Last week at CocoVivo, I hopped into a boat with Rick, his friend
Maikao, and one of the guys living and working here, Colin. Thirty
minutes later, we arrived at the village of San Cristobal.

We went because Rick needed to speak with the village leader—the local
authority for the immediate area. Earlier in the week, Rick caught
thieves trying to steal $200 worth of building material off the roof
of Ricardo’s house (Ricardo is the Panamanian caretaker at CocoVivo)
while he was away in the hospital. Rick took off with some locals to
chase down the thieves, and discovered they had abandoned their boat
and were hiding among the mangroves in the water. He snapped a great
photo of the shocked thieves treading water in the dark. In the end,
of course, Ricardo got his stuff back.

So there we were in San Cristobal, delivering the photographic
evidence to the proper authorities. Like most places in the province
of Bocas del Toro, the village of San Cristobal was built on the
water. It is home to 800 people, half of them children. Considering
some of the poor Bocas communities I have seen so far—where water near
the docks is so dirty from sewage that a laceration on one’s leg would
most certainly get infected if submerged—I was blown away by how clean
and put together this place was. The people we met were all friendly
and helpful. The children playing in the streets looked clean and
healthy. The school had plenty of desks and books. Everyone seemed
generally happy. Despite a lack of money, somehow this village had
figured out a way to prosper.

I soon discovered the village leader was responsible for turning
things around in the past few years. He had been elected into power in
San Cristobal despite the fact that he was not from the area. Nor did
he have a family. Yet the locals certainly seemed to respect him, and
value his judgment. I wondered - why would the people of San Cristobal
want somebody from outside to come in and run their community?

The answer, I later discovered, was that the village leader’s external
roots allowed him to act as an unbiased third party in local disputes.
The locals liked him because without tight knit relationships to
certain people in the community, and without a family, he was not
tempted by bias to take sides on any issue. Running a village in this
way makes a lot sense, even though we typically observe leaders rising
from within the community. Comparing San Cristobal to other poor
Panamanian villages in Bocas, one has to question the extent to which
its unusual style of leadership accounts for its success. Just another
contemplative day in paradise…