After Panama’s magnitude 7.7 earthquake, residents of La Villa de Los Santos are gathering fragments of their national heritage. With homes damaged and aftershocks continuing, saving a beloved church raises a difficult question: who should pay to preserve history?
A Nation in the Rubble
Residents crossed into the cordoned plaza and began collecting shells from the rubble. The shining fragments had decorated San Atanasio Church’s bell tower. Neighbors told EFE they wanted to set them back into its walls someday. For now, they gathered what they could still hold.
La Villa de Los Santos, founded in 1569, is not simply an old town with an attractive square. Here, on November 10, 1821, Panama issued its first cry of independence from Spain. The earthquake struck just over a month before the anniversary of that defining moment.
The colonial arrangement remains legible through the wreckage: church facing plaza, municipal buildings nearby, a white pavilion at the center. But no one can enter the church. Cracks run across its walls, and the uppermost level of its bell tower lies in the street.
“It was a very sad moment because the church is a symbol,” historian Manuel Moreno Arosemena told EFE. Born and raised here, he works in a building on the square. At about 12:56 p.m. on Friday, October 9, he ran outside as the magnitude 7.7 earthquake shook the town.
He watched the tower fall. Recalling it brought him to tears.
For Moreno and his neighbors, this Catholic church belongs to the nation’s history and their emotional lives. Residents said they had taken its two bells to the parish house for safekeeping. They could not protect the tower, but they could protect something that had belonged inside it.
The Roof Above a Lifetime
Away from the square, broken roof tiles clogged narrow streets. Houses stood with split walls and collapsed facades. The historic center, recognized as national heritage since the mid-twentieth century, was also a neighborhood where people needed somewhere to sleep.
Its traditional quincha houses had red roof tiles darkened by moisture and small front courtyards. Those details made a recognizable streetscape. For Alberto Lara, in his seventies, one house held something more immediate: generations of his family.
He stood in the doorway, one hand on his head and the other on the frame. He could not go farther inside. He did not want to leave. The house was roughly a century old, he told EFE, and sunlight now entered through its broken roof.
“I’d never felt anything like that. So strong. The little house came down,” Lara told EFE, crying with his head lowered.
The first official national assessment cited in EFE’s reporting recorded no deaths, approximately 30 minor injuries, and more than 400 damaged buildings. The absence of fatalities was an enormous relief. It did not make hundreds of repair bills manageable or damaged homes habitable.
Nor does that tally describe 400 collapsed buildings. Damage varies, and the preliminary count supplies neither a repair estimate nor the number of households unable to return. For Lara, however, the question was already concrete: how to replace the roof over a lifetime.
National heritage status recognizes a public interest in these streets, but it doesn’t put tiles back over a family’s rooms. Recovery will need to distinguish urgent shelter from longer restoration work without treating either as expendable. Otherwise, the most visible monument could recover while the neighborhood that gives it meaning still struggles.
Who Pays to Put It Back
The provincial figures expose another layer of the disruption. Los Santos reported 22 affected educational centers and four hospitals. Together, those 26 facilities outnumbered the 14 residences specified in the same preliminary assessment. The report also noted five hotels and two churches as damaged.
Those categories total 47 buildings, with schools and hospitals accounting for slightly more than half. That is a share of the listed subtotal, not all provincial damage. Still, it shows why counting affected buildings alone understates the potential disruption: one school or hospital serves far beyond a single household.
Damage does not establish that every facility has closed. But inspections and repairs must address services, not just structures. Five affected hotels also put local earnings at risk just as reconstruction creates new expenses.
The province recorded at least six minor injuries and roughly 300 people evacuated from a coastal community because the sea level rose. Across the affected area, more than 100 aftershocks followed overnight. Residents camped in parks and on streets as humanitarian aid arrived and authorities worked to restore electricity.
In La Villa de Los Santos, neighbors were already planning to repair the church with their own money. Their attachment is unmistakable. So is the difficulty: the community hoping to recover its national symbol also has broken roofs to mend.
Private contributions can express belonging. Making them the measure of what gets restored would risk confusing devotion with ability to pay. A place celebrated as a cradle of Panamanian identity has significance beyond the families living around its square.
The shells deserve to return to the tower. Lara deserves a roof that keeps the weather out. A reconstruction worthy of this town must honor both obligations, rather than ask residents to choose which part of their history they can afford to save.