Las Tablas

Las Tablas was founded by Spanish settlers in the late 17th century; one account puts the date at 19 July 1671. They came from the old city of Panama, forced to flee by the English pirate Henry Morgan's attack on it, and their ship ran aground at the mouth of a river on the Azuero coast, at the port of Mensabé. According to tradition, the first houses were built from planks salvaged from the wreck, and locals mocked the newcomers as the people "of the boards", las tablas, which gave the town its name.

A second legend ties the town to its patron saint, Santa Librada. The settlers are said to have carried her image to their camp, only to find it each morning back on a mound of stones, and to have taken this as a sign that the saint wanted them to settle there. Her church was completed in 1721 and is now a national monument. The town stands on a plain close to sea level, much of which turned swampy in the rainy season.

Las Tablas was the birthplace of Belisario Porras, the only Panamanian president to serve three terms, and the town's main avenue and its 1924 model school bear his name. Today it is the capital of Los Santos province, which took its modern form in 1945, and its carnival is the largest in the country.

Las Tablas regards itself as a national centre of Panamanian folk art, music, food and literature. The district is the home of many old styles of country music: the Panamanian cumbia, the tamborito drum dance, colonial-era religious songs, the saloma, a call-and-response between men's and women's voices, the décima verse and the murga. Fiddle and flute have long been played here, and the town's drummers are known for their skill on hand-made drums.

Villages around the town, among them Guararé, Santo Domingo, La Palma and San José, are known for making the pollera, the national dress, along with embroidered shirts, painted hats and cutarras. The Desfile de las Mil Polleras, a parade of the dress held each January, shows the variety of the garments together.

Carnival is the town's great event. Las Tablas splits into Calle Arriba and Calle Abajo, each with its queen, its parade, fireworks, music, decorated plaza and food stands, all trying to outdo the other. By day, tanker trucks spray the crowds with water at the culecos; by night there are floats and concerts. More than a hundred carnival queens have been crowned over the years, and the town has also produced several winners of Señorita Panamá.

About 9,300 people lived in the corregimiento of Las Tablas in 2010, and about 27,000 in the wider district, the most populous in Los Santos province. The town is the commercial and administrative centre for the surrounding villages, and people come in from La Palma, Santo Domingo and the other villages around it.

The economy rests on trade, cattle and farming on the plain around it, watered by the rivers that rise in the Canajagua hills. The commercial zone runs from Paseo Carlos L. López onto the main avenue, which has department stores, supermarkets, casinos, boutiques and goldsmiths' workshops, and the town has both state and private banks. There is no local television channel or newspaper, so most people follow local news on the radio; one station, Radio Mensabé, shares its name with the town's port.

Most of the year the pace is slow. Then, in the run-up to carnival, the town turns itself over to preparations: queens are announced, floats are built and the rivalry between the two streets fills conversation.

Las Tablas eats the food of the Azuero countryside, the nation's larder. Maize is the base of the morning: bollos, maize dough wrapped in husks and boiled, and thick fried tortillas are eaten with fresh white cheese. Sancocho made with free-range hen, gallina de patio, is the region's pride, and arroz con guandú, rice with pigeon peas, marks holidays.

Beef dominates the rest of the menu. Tasajo, salted and smoked dried beef, is fried or stewed, and fondas serve steak with rice, beans and patacones, twice-fried slices of green plantain. Tamales, maize dough with chicken or pork wrapped in banana leaves, are a Christmas and festival dish, and carnival brings food stands to both halves of the town.

Sweets include cocadas, coconut sweets. The festive drink is seco, the clear sugar-cane spirit distilled at Pesé in neighbouring Herrera, drunk neat, with milk or in seco con leche, and street stalls sell raspao, shaved ice topped with fruit flavours and condensed milk.