Once More, My Town

At the beginning of November 1821, the Panamanian people were a Spanish colony, with nearly all their needs unmet. By the end of that same month, the Panamanian people were already a free territory, joined of their own will to Gran Colombia. What happened in those few days changed the course of our national history more than any other moment in the past had.

On November 10, 1821, a rebel uprising took place in the Villa de Los Santos, which Simón Bolívar would later name Heroic City in honor of these very acts, and as a reward for its courage and its pioneering in the cause of freedom.

The independence of the Panamanian people was won in a relatively short span of time. Twenty days were enough to carry that first cry of “Independence!” through to total liberation from the Iberian chains. The explanation may be found in the fact that most of the authorities, armed or not, were Panamanian and longed for freedom as much as the colonists did. Blood did not bathe our land as much as other lands that likewise fought for freedom, with less luck.

Now, 177 years after that cry of independence, a new rebel cry has risen from the holy and heroic land of the Villa de Los Santos, which is fighting once again for its self-determination against the erroneous and despotic dictates of a regime that has scorned it.