Coiba – La Isla Del Diablo
By Steven Banks
So I decide to show Estrella her own country and teach her to scuba dive. In the surfer paradise of Santa Catalina, we found a great dive master and the oldest Rasta wannabe I have ever seen. We get on the boat and right off he says, “Oh, please don’t you rock my boat,” when the rust heap didn’t even move, “’Cause I don’t want my boat to be rockin’.” He had graying dreads hanging past his waist and his face looked like the back of my elbow.
My dive master is friends with this dried raisin, and between the two of them they know every diving and fishing spot in the waters off the protected marine park of Coiba. National Geographic editors have collectively jizzed more over photos of this place than their March 1976 topless pigmy special. The dolphins that jump and swim off our bow are barely noticed until the captain points and murmurs something like, “These are the big fish, who always try to eat down the small fish. Just the small fish.” There was a certain lyrical bounce to his speech that seemed familiar to me.
After experiencing one of the best dives of my life, I learned the history of the island, which now makes me even smarter than I was. Let’s see if you are smart like me. Pencils ready?
The region has had the most attacks from one of the following: a) Sharks, b) Monkeys, c) Chuckys.
If you guessed c then remove some ribs and start sucking yourself off now because you are right -- Chucky, or, more accurately, Los Chuckys along with their rivals, The Children of the Cold Tomb (my favorite) and the Sons of God. All are street gangs.
Los Chuckys took their name from the movie Child’s Play, and they were sent to a deserted island where they were forced to sit through such cinema gold as Child’s Play 3, The Bride of Chucky, and The Seed of Chucky, as punishment for taking such a lame name. For that and for killing people.
Back in ’03 there were a couple of ways to get to Coiba -- take a boat or kill someone. Aside from every taxi driver in Panama, there has only ever been one Panamanian I ever wanted to kill, but instead we had angry sex, and I still haven’t been able to shake her. But anyway, the boat is the only way to go now, since the prison was closed in 2004. That’s right -- Coiba Island was one big ass prison.
At night, the guards would lock themselves in their towers and let prisoners out of their cells. I have no idea why they would do this. The guards must have thought it was good fun. Imagine The Most Dangerous Game in teams. Or Survivor Panama with a twist. The bets would be somewhere along the lines of “I give you three to one the rapist gets castrated tonight… or lucky.” One night escapees floated on a raft to the rival gang’s area and were greeted by having their heads removed. But they weren’t really using them properly anyway—who would think they could navigate through foaming, shark-infested waters patrolled by boats carrying men toting machine guns?
The late afternoon sun came up, and a flock of bright red scarlet macaws passed overhead on their way to the island. The Rasta took his shirt off… he was not really black, but he tans to reach that nice dark blend of Jamaican and dark roasted Panamanian. He lights his joint, lays back, and then sings, “Sun is shining, the weather is sweet now, make you wanna move your dancing feet, yeah.”
We drift past a wall of the former compound and I see the words, “Penitenciaría.” The dive master sees my face light up. He drops me and the Rasta man off there, but Estrella won’t set foot on the island. I think she knew.
The faux Rasta led the way on foot, chopping away at the undergrowth as we moved along. I saw rusting gates and crumpling concrete and wondered what horrors had occurred here. When I ask what happened to all the people, the machete wielding boat captain understands and smiles. “Exodus, all right! Movement of jah people.”
I stop with a sudden realization. I confront the Rasta Man.
“What is your name?”
He has a big shit eatin’ grin.
“What… is… your… name?”
And he has an even bigger shit eatin’ grin. The guy can understand but he doesn’t really speak. “Can he speak Spanish?” I ask the dive master when I return to the boat.
“He understands English and Spanish but he only speaks… he only speaks Marleynese.”
“Freedom came my way one day,” Rasta Man said, “and I started out of town, yeah!” He pointed at a cell with a caved in ceiling and dead palm leaves on its floor.
“He was a prisoner?”
“This was his home for twenty years.”
I got a chill standing in front of this smiling man with the big knife. I thought about headless ghosts roaming the cells and wondered if Rasta Man was a Chucky. Seeing him with a knife and a smile, I wouldn’t be surprised.
The sun began to set as we motored past the final leaning palm of the island. I stared into dark, forbidding jungle.
“La Isla Del Diablo,” the captain said. I wondered if there were lost prisoners in the thick of the island that didn’t know the prison had closed, just like the pockets of Japanese on Pacific islands that still think the war is on.
Evil is a dark cloud roaming the earth. It drifts over places like the World Trade Center and Iraq, but when nobody is looking it usually comes to rest in remote places like this -- places of natural beauty lie next to the evils of humankind.
I asked my dive master what the Rasta Man did to do time. The Rasta Man turned to me.
“No woman no cry,” he said. But this time he wasn’t smiling.