Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [175]
THERE HAS ALWAYS been an affinity for Duran in Guarare, his mother’s birthplace in the Los Santos province, bordered by the Pacific Ocean on one side and the Bahia de Panama on the other. Everyone there who was alive at that time can remember where they were or how much they won when Duran won the lightweight title in 1972 or dethroned Leonard in 1980. “I was watching that fight on a big screen that they set up in a field here in Guarare,” says resident Daniel Peres, sat in a local bar. “All the lights were on in the town and when they announced that Duran was the winner, a man next to me flung a child very high in the air. That’s all I can remember from that night.” And when he lost to Leonard? “The city was dark that evening.”
Traveling through Guarare to the several apartments and homes that Clara used to rent near La Plasita del Toros, along with Duran’s old hangouts, it is clear that the people recall him with great affection. “I remember he used to steal coconuts from El Rio. He used to come around here to the house as a young boy,” said Lesbia Diaz, who lives a block off the Carretera National. “He would walk in and ask my mother, ‘Mama, mama, tengo hambre?’ She used to feed him rice, beans, patacones and anything she put on the table he would eat. The whole town would be lit when Duran won.” Lesbia’s late father, Arquimedes, was Duran’s biggest fan, and would travel from Guarare to Panama City to congratulate him after victories. Diaz can pull out an entire photo album from a parade the town had after Duran won the lightweight title. Duran was their hope.
Clara Samaniego still lives in the house that her son bought her in the Seventies. It is in Los Andes No. 2, a district in the town of San Miguelito. When Duran bought the house, Los Andes was a safe place to live. It no longer is. Cab drivers refer to it as a red-light district, another name for a low-income housing project. It is the same house where Clara sat with a local reporter to watch her son defeat Sugar Ray Leonard in 1980. She was also there for the rematch, and she remembers hearing people yell, “Cholo, perdio, Cholo perdio,” after he walked out. Euphoria and joy encompassed the house when Clara’s son was still great.
Young, half-dressed children spread around the house in chaotic disharmony. Dirty dishes are stacked in the small sink to the left. Random phone numbers are scribbled in frat-house comprehension. It has been decades since Clara Samaniego was young but the hard years have not dissolved her kindness. She waits outside her home on a chair for nothing in particular. People pass and exchange glances or small talk. We drive up in a cab, and the driver asks her for “La mama de Duran.”
“Soy yo,” said Clara softly.
Twenty-five years earlier, things were better. Roberto took care of her. He bought this home for her, one that time has ravaged. Now, with the exception of Roberto, all her sons struggle to make a good living. “I was sad because I fought really hard so as not to fail to my children,” she said. “I never failed them. When I say you fail your children, I mean you abandon them. I never did that. I started working to buy their food. Roberto was born with a weight of eleven-and-a-half pounds but he always had his milk ready because I worked. There is a form where you write month after month your baby’s weight, and he grew pretty well. His milk bottles were always ready for him when I went to work and my compadre took care of him. Upon my returning, I would bring some more money to buy extra food. They never knew what to be hungry was.
“One day there was a party at home, and Roberto asked me