Those familiar with Portobelo describe it as a living entity full of magic, mystery, and miracles with a magnetic force that attracts visitors.  Even the origin of its name is shrouded in mystery.  Among many stories, one claims that on Columbus’ fourth and final voyage to the “New World,” he visited Panama’s Caribbean shores.  The magnificence of Portobelo’s vegetation and the depth of its bay seduced him to enter and inadvertently name the village.  The sea weary admiral was so smitten by the splendor of Portobelo’s beauty and the protectiveness of this natural harbor that he exclaimed “que porto bello!” Italian for – what a beautiful harbor!

During the colonial period Portobelo was one of the most important ports in the Spanish Empire.  The Ferias de Portobelo were an annual event where goods and services from Europe, Africa, and the Americas were bought, sold and/or bartered.  The Englishman Thomas Gage, a Roman Catholic priest of the Dominican order, published a detailed account of his twelve-year travel in his book Thomas Gage’s Travels in the New World, that included the Portobelo fairs where he observed the transformation of the town with the arrival of vessels from all over the world.  Notable pirates of the era including Francis Drake, Henry Morgan, Edward Vernon and Lawrence Washington are all part of Portobelo’s history.  Drake was buried in a lead coffin at the mouth of the Bay of Portobelo.

For Africans abducted from their homelands, Portobelo was simultaneously the end of the horrid Middle Passage and the beginning of bondage in America.  The Congos of Portobelo are the descendants of the cimarrones – runaway Africans who fiercely fought for their freedom during the Spanish colonial period.  After escaping into the hills and rainforest, the cimarrones built fortified villages known as palenques from which they waged wars against their former enslavers.  So successful were they in war, that the Spaniards were forced to recognize their freedom.  Today, the Congos memorialize their ancestors during carnival in street performances, music, dance, and costumes.  Their legends and historical accounts record the names of several well-known kings among them Felipillo, a ladino (an African familiar with Spanish language & culture), Bayano, an African prince in his own land, Domingo Congo, Antón Mandinga, Luis de Mozambique and Juan de Dioso.

Oral history in Portobelo also tells of a crate containing a sculptural figure of a black Christ “magically” appearing in the bay during an epidemic and being brought ashore by two fishermen.  Shortly after the community began venerating the figure, the epidemic miraculously ended.  As a result, for the last three centuries on the 21st of October, the Feast Day of the Cristo Negro de Portobelo – the Black Christ of Portobelo, as many as 60,000 devotees make pilgrimages to visit the statue.