In this excerpt, Esquina recounts watching her father, Vicente Esquina, get dressed as the Congo King and accompanying him to the palenque/palacio to play Congo. Memories of her father’s participation as king mark some of Esquina’s earliest recollections of the tradition.

In this brief excerpt, Esquina discusses occasions on which the community offers presentations of Congo performance locally as well as abroad and her perception of their response to the tradition.

In this brief excerpt, Esquina discusses the significance of the Congo game and Congo dance including how prominently performing as a primary singer has figured into her life.

In this excerpt, Esquina discusses her pride for the Congo tradition and its importance to the towns of Panama’s upper coast.

In this excerpt, Esquina discusses the changes she has seen in the Congo tradition over the course of her lifetime. Specifically, she talks about changes that she has witnessed in ways in which younger practitioners who perform the role of devil in other communities sometimes put razor blades in their whips, which violates the nature of the game.

In this brief excerpt, Esquina describes the ways in which Congo season begins in Panama on the feast day of San Sebastian with the raising of the Congo flag.

In this excerpt, Esquina discusses the changes she has seen in the Congo tradition over the course of her lifetime. Specifically, she talks about the rare existence of two palacios in 2003 and the shifting commitment of Congo practitioners who once participated in the tradition exclusively and without interruption during carnival season before the road was constructed in the early 1970s, which connected Portobelo and the rest of the Coasta Arriba to the broader Republic.