“Each had their one song. Roberto would sing, ‘La Critica-a-a!’ Chaflan would shout, ‘La Estrella de Panama!’ The hunched boy who couldn’t talk would scream, and people would wake at 6 a.m. to buy a paper just to make him stop. The boys would sleep in the market, in the stands where they sold fruits and vegetables, or under a tree in the park. Their money went to their mothers.”
It was survival of the fittest. “There were many criminals around there, and we were small children standing in the line to get the newspapers,” said Toti. “We would get hit in the head and our newspapers would get stolen. I was older and used to get very angry and hit with real fury. I had to defend my brother and watch they would not take away our newspapers. We would sometimes be left crying and without the papers. But Roberto was born with that gift that it seems God gave him. He had very heavy hands and would fight strongly.”
“My mother, who was very strict, always said there were two ways a person could go in that neighborhood – bad or good,” said Chorrillo neighbor Nora Mendoza. “Roberto was a good kid, very humble. When my mother fed him rice, he was so hungry he would eat the concolon [crust] at the bottom of the pan. He often went to Central Avenue with Chaflan, who was very influential at the time and good for Duran.” Central Avenue was the city’s main shopping district, a place where money could be made from the tourists and office workers of Panama City.
Young Roberto was a constant in the Mendoza household. With his charming smile and cute looks, he often traveled from house to house to fill his empty stomach. It was impossible to turn the young child away, and many families would snatch him from their doorstep straight to the dinner table. Nora Mendoza remembered El Chorrillo as a place where “most of the men worked at the Canal and didn’t have much money, so they built their houses out of wood. Roberto lived in La Casa de Piedra, which was named that because it was made of concrete. Roberto used to come over and my mother would feed him. Everyone was poor in El Chorrillo, so he would come over and eat whatever we gave him. He’d always want more but we didn’t have enough for him. I didn’t like Roberto very much because I was just a young girl. But he was always at our home.”
When not invited to eat at a neighbor’s home, Roberto would go behind La Casa de Piedra to see what Nina, a local woman who had turned her home into a small restaurant, had cooking. Nina’s became a haven for Duran and friends. There was also a small market in the town of Caledonia where they could order their favorite dishes. A Number Three was rice with beans and meat, a Number Four was a combo platter of rice, meat, beans and macaroni, and a Number Five was everything and a bowl of soup. Almost fifty years later, Duran would still remember the numbers of those orders, the smell of the food leaving an indelible impression on a ravenous boy.
He seemed to thrive on din and chaos. “The country was too quiet, too much peace,” recalled Duran. “I was born in the middle of noise. I remember my mother’s bedroom, it had a high door where the buses would go by. Next door there was a canteen, and we were used to the noises there, the buses, the quarrels at the canteen. When I would go to the country, where the people were so quiet, I used to feel badly.”
Everywhere in Panama someone has an anecdote about Roberto, many of them about the deprivation of his youth. “We all came up fighting,” said fellow boxer and childhood friend Alfonso “Peppermint” Frazer. “It helped make us men. We all had it tough, but we didn’t have it like Duran. He would finish our meals after we left the table and come up and take a piece of bread. That’s how bad he had it.”
Chaflan taught him how to fill his belly. Maybe he would have made it without the gypsy’s lessons, but many believe he would eventually have fallen in and out of bars, living day to day. Duran learned from Chaflan that he didn’t have to live like that.
“They would put up a show together to collect some reales, which they would later share,” said Nestor Quinones, Duran’s his first boxing trainer. “That is why, since age six, he would seldom be in Chorrillo; most of the time he would be hanging out all over in the city. There were five children in all going around with Chaflan, Duran and four more. Duran told me himself that they would not return to their homes after the shows. They would stay at Casco Viejo [the old compound] to buy newspapers to sell. Once they had finished they would get together again and put on their shows with Chaflan.”
However, some people kept a close watch on Chaflan. They said his interest in the children was unhealthy, that he sexually molested them, and that he should be locked up. “I never saw Chaflan do anything they accused him of,” said Duran. “Chaflan would do all sorts of pirouettes, tricks with his hands and all the ten- and twelve-year-old kids would follow him. So one day he said that if we would exercise with him he would feed us lunch. So we would do what he told us and walk on our hands, exercise and do flips in the air. Afterwards, he would make us clean off in the ocean. Then, all covered in sand, he would put us to wrestle because at that time a lot of wrestlers would come to Panama.” Before boxing became a passion, Duran desired to be like the popular Mexican wrestlers. Chaflan helped funnel that passion and asked for nothing in return.
Young Roberto also skirted back and forth between Panama City and Guarare. It wasn’t unusual to see the little child rolled up on a catre, a canvas-like covering, on the ground of one of his extended family’s small homes. He was always on the go, playing soccer and baseball or learning to punch under the tutelage of his uncle Socrates “El Chinon” Garcia. Socrates’ brother Jairo later claimed, “It was my brother who gave him that powerful punch. He was the man who showed him how to box.”
Roberto and his sister Marina went to elementary school in Guarare for a while, until Clara moved back with them to the capital when Roberto was in second grade. For a while the family lived in El Mangote, on the Pacific side of the Isthmus. Not yet “Manos de Piedra,” Duran often came running home to the call of “patas de abejon,” because he was so thin. According to Toti, “The abejon is a wasp, which though being fat has very thin legs.”
“He was quite a terrible boy,” joked Mireya, Roberto’s aunt, who was close to him in age. “He misbehaved always. When he was a little boy, he used to climb trees and liked to swing on the branches once he was up there. This is what I remember, because we were of a similar age. My mother had a sister called Angela Garcia, who lived in the Nuevo Arraijan. She had two dogs, one called Biuty and the other Capitan. Do you want to know what Roberto did? Starting at Chorrillo, he walked all the way with Toti, his brother. They crossed on foot the Puente de las Americas and went to Nueva Real, which is very, very far, and came to where my mother was because they did not have any money. They went on foot. These two dogs attacked Roberto and Toti and if my mother had not got out at that moment, the dogs would have killed them.”
Eventually Roberto would immerse himself in boxing and see less of Chaflan and the gang. Unlike his protégé, the sage would never prosper. The mores that he taught Duran, he couldn’t apply to his own life and it was the nature of such a friendship to wither. Chaflan had plateaued in life and although Duran loved him, he didn’t need him anymore. The young fighter grew out of Chaflan.
“When I started boxing, Chaflan would come over to the El Maranon Gym,” recalled Duran. “One day I was training and he came over and he tapped my back. When I turned around they took a picture of us. I have the picture in my house as a remembrance of him. After that I didn’t see him much. I wouldn’t follow him anymore.”
2
Fighter
“His mother used to tell me to go to the gym and see if he was there, and to hit him if I found him there. He would ask me what I was doing there, to which I would answer that I had come to see him training. I never brought him back home. I once told his mother that if the boy likes boxing, maybe tomorrow he would be famous.”
Victorino Vargas, Duran’s stepfather
AT TIMES HE would sit in his room, stare out the window and dream. When will I be a boxer? He would peek in his brother’s boxing bag and s
ee himself draped in the fabulous colors. The boots would be too big and the pants would droop on his skinny frame, but when he wore them he felt like a champion. I will wear this sparkling uniform one day when I become a boxer. It wasn’t the power and speed of the punches that enticed him, not the quick footwork and fancy moves, nor even the cheers of the crowd and the hope of acclaim. It was the outfit.
“One day my brother Domingo told me he was going down to the gym,” he remembered. “Everybody would go over and practice there around noon. At that time there were these little blue bags and the only thing that could fit into the bags was shirt and shorts, nothing else. I liked the way the uniforms looked.” Just as he had trailed Chaflan through the dusty streets of the city, so he tagged along with Toti to the Gimnasio Nacional (later Neco de la Guardia) in front of the National Guard headquarters on Avenue A. He knew that boxers could get paid for beating up people in the ring, and money meant the difference between eating and not.
“I was carrying the little bag and we’re walking to the gym, which is very close to where we live,” said Duran. “When I was carrying the bag people would ask me if I was a boxer, and I said, ‘No I’m not.’ My brother told me to sit outside and wait for him. There was a banister and I sat there and waited. When he came out of the dressing room, he was wearing his boxing shorts and his boxing shoes. I watched him practice that day.”
It was a tough gym, packed with former and future national champions. “A boxer named Adolfo Osses told my brother to help him spar,” said Duran. “My brother put on headgear, gloves and a jockstrap. I marveled at my brother’s uniform. When he finished sparring, I said, ‘Toti, how can I get the same gear that you are wearing?’”
“If you become a boxer they give you all that,” replied Toti.
“And that’s how I became a boxer.”
Toti could punch but he wasn’t cut out for the ring. “I knocked Adolfo Osses down because I hit hard,” said Toti. “He was a professional boxer and I was an amateur. [But] I had a problem with my nose and my nose used to bleed when I would jump rope; that is why I was not able to fight. Duran also had the same problem, but he got rid of that later. I did not. When I knocked Osses down, Duran got enthusiastic about boxing. Duran was only a boy at that time but he had such a strong hand that even Osses was not able to stand his blows. Grandma [Ceferina Garcia] used to hit hard. In my family we all have a heavy hand.”
Barely eight years old, Roberto had to spar with the experienced boxers like all the others. “That is what boxing consists of; you may fear no one,” said Toti. “I started fighting first and I taught Roberto how to fight. I did not like to see my brother get hit, so I showed him how to fight. This started many years ago, when he was seven or eight.”
It wasn’t long before Roberto, already obsessed with wrestling and running, was noticed by Sammy Medina, a former national bantamweight and featherweight champion who had once killed an opponent in the ring. “One day a little kid with a shoeshine box walked into the Neco de La Guardia gymnasium,” remembered Medina. “He put on a pair of gloves and started to box with a boy smaller than he was. I was impressed by the way he moved his head to dodge the blows and I called him over. He said he wanted to be a boxer. I began to teach him and I had him for a couple of years, boxing amateur about three times.”
It was hard to train when you didn’t even have enough food to eat. “The only problem we both had was poverty,” said Toti. “We would sometimes go to train and get hungry but had no money for food, so we used to go to sell newspapers to make some money. And the following day we had to start running really early, but we were not strong enough. I remember we once started running, thinking it was five o’clock, but we had made a mistake. It was one o’clock in the morning and the police stopped us. We were coming from the bridge towards this area and the policemen could not believe we had mistaken the hour. Roberto liked boxing so much that he would sometimes skip sleeping and go training on the beach in Chorrillo.”
Toti and other jobbing boxers made a mere fifty cents a contest. Even established boxers received only a pittance and he soon gave up the sport. “[Ismael] Laguna and all the others used to fight for very small sums in order to get known and start fighting abroad,” he said. “In Panama, fighting was not worthwhile.”
Roberto loved it, however, and soon had his first amateur bout under Medina’s tutelage. The details have been lost to history but he could have been no more than nine years old, and the result was controversial. “He lost his first fight,” said Medina, “but the spectators protested the decision because he had even knocked down his opponent.” Toti concurred. “He lost his first fight because the arbiter was the boxer’s father. Roberto knocked him down three times but the fight was given to the other one.”
His mother, who remembered her sister Gladys initiating her son into boxing, was the last to know of her son’s new pursuit. “One night a person came to see me and told me Roberto was going to fight that night in El Maranon Stadium,” said Clara. “I then said, ‘Oh, my God. This is not what I want for him.’ But when I realized this was the sport he liked, I let him stay there. I used to make promises to the Virgen del Carmen but I also cried a lot. This was not what I wanted for him. He was a vivacious kid. I remember when he had a fight at the Maranon. Roberto was winning but when the referee decided to give the fight to his rival, Roberto gave the referee a terrible punch.”
Roberto began to leave Chaflan and the old crowd behind and to adopt a discipline beyond anything he had learned in random street brawls. Unlike the streets, boxing demanded dedication, precision and self-sacrifice and was an unforgiving, often brutal master. Battered faces and bruised minds were the lot of ex-boxers, even good ones, and most ended their careers as poor as they had started. The veteran Medina was still intending to box himself and couldn’t divide his time equally between his own career and training youngsters. Instead, Roberto found a trainer who would become like family. In boxing, relationships come apart like worn Velcro. Trainers once treated like family become dispensable and loyalty in the corner counts for nothing in the end. Everything in boxing, from the hiring and firing of friends to the hoarding of that last penny, is a transaction and the old adage “It’s just business” is as common as a pair of wraps in the fight game. Wads of bills displace family; empty promises dissolve friendships.
But when Duran met Nestor “Plomo” Quinones, a former amateur boxer, a longtime bond was forged. In his signature driver’s cap, Plomo (which translates as “lead” or “bullet,” a relic of his days as a pistol-toting detective) was becoming one of Panama’s best trainers. A man with a warm handshake, expressive eyes and a slow, cautious manner, he filled space …
Some individuals can signify emotion through their reactions without saying a word. By reading Plomo’s eyes it is easy to see satisfaction when they dart approvingly eyeing money, or disappointment when they sag with his cheeks when the proposition doesn’t fit with him. In both instances, the translations are succinct even to the foreigner. Plomo no longer forges ahead. The man enters space as milk fills a glass, slow and with caution. Plomo slithers around the gym like a lazy snake, his life, health and money have dissolved in accordance with Duran’s. With his cap, cocked in a manner that makes him simultaneously appear old, innocuous and totally exasperated by life, Plomo greets people with a nod of the head from across the room.
“There were fights between clubs from Chorrillo, Maranon, and I think I was fighting out of the Club Cincuentenario,” recalled Duran. “One day I go to the Maranon Gym and I see Plomo and tell him I want him to be my trainer because at the time I didn’t have anyone to train me. Plomo wouldn’t pay any attention to me because I was just a kid. He weighed me with clothing and all and I was ninety-five pounds.”
Quinones did not want to take on Duran right away, not only because of his age but also because he questioned whether one so young would stick it out. “Medina was the first to have Duran,” said Plomo. “Duran was eight years old then. He w
ould receive about one dollar for each fight while Medina would keep the remaining eight or ten dollars. It was a business for him. Duran did not like this situation so he decided he did not want to be trained by Medina anymore and he searched for me. He was nine years old and even though I did not request him to fight then, because he was too young, I could see he had very good attributes. He was a daring fighter and this was a very good characteristic. The rest may be taught but the fighter has to be daring. He cannot be afraid.
“When he was a child, he loved to fight and I saw him fighting a couple of times. He was already working as a shoeshine boy. I saw him fighting against another shoeshine boy, older than him, but Duran hit him really hard and knocked him down. I then told him he should fight as a boxer and not in the streets anymore; for during that fight I realized that Duran could be a professional boxer. He had the character to be one.”
Plomo had watched scores of little ruffians come and go, arriving full of bravado but unable to stomach the rigors of endless training in the sweltering blood buckets they called gyms in Panama. “Duran came to the gym and asked me if I could be his trainer. He just wouldn’t leave until I gave him an answer,” said Plomo. “I told him, ‘You’re just a kid, but if you demonstrate your boxing skills I will teach you. Then he threw a punch with force and I approved him. I told him to come the next day with a bathing suit and sneakers. He would come every day with the same clothes and shoes.”
With uncommon perseverance, Duran would finally get his uniform, a moment that neither the fighter nor his brother would forget. “Roberto did not have any boxing clothes and I had been given some as a present,” said Toti. “So I gave him the shoes and the shorts, for I was not going to fight. Roberto had started fighting as an amateur boxer and during these fights the people throw coins to the ringside for both the fighters. Roberto started winning these fights.”
Hands of Stone Page 3
