"In Portobelo, a lush village on Panama's Caribbean coast where the line between history and myth can feel faint, Sandra Eleta is known as the Great Witch. The wry and regal 83-year-old, whose striking photos of the town's Afro-Panamanian community have made her one of the country's most celebrated artists, has lived for more than half a century in an eclectic compound teeming with folkloric murals, feathered masks and mirrored canvases."
"Eleta's works, arranged about the place like shrines, reflect her reverence for the region's descendants of enslaved Africans from the Congo, first brought to Panama by Spanish colonialists in the 1500s. Eleta greets me with an embrace, a chilled red wine and words that carry the whiff of a mantra. 'While here,' she says, 'you are free to do whatever you'd like to do.'"
"Many visitors still view Panama through the tight lens of its storied canal. They might bed down in a resort town such as Bocas del Toro, or pass through on a cruise, but we are journeying across this famously narrow country - from Panama City to Portobelo and beyond - by car."
"'Life here is different than anywhere else in Panama,' says Eleta as we settle in at an informal artists' residency and hotel known as La Morada de la Bruja - The Witch's Abode."
Portobelo, a village on Panama's Caribbean coast, is home to Sandra Eleta, an acclaimed artist known as the Great Witch. Her compound, La Morada de la Bruja, serves as an informal artists' residency and hotel. Eleta's artwork honors the Afro-Panamanian community and its history. The journey through Panama highlights the contrast between the bustling capital and the tranquil, colorful life in Portobelo, where howler monkeys dominate the soundscape and local culture thrives away from tourist paths.
Read at CN Traveller
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