Then would you please drive out to the justice of the peace’s office to file a complaint against Roberta? While you’re there, make another report with the police, too.”
The current situation was dramatic, but it was hardly the first time Roberta had interfered with our work. Dalys had met with local law enforcement many times. They just brush her off. Still, we wanted each incident on record.
“Sounds good,” Dalys said as she opened her door.
Wait.
What?
I nearly called out to object but stopped myself. I hadn’t imagined Dalys would walk over to our men. I was thinking she’d drive us to them so we could manage their exodus from the safety of the truck. I was surprised but shouldn’t have been.
Dalys has lived her whole life in Quebro. She knows the Roberta stories. But, unlike our crew, she isn’t afraid of the woman. I worried that maybe she should be as she walked calmly through our gate, past Roberta and her machete, and over to our guys.
I watched her give instructions to our men then help them collect their tools. All the while, Roberta kept her machete straight out in front of her, pointing it hard at Dalys and our crew as they walked away.
Every man, woman, and child up and down this coast would hear tell of this confrontation by lunchtime. Most of them don’t have indoor plumbing, but they’ve all got WhatsApp on their cell phones. The twenty-first century’s coconut telegraph. So be it, I thought.
As Dalys turned the truck around, the doubts that’d become my constant companions bubbled to the surface. I could never keep them down for long.
Maybe we don’t belong here, and maybe our development plan is misguided. But we’re too invested emotionally and financially to pull out now. And, if we did, it wouldn’t be long before another developer took our place, and their agendas wouldn’t be as well-meaning as ours, I’d guarantee it.
The world is finding its way to Veraguas. As publisher of a magazine for Americans interested in living and investing overseas, I’ve watched what passes for progress along coasts and valleys across these Americas for decades. The after is rarely better than the before.
I think our vision for how the inevitable modern-day invasion of Veraguas plays out is its best hope.
If Roberta doesn’t murder someone first…
Until next time,
Kathleen Peddicord
Founding Publisher, Overseas Opportunity Letter
