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By Root 1259 0

some people kept a close watch on Chaflan. They said his interest in the children was unhealthy, that he sexually molested them, and that he should be locked up. “I never saw Chaflan do anything they accused him of,” said Duran. “Chaflan would do all sorts of pirouettes, tricks with his hands and all the ten- and twelve-year-old kids would follow him. So one day he said that if we would exercise with him he would feed us lunch. So we would do what he told us and walk on our hands, exercise and do flips in the air. Afterwards, he would make us clean off in the ocean. Then, all covered in sand, he would put us to wrestle because at that time a lot of wrestlers would come to Panama.” Before boxing became a passion, Duran desired to be like the popular Mexican wrestlers. Chaflan helped funnel that passion and asked for nothing in return.

Young Roberto also skirted back and forth between Panama City and Guarare. It wasn’t unusual to see the little child rolled up on a catre, a canvas-like covering, on the ground of one of his extended family’s small homes. He was always on the go, playing soccer and baseball or learning to punch under the tutelage of his uncle Socrates “El Chinon” Garcia. Socrates’ brother Jairo later claimed, “It was my brother who gave him that powerful punch. He was the man who showed him how to box.”

Roberto and his sister Marina went to elementary school in Guarare for a while, until Clara moved back with them to the capital when Roberto was in second grade. For a while the family lived in El Mangote, on the Pacific side of the Isthmus. Not yet “Manos de Piedra,” Duran often came running home to the call of “patas de abejon,” because he was so thin. According to Toti, “The abejon is a wasp, which though being fat has very thin legs.”

“He was quite a terrible boy,” joked Mireya, Roberto’s aunt, who was close to him in age. “He misbehaved always. When he was a little boy, he used to climb trees and liked to swing on the branches once he was up there. This is what I remember, because we were of a similar age. My mother had a sister called Angela Garcia, who lived in the Nuevo Arraijan. She had two dogs, one called Biuty and the other Capitan. Do you want to know what Roberto did? Starting at Chorrillo, he walked all the way with Toti, his brother. They crossed on foot the Puente de las Americas and went to Nueva Real, which is very, very far, and came to where my mother was because they did not have any money. They went on foot. These two dogs attacked Roberto and Toti and if my mother had not got out at that moment, the dogs would have killed them.”

Eventually Roberto would immerse himself in boxing and see less of Chaflan and the gang. Unlike his protégé, the sage would never prosper. The mores that he taught Duran, he couldn’t apply to his own life and it was the nature of such a friendship to wither. Chaflan had plateaued in life and although Duran loved him, he didn’t need him anymore. The young fighter grew out of Chaflan.

“When I started boxing, Chaflan would come over to the El Maranon Gym,” recalled Duran. “One day I was training and he came over and he tapped my back. When I turned around they took a picture of us. I have the picture in my house as a remembrance of him. After that I didn’t see him much. I wouldn’t follow him anymore.”

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Fighter

“His mother used to tell me to go to the gym and see if he was there, and to hit him if I found him there. He would ask me what I was doing there, to which I would answer that I had come to see him training. I never brought him back home. I once told his mother that if the boy likes boxing, maybe tomorrow he would be famous.”

Victorino Vargas, Duran’s stepfather

AT TIMES HE would sit in his room, stare out the window and dream. When will I be a boxer? He would peek in his brother’s boxing bag and see himself draped in the fabulous colors. The boots would be too big and the pants would droop on his skinny frame, but when he wore them he felt like a champion. I will wear this sparkling uniform one day when I become a boxer. It wasn