In the old treasure port of Portobelo, on Panama's Caribbean coast, the church of San Felipe keeps a dark wooden statue of Christ carrying the cross, the Cristo Negro, that has become the centre of one of Latin America's great popular devotions. The image's arrival is told in competing legends, all involving the sea: a ship that could not leave the bay until the crate holding the statue was put ashore, a box washed up after a storm, a cargo refused and abandoned. What is certain is that the devotion is centuries old and that it belongs above all to the Afro Panamanian communities of the coast, descendants of the enslaved and the cimarrones who made the region their refuge.
Every 21 October tens of thousands of pilgrims, the nazarenos, converge on Portobelo, many walking the final kilometres from Sabanitas and some crawling the last stretch, dressed in the purple robes of the Nazarene which they wear in payment of promises made for healing, deliverance or pardon. The statue is carried through the town at night on a swaying platform borne by rotating teams, four steps forward and three back, to brass band dirges, and the festival's mixture of penance, drumming, food and dance has made it a defining expression of Congo coast culture. The Black Christ is petitioned by fishermen, migrants and prisoners alike, a Christ whose colour and coast belong unmistakably to his devotees.