Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [14]
The Maranon Gym, later to be renamed Pascual Cielo Gonzalez, was built in the gallery of an old train station. At the time, athletes had no place to train, so when the station closed, the gallery space was converted and the local mayor agreed to let it be used for boxing. A vast, metal-roofed, concrete building, painted light blue, the gym had a basketball court marked inside and a ring in the centre, barely illuminated by shafts of light from window holes. A variety of spectators invariably gathered there, from local workers in typical white, open-necked shirts to a myriad of children staving off boredom by watching prospects hit the speed bag.
Neco de La Guardia in Chorrillo had previously been the best gym around, while nearly two hours from the capital, in the notorious slums of Colon, were two other boxing gyms: Teofilo Al Brown, named after the country’s first champion, and a pokey hole called the Box of Matches, so named because young boxers crowded in there so tightly that they had to rub shoulders to punch the bags. Greats like Luis Ibarra, Ismael Laguna and Eusebio Pedroza would train there. “It was such a small gym and so many trainers worked with fighters there,” said Plomo. “It was always full and no matter how many people were there, everybody trained together.”
By the age of twelve, Duran was a painter and handyman for Don Jose Manuel Gomez, a hotelier he affectionately called “Viejo.” His mother already worked at the Roosevelt Hotel, which was popular with American soldiers and their wives, washing and ironing and cleaning rooms, and she introduced her sons to Gomez, a kindly man who taught Duran about dedication to work and basic moral values. Duran would often refer to him as a father figure. It wasn’t unusual for the family to sleep in a room at the hotel.
“Jose Manuel Gomez was in love with my mother, but she never paid any attention to him,” said Duran. “He gave my older brother Toti a job in the hotel … it had like sixty or seventy rooms. Later on he gave me a job there too. I would make three dollars a week. We used to sleep in the maintenance room. He taught me to paint, to polish furniture and bed springs. We used to put a covering on the roof to protect us from the rain. We painted the hotel inside out. We used to use brooms to reach the parts that we couldn’t reach. I used to go to school sometimes in the mornings or afternoons and sometimes in the night. This man taught me to work and never to steal, that it was better to ask than steal. My brother and I never stole, never smoked and never tried drugs.”
Despite the friendliness of the Americans at the Roosevelt, trouble was in the air. On January 9, 1964, in what became known as the Day of the Martyrs, anti-U.S. rioting broke out in the Canal Zone. It began when a U.S. flag was torn down during conflict between Panamanian students and Zonians over the right of the Panamanian flag to be flown alongside it. The U.S. Army intervened after Canal Zone police were overwhelmed, and after three days of fighting, about twenty-two Panamanians and four U.S. citizens were dead.
“Clara always lived in extreme poverty,” said her sister Mireya. “When it was January the Ninth, the students entered the area of the Canal. My sister had moved to a place called Caledonia. She had a room there, next to an ice factory. I had gone there for a visit. There was a terrible gunfire there and we all had to get inside and under the bed – my brother Joaquin, Toti, Roberto, Marina and I. That is where my sister was with her poverty.”
Schooling came third behind hustling for a living and boxing. Although it has been documented that Duran stayed in school until he was fourteen years old, some family members don’t recall him getting past the third grade. He had no inclination to study and