The Azuero Peninsula and Veraguas Places

La Villa de Los Santos

Just across the muddy Río La Villa from Chitré is La Villa de Los Santos, which is considerably smaller than its neighbor but more historically significant. When it was founded in 1569 it was one of just two Spanish outposts in an area dominated by hostile Indians. That indigenous population was highly developed, as excavations at the nearby burial site of Cerro Juan Díaz have established, but they were no match for Spanish swords or the old-world diseases.

La Villa's claim to fame in Panama is that it was the first community to express support for Simón Bolívar's South American revolution against Spain. People in the region were fed up with Spanish exploitation, but the politicians in the administrative center of Natá were pro-Spain, and they repressed La Villa's independence movement. The town's most powerful families consequently sent a letter directly to Bolívar on November 10, 1821, expressing their desire to join his recently liberated state of Gran Colombia (modern-day Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela). Several weeks later Panama declared its independence from Spain. The drafting of that letter, known as el Primer Grito de la Independencia, (the First Shout of Independence), is celebrated every November 10 on La Villa's central plaza with speeches and folk dancing.

Three blocks east of the Carretera Nacional, La Villa's central Plaza Simón Bolívar is surrounded by colonial- and republican-era buildings, the most impressive of which is the town's church.