Prologue for my book. The Priest, the Soldier, the Smuggler: My Choices, My Life (tentative title)

PROLOGUE

MARCH 3, 2017

APPOINTMENT: TEN IN THE MORNING

It was the middle of the dry season, and the torrential rains that fed the Panama Canal would not arrive until the following month in mid-April, but for weeks a storm had been brewing in my gut. The U.S. embassy had given me an appointment to pick up my American passport.

I had called my sister to come down from Miami and be a witness or to be an advocate in case an explanation was needed. Angela, my oldest sister, could always be counted on for anything. “Yes mother,” I had said, “I need you to hold my hand.” When she came down, I told her the truth, that I was terrified of going to the embassy alone.

“Why,” said my enabling angel, “everything is working out for you. All the pieces are falling into place.”

“Exactly,” I said, “and that’s what I’m afraid of. There ain’t no such thing as a free breakfast. What if it’s a sting operation? What if I’m being tricked, being set up?” My sister told me that I was paranoid and then did what she did best, which was to reassure me that she’d be there for me every step of the way.

I was fifty-six years old, and my life was finally in order. I had a decent life in Panama. I was back with my ex-wife; our son was happy; I had a house with a pool and a job that I loved at a university where I was an English teacher. I didn’t want to disturb my life by going to an institution belonging to the U.S. government, but months earlier my daughter had asked me for help. She was months away from graduating from a University in Florida and wanted to stay in the United States, so I had contacted the embassy.

After a shave and a shower, I had breakfast with my son and then took him to school. Then Angela and I headed out to Clayton, the old military base that used to belong to the United States but now belonged to Panama. I told my sister about a dream I had a few days prior.

I was a Boy Scout trekking the Appalachian trail on the base of Bear Mountain on the New York border next to New Jersey. It was the early 70’s. I was tiptoeing towards a massive beehive and its honey in the distance. The trail was quiet but for the stream of water from a nearby creek. The sun shone rays of lights through the trees. My backpack was heavy, and looped on my belt was the scabbard with machete, the compass, and a water canteen. I walked stealthily with my gum-soled, high-top sneakers making sure not to step on dried leaves or branches that might disturb the hive. The swarm, however, had a different idea and a Blitzkrieg was launched as I ran for my life. When I got to the clearing, the other scouts shooed away the mob of killer bees, except for the hundred or so that savagely fought to leave a stinger on my bell-bottom jeans and my backpack.

“You didn’t get stung, right?”

“Nope,” I said.

“Then it’s a good dream. You see, it means everything is going to be fine.”

I parked outside the embassy compound and walked inside the gate. My sister wasn’t allowed inside.

I felt privileged and proud to be connected to the majestic new building that stood out from the rest of the third-world structures of Panama. I was walking on American soil, sort of. Past the metal detectors my phone was put in a small locker. “No phones allowed.”

I was breathing hard, but my brain reminded me how I was being paranoid and ridiculous.

Once inside and settled, I talked to a man who asked me why I hadn’t claimed my citizenship sooner. “I didn’t know I was a citizen. I was sixteen, nine months and four days, when both my parents naturalized on April 19, of 1978,” I said.

“Did you at any time give up your residency or your citizenship?”

I didn’t know what to say. I had learned in the Air Force never to volunteer information and was caught off guard.

“I believe I was wrongly, if not illegally, deported from the United States back in 1994.”  The man left the thick glass separating him and me and disappeared through a door.

“Do you know why you were deported?” asked the man after leaving me waiting for over an hour.

“Yes, sir. I was incarcerated in 1983,” I said, “and deported after I did my stretch.” It didn’t make any sense to lie or withhold information since they probably knew more about me than I did.

“Stretch?”

“After I finished my term of incarceration and paid society, Sir,” I said. 

“What were you arrested for?”

“Sir, importation of a controlled substance…but I was only a passenger and—”.

“Yes, we’re all innocent,” said the man and went inside again. The game was up. I waited another grueling hour. Things didn’t look good. My racing heart and my gut kept telling me to make some tracks and run out as fast as I could.

“Did you enter the United States legally and did you provide proof of having lived there for five years prior to your parents’ naturalization?”

“Sir, I was nine years old when I entered the United States, at the port of Miami, legally on September 12, of 1970. I was one of six children. I was seventeen in 1978 when I enlisted in the United States Air Force. I was honorably discharged. You can’t be an illegal alien and be in the Air Force, Sir. I have a copy of my DD-214 on my phone. It’s at security checkpoint.” The man went back inside, and I waited some more.

“Here’s your passport,” said the man with a smile, “just need you to sign it.” I returned a smile despite the concoction of different emotions going off in my body: fear, happiness and disbelief.  I signed my name right under a bald eagle and the red, white and blue flag printed on the first page.

“By the way,” said the man, his smile a little bigger, a little wider, and a little bit more welcoming, “there’s a letter for you.” The United States District Court, Southern District of Florida, had a warrant out for my arrest concerning a case for possession, importation and intent to distribute 268 kilos of cocaine.

“Sir,” I said, “I maxed out my time. They milked my sentence to the last drop.”

“Hey,” said the man, “don’t get pissed off at me. I’m just the messenger.”

“What about my passport?” So close and yet so far. I should have listened to my gut.

“It’s a temporary passport. You’re good for fourteen days,” said the man, “but after that you will not be able to travel.” His smile came back and so did mine—though mine I forced with a chisel and hammer.

“Thank you, Sir,” I said, “I appreciate your and the embassy’s kindness.” I didn’t have to run and there were no killer bees in the distance. It had all been a figment of my hypervigilant imagination. How could I have not trusted the United States embassy. With a passport, I had two weeks to go home to the Southern District of Florida and fix the warrant for a crime I had already paid society, a crime protected by double jeopardy law.

Home sweet home, baby, here I go.

I was given my phone at the checkpoint, and I slowly walked towards the gate as I tightly held the blue booklet in my left hand. My picture, my name, my date of birth, my country of origin, and the United States of America jumped out at me from the passport. It was real. My left index finger was bent to where I have two small scars that make a perfect crucifix. I had long before stopped praying to the cross but thanked the scar, nonetheless. I was going home and was going back to exercise my rights as a citizen after waiting for almost forty years to do so. My daughter, my Little Munchkin, would be getting her American dream, a priceless blessing that had just come out of the blue. Angela, whom I sometimes called my angel and my mother, was going to be ecstatic.

Just as I was at the embassy gate with my eyes still glued to the passport, I was startled by two men who grabbed me by my arms. Another man appeared in front of me and another one grabbed me from behind. I was cuffed and shoved inside a pickup truck. I was caught completely by surprise. I looked for Angela, my angel, by she was nowhere to be seen.

I scanned everything around me, sized up the man driving, the one riding shotgun, and the two on my flanks. The driver sped away. “Soy inocente, soy inocente,” I kept saying in Spanish, but they told me to shut up.

We entered the slums of Curundú. I had been in the area many times but had never been through the back alleys. The off-road vehicle rolled over the dirt road on the side of the rubble still left over from buildings that President Bush had bombed during the U.S. invasion three decades earlier in 1989. My breathing raced with a vengeance, my heart sped, the hairs on the back of my neck stood out, and heat rushed to my face. There had to be an escape route. “Por favor, no me maten, por que?”

When the four men didn’t answer why they were ordered to kill me and started laughing instead, I looked at my scar, my heart skipped, my fight and flight vanished into thin air, my body went limp in total surrender and helplessness, and my soul left to hover above me, again, like it had at times in the past. Would the bullet shatter my head and splatter my brain on the dirt road? Or will the bullet exit the bone after dancing around in my skull, leaving a neat little puddle out by the rubble?  I should have known that getting an American passport so easily was too good to be true.