July 8, 2025 • 42 mins
In an interview with his Mom, Ian dives into his and Uncle Chris’ shared family history. It’s a lineage that’s tied to the founding families of Panama and the Spanish monarchy. There are stories about duels, ruthless dictators, jungle tribes, island prisons, and of course, true love.
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Speaker 1 (00:21):
Panama, the Isthmus we'd go to for Christmas. My mom
is Panamanian, and growing up, my family and I would
go down there every few years for Christmas to see
my grandparents. Growing up in Minnesota, I never met anyone
other than my mom who's from Panama. In fact, my
whole life, I only ever met one other person from
(00:41):
Panama that I'm not related to, and that was stopped
at a red light. I had this Panamanian sticker on
my grandfather's car, and this car pulled up and the
driver was very excited to see that I was also Panamanian.
So we started speaking to me in Spanish, but I
didn't speak Spanish and it was a little awkward. The
light turned green and that was that. I recently went
(01:02):
down to Panama and I was talking to my cousin's girlfriend.
She's never been outside of Panama, and I asked her
if she had plans to travel or maybe move somewhere else,
And to her, the question seemed stupid. As she explained it,
Panama is a paradise and life is good there. Why
would she want to go anywhere else? And the way
I understand it, a lot of Panamanians feel that way.
(01:22):
A lot of Americans do as well, with an estimated
thirty thousand expats currently living in Panama. So if Panama
is so great, why did my uncle Chris end up
living in South Carolina? And what was my mom doing
raising a family in Minnesota? As you'll hear, it had
a lot less to do with Panama and a lot
more to do with the tumultuous, unique, always interesting family
(01:46):
that they grew up in. All of my life, I've
heard my mom's stories about Panama, her connections to Panama's
ruling class, love stories, fishing stories, adventure stories, sharks, machine guns, dictators,
some of them running the country, others running the house.
But these stories are a lot better when she tells
(02:06):
them this is my mom and this is her name.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Okay. The whole thing that I was saddled with is
lupite that which is a nickname for Wada Lupe, But
it was always in my name thing lupetea Lupaguel, which
is what my mother wanted me to have as a name.
But the priest would not baptize me because there's no
saint Lupaguel. So then she created Lupaguel from wadal Lupe Raqueale.
So I'm Lupita, Lupeguel, wadal Lupe, Raqueale, Herndon Valdez.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Paf, paf or faf.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Oh, that's true, that's true.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Depending on who you're talking to.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
In college, I became loopy, and when I married your father,
it became lupyfaf.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Has he ever called you Guadalupe or Guadalupe? You know what?
Speaker 2 (02:52):
He never has ever? Ever? Interesting, I just realized that
my name from her early age was a bone of
contention for me because I had three brothers aside from.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
My uncle Chris. I'm going to leave my mom's other
two brothers out of the podcast. Let's just say they
have names that are as American sounding as Chris, names
that would go well with the pizza joint or a
sandwich shop. But my mom wasn't so lucky.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
And I was saddled with the name Buadelupe Raquel and
I grew up predominantly in the south of the US,
where no one had ever heard of the name or
could pronounce it properly, and as I got older, I
became guad guadapoop. I did not enjoy a lot of
the nicknames that came with.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
That, so people called you guadapoop.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Not and lived right. That was basically just third and
fourth grade, and then things settled down.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Growing up in a far out suburb of Minneapolis, I
was the only kid I knew with a bilingual parent,
and I actually found it pretty fascinating. She didn't speak
Spanish to us, but if she got a phone call
from her mom or someone else in Panama, she would
start speaking Spanish immediately, and it was like she turned
into a whole new person. She had a new voice,
a very fast voice, and much more exaggerated body language,
(04:08):
lots of hand gestures and facial expressions I'd never seen
before a bit of a tangent. But I've always wondered
just listening to you talk. I remember in high school,
you and I went to Taco Bell and I was
mortified because you were like, Hi, I'd like a jalupa
and could I also get a gordita? And uh. And
(04:30):
it's one of those things where for me where in
high school I took Spanish and I speak a little
bit of Spanish, but I always feel like such an
impost when I throw the accent on. So I can
do the accent, but it feels very uncomfortable for me
to just put on this accent. So I'm just curious
for you speaking both languages, do you have to think
to turn on the accent or does it just automatically
(04:51):
kick on for it?
Speaker 2 (04:52):
It's natural. It's like the reverse is true if I'm
talking in Spanish Kral Highway. That's how we For me.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
It's funny because when I hear it, it feels like
it's like this performative thing. But I just realized, like,
because for me it actually is. Yeah, And I always
thought it was funny that, you know, people will be like, well,
you know, this coffee is from Nicaragua and this coffee
is from Panama, but they won't be like, this is
a French roast.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Well, all I know is that there's a there's a
new movement now I think for for Latins to feel
more comfortable being Latin. And I'll give you a chance.
An example on ABC News on the weekends, it's some
guy from Telemundo that takes over. He speaks English perfectly
as I do, but when he pronounces a reporter who
happens to be Latin, he pronounces it the way it's
(05:42):
supposed to be said, doesn't americanize it, and I.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Guess you know, for me, I guess I'm reacting to
more media types because they probably are purposely laying it
on a little thicker. Oh probably, but just talking to
you to see how like quickly.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
He'll just And it's always been. I didn't speak until
I was three. My parents were very worried. But when
I did speak, it was full sentences and it was
completely bilingual, so I could speak to either parent in
whatever language. And according to my dad, I never stopped
talking after that.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
So how come you never taught me Spanish?
Speaker 2 (06:13):
I have a joke about it, Okay. I used to
always tell this to people. It's like, if they don't
listen to me in English, why waste my breath in Spanish?
But to be perfectly honest, I'm comfortable in both languages.
But your father, my husband, did not speak another language.
He only spoke English, and it felt to me just
like you thought it was weird to talk with the
(06:34):
proper accent. It felt weird for me to be running
a Spanish dialogue past a child and then have a
husband that didn't know what I was talking about, so
it just never seemed appropriate.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
My mom was the oldest of four children, My uncle
Chris was the youngest. She was born in Venezuela, but
because my grandpa was in the Marine Corps, they moved
around constantly. She lived all over Georgia, South Carolina, Portico,
and Panama. My grandmother was Panamanian and my grandfather was
an American from Alabama. Your dad famously spoke fluent Spanish
(07:09):
with an incredible vocabulary, with a very thick Alabama Southern accent.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Horrible, horrible. I'll give you an example. In Spanish, if
you say answer the telephone, my Dad's like conetestale.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
TELEPHONEO roquel telephone, O waqi.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Yeah you got it.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
That dead.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
But his vocabulary was amazing. He just he really studied it,
and he wasn't scared of being laughed at. He didn't care.
It's kind of interesting. All three of my brothers picked
up my dad's southern accent twang. Thing. As much as
they didn't get along with my dad or bucked heads
with them, they wanted to be like him. They wanted
to sound like him, so they really did. All of
(07:51):
them have a Southern twang to them, and they all
sound like my dad.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
I wish I was able to find a better example
of his version of Spanish. But here's a clip from
an old home movie where my grandpa tells my grandma
how beautiful she looks. Wrong it is.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
I grew up with two very proud parents of who
they were. My father was extremely proud of being an American,
a US citizen, and Mama was incredibly proud of being
a Panamanian. Never wanted to be a US citizen. And
because of how I look, which is confusing to a
lot of people, because I have a lot of my
Panamanian traits. What people don't understand is Panama was populated
(08:37):
by just about every race known to man, and so
people often think that we should all look like what
they think Mexicans should look like.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
They're picturing dark.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Skin, dark skin, dark Yeah, exactly, and I have the
lighter skin, green eyes, and fair hair depending on depending
on my age, color, my areas.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Most people in your American meet you don't think you're Panamanian,
or most people in Panama don't think you're Panamanian when
they see you correct or meet you. And I imagine
if you're traveling anywhere else in Latin America, most people
assume you won't speak Spanish or don't speak Spanish, which
I believe you've used your advantage. Yes, at some point
you sat on a plane next to the rapper Lil Jean. Yes,
(09:23):
he thought you were Susan Sarandon. You just went with it.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
I did, because it was like, everybody's to make a
big deal about this little John guy, and I didn't
know who he was. He was there for a concert
in Panama, and they kept saying miss sarand and I
was like I'm not. I was like, what the heck? Yeah, okay, yes,
but don't tell anyone.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Right, And then you got him to autograph a napkin
for you said something like keep on keeping on in
jan Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
And the whole time I had no idea who little
John was. But the back of the plane kept trying
to come up to where we were, so I figured
he might be somebody.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
So all that being said, I know you have a
story of experiencing some racism in college.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Oh yeah, yeah, which.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Is a weird one, just based on purely what you
look like that you would still kind of get treated
that way.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Well, I had never understood it, and actually it still
makes me sad to share this story. But what happened
is I was in my first year of college, and
since my family was down in Panama, a lot of
the special weekends or Thanksgiving or whatever, I would go
to different people's houses. So I went with a girl
named Anne, I won't say her last name. Went with Anne,
and she was from Tobaccoville, North Carolina. So I was
(10:30):
in Anne's room unpacking and I had met the mom.
She was delightful, and I was just kind of getting
my stuff settled in Anne's room when I heard this
man walk in the door and he goes, what the
hell did you bring me a damn spick into this
house for? And that was the first time I cringed.
I had never felt belittled or it was very, very strange,
(10:54):
shrinking feeling just I was like ready to hide. I
wanted to leave. I was going to I felt so bad,
and then rock hel my mother, took over my spirit
and I went charging out there and I said, hi,
I'm loopy and he said, well, hell girl, you're white,
and I said, I'm white, but you're still stupid. I
(11:15):
was really angry, and he ended up being a big
fan of me. He really liked me. But I just
couldn't warm up to the man. It just it broke
my heart that that people are judged by their skin color,
or by their heritage or whatever without knowing them, and.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Even how they order it. Taco bell, Yeah, shut up.
Do you have any connection to Venezuela whatsoever?
Speaker 2 (11:39):
You know what. I don't have a connection with Venezuela.
It was the best years of my parents' lives. They
have wonderful memories of it. Obviously, I left when I
was a month old, and I've never been backed. I
had of Venezuelan passport for a while. When I was
traveling through Europe. They were looking for Americans at the time.
I was back when planes were being hijacked and all
that stuff, so I hid my American one and travel
(12:00):
with the Venezuelan and the Panamanian one. At that time,
you had to give your passports at the hotel when
you were there, So I gave the Venezuelan one because
I thought, what the heck, who cares, I'm American, Panamanian,
Panamanian American. I'll grab whichever one I want when it's convenient.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
You've lived in Minnesota for thirty years. Do you consider
yourself a Minnesotan.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
You know, sadly, no, you know, I still feel it's crazy.
I don't. When I moved to Minnesota, I was overwhelmed
that there was no people of color, hardly at that time.
I didn't hear people speaking different languages. Everybody was blonde,
blue eyed. I put my daughter in preschool Alia your sister,
and she came back and I said, eh, yeah, I
(12:41):
was preschool. She goes, Oh, it was fun, mommy, but
tomorrow I need yellow hair and blue eyes. You know.
It was just like it was overwhelming to me, and
I just never it just never felt like me there.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
And I remember we went to a fud Ruckers. I remember,
seven years older at fud Rutgers and like cornered, a
bus boy may sit down. You gave him money to
sit down with you Spanish.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
I had missed it so much, and you know that's
an American place.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Fo.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Being Panamanian is a huge part of my mom's identity,
and a lot of that comes from the pride instilled
in her by my grandmother, Roquel. For Roquel, being Panamanian
was her identity, and for good reason. She was from
one of the founding families of Panama. Raised in high society.
Her family was part of the country's ruling elite. So
(13:41):
I'm assuming not everyone listening knows everything about Panama. Here's
a quick crash course on the Republic of Panama, most
famous for the Panama Canal, it is the country that
is the isthmus that connects North and South America. For
over three hundred years, Panama was a colony of Spain.
Eventually it became part of Colombia. In the late eighteen hundreds,
(14:03):
The French started to build the canal, but gave up
after too many workers died from malaria in the extreme
working conditions. At some point Teddy Roosevelt got involved and
America secretly helped Panama gain its independence from Colombia. Once independent,
America came in and built the canal, finishing it in
nineteen fourteen. The Panama Canal was run by the Americans
until the year two thousand, when it was handed over
(14:25):
to the Panamanians. Canal aside, Panama is an incredible place,
a tropical paradise with mountains, beaches, jungles, filled with Spanish
forts and ruins, incredible wildlife, and lots of different cultures
ranging from traditional Spanish to those of dozens of indigenous
tribes that inhabit the Jungles and nearby islands. And apparently
(14:46):
my grandmother Rockhell's family had a lot to do with
Panama's history once it became its own country.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Okay, we'll start with my grandfather, who is the true Panamanian.
His great great grandparents were given land and in Panama
by the King and Queen of Spain. One of his
brothers or cousins was actually president of Panama at one time.
My grandfather, Nairilito was involved, heavily involved in the war
(15:13):
between Colombia and Panama when we fought the Colombians for
our independence, and he was given the job of going
and bringing back the General of Columbia.
Speaker 4 (15:22):
Which he did, but he had to, like, he had
to like stab him first with the sword.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
I guess.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
The sword was kept in a display case in my grandparents'
living room.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
That made my grandfather a very important person.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
He remembering there's still blood on the sword.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Yes, yes, and that sword remains in its sheath, which
has been taken out to show me the brown, crusty
blood on the tip.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
I remember seeing the sword when I was ten and
seeing the dried blood on.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
It made an impression.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
It definitely made an impression. It's displayed in a living
room or was.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
With all his medals. He had a lot of medals.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
When it came time for Antonio Valdez to get married,
he went back to Spain.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
He was going to be in a duel with somebody
that had insulted him from Columbia and they were going
to have a duel, and this Spanish colonel it was
trying to dissuade them from doing it, so he ended
up not having the duel. The colonel talked him out
of it, brought him back to his home, and that's
where he met Maya Walita, my grandmother, the daughter of
the colonel Abwalita, my grandmother. Her family was very connected
(16:26):
to the Spanish monarchy, and she was a young girl.
She was only like fourteen or fifteen, but that's who
he ended up marrying. He married her at fifteen and
brought her back to Panama.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
They had a one year honeymoon throughout Europe, and Maya
Walita hated Panama with a passion. To her was an uncivilized, disgusting,
dirty country now think about it. They got married in
nineteen oh three, so the canal was in the process
of being built. It was dirty, malaria, everything, And she came.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
From a very refine going to a different planet.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Oh yeah, she was not a happy camper, and she.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Probably felt the same way you feel about Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Not true, no, not true, not true. But I will
say that when my grandfather died, when he died many many,
many years later, she packed her bags and got the
hell out of there. She when she was not it
wasn't like all I spend the rest of my life here.
This is what I do. You know what, that might
be a little bit like Minnesota, you know what. She
might be right, She was transplanted. It was never her country.
(17:29):
She never felt an allegiance to it. She didn't like
the Panamanians, I don't think.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Okay, So it was your grandfather's brother that at some
point was president of Panama.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Brother or cousin. I'm still unclear on that up.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
But the founding families, oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
The Valdez with an s. Okay, yes, my mother was
always insistent. I knew that.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
And then so your mother, Raquel, my grandmother.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
She grew up among these founding families. So it was
it was a group of five or six families, and
everybody knew each other, and Mama was very proud of
who she was. As a matter of fact, when your
father came to visit Panama when Dad and I first
got married, she took him around Panama and then went
to the White House and she said, Oh, I'm Raquel
Valdez and I'm here to show my son in law
(18:16):
the White House. So I'd like to go to Yeah, yeah,
that Casa Panama, the White House of Panama. Anyhow, it
was pretty funny. Your dad was like shocked, beyond belief
that we could just walk in there, and she's walking
us all around and showing us where she used to
hide as a little girl and what she used to do.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
So, yeah, visiting my grandparents' house was always an adventure.
I'd see two cans and iguanas in the backyard. Lizards
from outside would come inside, crawling on the ceiling while
we were eating dinner. At one point, they had two dogs,
a pet monkey, and about twenty parrots that lived in
cages in the backyard. My grandma Raquelle trained these parrots
(18:54):
to say a boiloh whenever my grandpa walked by. I
found this one video from the late nineties of Grandma
talking to the parrots. At this point there were only
two of them left.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Only give you alone.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
She Raquel was not the type of doting grandmother who
made cookies and knitted socks. She was very intimidating. Even
though she spoke English, she mostly spoke to my sister
and me in Spanish and expected us to speak Spanish
(19:39):
back to her. She would often lose her patience with
us when we wouldn't speak Spanish because we couldn't speak Spanish,
because we didn't speak Spanish. She was a stickler for
table manners and etiquette, never letting go of her high
society upbringing. She would refer to me as Mia Moore,
which was nice, but she would often refer to my
sister as the girl in her day. Roquel was larger
(20:02):
than life, a huge personality who did whatever she wanted
and got away with everything. She was the Bell of
the Ball and, for all intents and purposes, a real
life Disney princess.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
My mother was dropped at gorgeous. She made Elizabeth Taylor
look plain. I remember asking, why why is Mama the
only pretty one of your four girls? I said, she's
got those beautiful green eyes, and the rest of them
are fish belly white, and she's got that nice tan.
And my grandmother, my Walita, looks at me and she sighed,
(20:35):
and she goes a lupita Los Moros, the moors. The
more invasion of one hundred years ago is why she
had one dark child. So to me, my mother was
one of the most gorgeous women I've ever seen in
my life. Emerald green eyes, double set of black eyelashes,
(20:56):
kind of not darkish skin, but you know, skin that tans,
doesn't freck like mine, and jet black hair.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
And you got stuck looking like Susan.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Sarandon well or John Herndon.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Somewhere between the yeah yeah, great segue into who is
John Herndon?
Speaker 2 (21:12):
John Herndon so the.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Opposite of Roquel? My grandpa John was born into a
dirt poor family in rural Alabama in nineteen twenty nine,
or is he like to call it the height of
the Great Depression? Long story short, He lied about his
age and joined the Marine Corps as a teenager. He
spent three years stationed in San Diego, where he learned
to speak Spanish, and that got him transferred to Venezuela,
(21:38):
where he worked as a guard at the US Embassy
in Caracas, the same embassy where my great grandfather Antonio
Valdez had gotten his daughter Roquel a job as a
way of keeping an eye on her because she was
such a troublemaker straight out of a rom com. My
grandfather sees her at the embassy and asks her out,
but she turns him down because he's just a door man. Later,
(21:59):
one of my grandpa's his buddies asked him to tag
along on a double date, and it turns out that
Roquel just happens to be my grandpa's date for the night,
much to her surprise, They fall madly in love and
it becomes a huge scandal in Panamanian high society.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Naturally, my grandparents were not excited because this was not
the best match in heaven for Rockel. But the long
and the short of it, my grandmother was against their marriage.
But Maria a Walito, again always failing my mother. He said,
if that's what she wants, that's what she gets. So
there were two requirements. John Herndon had to a become
a Catholic and b become an officer.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
In record time, he became a lieutenant and a Catholic
and they were married. They stayed married for sixty nine
years until my grandmother's death in twenty twenty two. Based
on the stories I've heard from my mom, those sixty
nine years sounded like one very long episode of I
Love Lucy. Despite being madly in love, John and Roquel
(22:57):
drove each other nuts.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
I grew up involutable household. They argued about the color
of the sun, when the sun was going to come
up or go down, the sky was, you know, about everything.
They agreed on nothing. They were extremely passionately in love
with each other. It was very bizarre. My mother was
all about family, bloodlines and who was who, and Dad, unfortunately,
(23:19):
being a product of the South and a racist, was
all about skin color and it's like you know, and
would say horrible things about people. And Mom would think
horrible things about people, but she was educated enough not
to share it verbally. So between them, it was really
hard for me to ever feel like I could go
out with anybody because I just never was going to
please both of them. As a matter of fact, I
(23:41):
have a funny story to tell you and then we'll go.
As I'm growing up, my father's always Lapita and Lapita
was a nickname he had for me. My name is Lupitea.
That's a nickname, but he's Southern, so it came out Lapeita.
So he's like, Lapita, let me tell you something. What
you want to do is marry yourself an American. You
don't want to marry a lad And I said, why not, Daddy,
(24:02):
And he said, listen, a Latin guy, he's going to
fool around on you. You know, you want a guy
that's going to be loyal, It's going to be there
for you. He's not going to be fooling around. I
was like, okay, and my mother would go, Loupita, whatever
you do, do not marry a gringo. But I was like, why, Mama,
you married a gringo yourself. And she said, gringos want
(24:23):
to know. If you can cook and clean and wash
and the work of a maid, why would you want
to marry a gringo. And I said, Daddy told me
that they're loyal and stuff that Latins get mistresses. And
she goes, tell me, what could be better? They bring
you a maid to do the job of the maid,
and then you have to just get jewelry they bring
you because they have a mistress and they feel bad.
(24:46):
So this is how I grew up. And with these
two sources of information coloring what I should.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Do, John and Raquel drove each other nuts. John lacking
the refinement of Raquel's high societ upbringing, could be an
embarrassment for her, and Raquel, because of her high society upbringing,
was a constant source of embarrassment for my grandpa, always
getting him in trouble with his superiors in the military.
She did whatever she wanted, and if she got in
(25:13):
any trouble, she would always ask her favorite question, don't
you know who I am? I'm Roquel Vardes, daughter of
Antonio Valdez, et cetera, et cetera. The best example of
this is when they were living in Panama. The best
shopping in Panama at the time was on the American
Army base because you could get some really good deals.
So my grandma used to sneak her friends onto the
(25:34):
base and bring them to the store. One day, she
got caught and she was arrested by the military police.
She stood in front of the judge and immediately demanded
an apology because don't they know who she is? She
is Roquel Valdez, the daughter of Antonio Valdez. After the
end of her rant, she ended up receiving an official
apology from the judge and was given a military escort home.
(25:55):
When my grandpa found out about this, he was mortified.
Much later, when Roquel was really deep into Alzheimer's, she
would still find ways to push my grandpa's buttons. I
remember one time they were trying to get in the
car to go somewhere, so she decided to put her
purse on top of the fridge and then tell my
grandpa that she couldn't find it. And I just sat
there and watched while she was laughing maniacally while he
(26:16):
was stomping all over the house trying to find her purse.
But I think my favorite example of this is when
I was in college. I was doing a road trip
with John and Roquel and we were at some truck
stop and my grandpa was pretty controlling with what she
could eat. He was worried that she had diabetes and
didn't want her to have any sugar, but Roquel loved sweets.
So as we're sitting at this truck stop having dinner,
(26:37):
I watched as she pushes her fork off the table,
and my grandpa immediately goes Roquel, bebbe, what are you doing?
And as he bends down to grab the fork, she
grabs all of the sugar packets off the table and
stuffs them into her bra and gives me a wink.
That was Roquel and that was John. These were my grandparents,
and they were a lot. The bottom line is that
(26:58):
John and Roquel were huge persons, and even though they
shared a Disney like love story, the reality of their
lives wasn't always that pleasant. It was a reality that
wasn't easy for my mom and her brothers to grow
up in. I think too, that did de disnify it
a little bit. You know, both Roquel and John charming
(27:18):
in their own way, but also pretty flawed in their
own ways. Very I know, Grandpa was abusive and heavy drinker.
It was Roquel abusive or not at all? She did
he ever abuse her?
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Or hell no, no he did.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
And my mother, you know, this is a woman who
nobody touched, had touched or anything. She was She was
just destroyed, you know, she just didn't know how to
stop it. It was a hardhouse to grow up in
because Dad was trying to raise us with his southern
poor way of beatings and reprimands and commands, and Mama
(27:57):
was spoiling her boys rotten. I was just trying to
stay alive and lay low. But my brothers were always
trying to prove to my dad that they were men
and they didn't have to do what he said. And
then Mama was always on the side trying to help
them stay alive too.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
It was.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
It was very hard. It was. It was not an
easy place to grow up with.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
My grandpa came from a family of alcoholics and he
was a pretty big drinker. He would often give out
beatings to my mom and her brothers when my mom
was older. One of these beatings was witnessed by some
of the Panamanian in laws, and after that, my grandpa
never touched her again. But my mom's brothers weren't so lucky.
One of my mom's brothers got it the worst, and
(28:36):
Roquelle ended up sending him to live with family in
England for a while.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
You know what my dad ruined my high school graduation
was drunk off his butt, and he was a mean drunk.
He wasn't like some people are funny drunks, so he
did have a drinking issue. I remember my mother had
a statue of the Virgin Mary, and she had Novena's
lit and one of it was just so he would
quit drinking.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
I have to say that at some point my grandpa
did quit drinking and the abuse stopped. The version of
John Herndon that I grew up with was sharp, witty,
and very funny. I never saw him do anything cruel
or abusive. But that being said, neither my mom nor
my uncle's made any attempts to hide or excuse the
way my grandfather treated them. Somehow, at some point my
(29:20):
mom forgave him and they worked it all out, and
for all of my life they were extremely close. But
as I've heard, that wasn't always the case.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
I lived to get out of that house.
Speaker 4 (29:31):
You don't know how it was embarrassing for me because
I always have managed to make really nice, decent friends,
and then for them to see kind of the weirdness
I lived with was kind of a little embarrassing.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
But I didn't know different. I wasn't that embarrassed about
my family. It was my family, no, But I just
was tired of the beatings. It's so unnecessary. I wasn't
even that pad of a kid.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
I don't even know what that was for mine was
he always from having a smart mouth, actually.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Because I was always too fearful to break any of
the rules.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
My mom left for college when she was seventeen. She
would come back in the summers, but as soon as
she could officially be on her own, she was gone.
(30:29):
Now I've covered some of my grandpa's worst traits, but
he wasn't all bad. Like I said, I only ever
knew him as a good guy, a good guy who
was a bottomless pit of wild stories. Growing up in
the woods of Alabama, he was always into hunting and fishing,
but it was when he returned to Panama in the
nineteen sixties that he was finally in his element. Any
(30:51):
free time he could get he spent fishing, scuba diving,
exploring the rivers, islands and jungles of Panama.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Dad loves fishing, skin diving, hunting, all that. So he
would go on these excursions and we didn't care. We
were just glad he was gone. And I'll be honesty,
and he brought back some crazy stuff. I mean, I've
seen a shrunken head and a bottle. It was disgusting,
and he brought that he traded Budweiser's for them.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
That's right, Budweiser's. On all of his excursions, my grandpa
would bring a case of Budweiser with him, often trading
hot cans of beer with different indigenous tribes around Panama.
There was a room in my grandparents' house overflowing with
art and artifacts that he'd collected over the years, hand
carved canoe paddles, pottery carvings, and sculptures. It was a
(31:33):
room full of things that should have been on display
at a museum, but were instead on display alongside Mouldy
nat King Cole and Willie Nelson records. The walls of
this room were covered with framed photos from different fishing trips.
Each photo came with a different story. For instance, there
was the giant snapper he caught while snorkeling in a reef.
He didn't have an air tank and had to hold
his breath for two minutes while the snapper pulled him
(31:54):
deep into a sea cave. This is how he told
the story.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
This little island in a reef right pried and flow
the island and I didn't have nothing else to do
that when I said I'd just put all my stuff
and jumped in there and swim around, and it's pretty
underneath then and there just saying came out and looked
at him, and so I shot him, which is a
normal reaction.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
The first time he took my dad's scuba diving, he
warned him that there were sharks in the water. If
they had black tips on their fins, they were harmless,
but if they had white tips, my dad should watch
out because those ones can be aggressive. My Grandpa went
in the water first and my dad followed a few
seconds later, and the first thing that he sees fifteen
feet below him is a shark with white tiped fins
and my Grandpa yanking on its tail. My dad immediately
(32:45):
lost his shit and desperately climbed back into the boat.
There was also the time when my grandpa took my
dad on a two day fishing trip with Chiliico, who's Chilico.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
He had a checkered past, killed a couple of people
that had only spet some tam had a proved.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
Well, he was going up there for our protective Koiba Island,
or Koiba Island as my grandpa called it, was an
infamous prison island off the coast of Panama. Known as
the Alcatraz of Central America. This island was home to
Panama's most dangerous criminals. The island is still notorious, teeming
(33:22):
with hundreds of crocodiles, venomous snakes, and surrounded by shark
infested waters. Shark infested waters that happened to be great
for fishing, so my grandpa took my dad out there,
eighteen miles into the ocean in a fifteen foot long
aluminum fishing boat. They spent two days fishing around Koiba
Island and camped out on a nearby island. Chiliko was
(33:43):
there as a bodyguard because he'd been a former inmate
on the prison island. My dad did see some escaped
prisoners rowing away on a handmade raft, but luckily there
were no other encounters with the prisoners. A few months later,
an American couple visiting a nearby island weren't so lucky.
They were actually murdered by some escaped prisoners. But one
(34:09):
of my favorite Grandpa John's stories is the one where
he came home after going eighty miles up the Cayuga
River into the depths of the jungle and came back
with the National Geographic Camera.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Crew, the whole National Geographic team that it was doing
an article for National Geographic on the jungles of Panama,
where no white man had been before.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
My grandpa had been in the jungle for two days
with his buddy Johnny Weed. They were hanging out drinking
hot Budweisers by their campfire when a scared native couple
asked for help. They were being chased by members of
another tribe, the Kunyas. My grandpa and his buddy kept
them hidden while the rival tribe came looking for them.
We'll never stayed there that night.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
Sure enough, there in the middle of the night, what
if delco Kuna krima bonner and a Cayukta.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
And on the war pay and all that?
Speaker 3 (34:57):
So I four in it or just sap it all
over the.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
The next day, my grandpa woke up, looked across the
river and saw something unexpected.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
Hey it was a long married grego there standing on the plank.
He couldn't believe his I be and hey, uh, I
started talking to him, Mad, I'm going to keep a here.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Obviously, he ruined their whole storyline and stuff. So they
were going to try it in Columbia. So Dad so
I would just come and stay with us. So they
slept in our living room on bags and stuff for
a couple of days till Mom had it and threw
everybody out.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
There's simply way too many stories to tell about John
and Roquel, way too many to fit into a podcast,
But I'll leave you with one last story that sums
it all up. This happened when my mom was fifteen
and my uncle Chris was five.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
My grandfather, my Willito, passed away and we inherited a
great deal of land in Panama.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
The land that they inherited was a large chunk of farmland.
At this point, my grandpa had retired from the military
and loved the idea of spending his retirement as a
rancher in Panama. Raquel loved the idea too, so they
packed up all their stuff, all four kids, and returned
to Panama.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
As we were getting near Panama, the Panamanian government was
overthrown and a dictator took over, and that dictator was
called Rios.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
In nineteen sixty eight, Omar Efry Torrios was part of
a coupdata that overthrew the Panamanian government. He never took
the title of president, but instead settled for maximum leader
of the Panamanian Revolution. But he didn't do it alone.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
He had the help of a man named Altamirano Duke.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Ironically, Duque's parents were best friends with my mom's grandparents.
The two couples had neighboring properties, but my mom's grandparents' property,
the one they had just inherited, had the water rights,
and Duke wanted that land. Duke owned and edited the
largest newspaper at the time, and asked that in return
for his support for Torios, he'd be given the land
(36:59):
that he wanted. So to Rios gave it to him.
But okay, so the land that you guys lost just
happened to be that land, that Duque one, so that
had the water. It's not all of the founding families
lost their land.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Happened, No, I just won that Duke wanted that Duke wanted.
So with that said, my mother was livid. She knew
it was hers. She treated it like it was hers.
She built little houses on there, they bought cattle, they
bought horses because she knew it was hers.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Remember earlier when I described Panama as a lush mountainous
tropical paradise. Well, the land that they inherited was the opposite, flat,
dry and extremely hot.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
So one weekend we went out and we were having
a family picnic, and so my little brothers were on
smaller horses. I was on this black stallion from hell,
and my parents were on their horses, and all of
a sudden, there's this dust trail coming towards us of jeeps,
three or four of them, and as they get closer,
I see it's all Wardia, which is the Panamanian military.
(38:03):
Ata Mirano Duke was with them, and they've got machine guns,
and they said, you're under arrest, mister John Herndon and Roquel,
you're on private property. And so they made my dad
get down and Alda Mirano Duca, who's an asshole. He's
got a pistol to my dad's head. After it gets
off the horse. I'm wetting my pants. I'm like, oh
(38:25):
my god, what is going on. I'm seeing machine guns everywhere,
all kinds of stuff, and I'm seeing my dad, who
at that time I thought was the oldest man in
the world. Somehow, in a matter of seconds, he had
taken the gun away from Altamirano duke had duke on
the floor, eating dirt and the pistol at his head.
My mother gets down beating the colonel with a purse.
She had a purse. She's riding a horse with a purse,
(38:47):
screaming at him, saying, do you have any idea who
I am? The atrocity that you have done here? All
of Panama will be scandalized by what you have tried
to do here. I am Draquel Victoria Valdez, lailor antoniol
Bertovaldez thought that along. In the short of that, they
packed themselves up in their jeeps and they left. So
Dad's like shaking. He's like, okay, hell, we're all getting
(39:09):
out of here. We're going back home. Everybody, pack it up,
We're going.
Speaker 4 (39:13):
And Mama would not leave that area until she went
to the guardhouse and got an official apology from that colonel.
It was hysterical and as I rock, Helle, baby, no, no,
we can't. Let's just keep going. We don't want to
push our luck. She's like, they cannot speak that way
to me.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Honest to God. The colonel came out and apologized to her.
I think he'd made some calls to Panama and realized
that he had really done some bad stuff.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
The Roquel, who I am maybe ten years old, at
a pizza hut and Excelsior, Minnesota, and they told this
would be a fifteen minute wait for her seat, and
she said, I do not wait for pizza, and that
(39:57):
in Minnesota was terrified and.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
We didn't have to wait, did wit.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Roquel spent the rest of her life trying to get
the land back, but never did. One of my mom's
brothers is still working on it. But now the families
of several of the illegitimate children of Antonio Valdez are
claiming it's theirs as well. These are the parents that
my mom and my uncle Chris grew up with, and
this is just a taste of the world that they
(40:27):
grew up in. My whole life, I've been hearing stories
about the wild and crazy exploits of John and Roquel,
and after a childhood of being raised on all of
my grandpa's crazy adventure stories, one could see how I
might want to have an adventure of my own. On
the next episode, hitch hiking, train hopping, and floating down
the Mississippi on boats made out of garbage, the incredible
(40:49):
adventures that inspired me to go on my bike trip.
But first, this is one of the last recordings I
have of my grandmother Roquel. Here she is singing along
to Time, one of her favorite songs with my mom.
(41:30):
Special thanks to my mom for being such an open
book and sharing all these stories. Uncle Chris is a
production by Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network at iHeart Podcasts.
It's created and hosted by me Ian faff I. Wrote, directed, scored,
edited and mixed this episode. The show is executive produced
by Hans Sanhi and Will Ferrell and co produced by
(41:51):
Olivia Aguilar. If you want to see what else I'm
up to, go to ianfaff dot com or check out
my instagram. Spring Break nineteen eighty four. Thanks for listening.
Panama, the Isthmus we'd go to for Christmas. My mom
is Panamanian, and growing up, my family and I would
go down there every few years for Christmas to see
my grandparents. Growing up in Minnesota, I never met anyone
other than my mom who's from Panama. In fact, my
whole life, I only ever met one other person from
(00:41):
Panama that I'm not related to, and that was stopped
at a red light. I had this Panamanian sticker on
my grandfather's car, and this car pulled up and the
driver was very excited to see that I was also Panamanian.
So we started speaking to me in Spanish, but I
didn't speak Spanish and it was a little awkward. The
light turned green and that was that. I recently went
(01:02):
down to Panama and I was talking to my cousin's girlfriend.
She's never been outside of Panama, and I asked her
if she had plans to travel or maybe move somewhere else,
And to her, the question seemed stupid. As she explained it,
Panama is a paradise and life is good there. Why
would she want to go anywhere else? And the way
I understand it, a lot of Panamanians feel that way.
(01:22):
A lot of Americans do as well, with an estimated
thirty thousand expats currently living in Panama. So if Panama
is so great, why did my uncle Chris end up
living in South Carolina? And what was my mom doing
raising a family in Minnesota? As you'll hear, it had
a lot less to do with Panama and a lot
more to do with the tumultuous, unique, always interesting family
(01:46):
that they grew up in. All of my life, I've
heard my mom's stories about Panama, her connections to Panama's
ruling class, love stories, fishing stories, adventure stories, sharks, machine guns, dictators,
some of them running the country, others running the house.
But these stories are a lot better when she tells
(02:06):
them this is my mom and this is her name.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Okay. The whole thing that I was saddled with is
lupite that which is a nickname for Wada Lupe, But
it was always in my name thing lupetea Lupaguel, which
is what my mother wanted me to have as a name.
But the priest would not baptize me because there's no
saint Lupaguel. So then she created Lupaguel from wadal Lupe Raqueale.
So I'm Lupita, Lupeguel, wadal Lupe, Raqueale, Herndon Valdez.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Paf, paf or faf.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Oh, that's true, that's true.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Depending on who you're talking to.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
In college, I became loopy, and when I married your father,
it became lupyfaf.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Has he ever called you Guadalupe or Guadalupe? You know what?
Speaker 2 (02:52):
He never has ever? Ever? Interesting, I just realized that
my name from her early age was a bone of
contention for me because I had three brothers aside from.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
My uncle Chris. I'm going to leave my mom's other
two brothers out of the podcast. Let's just say they
have names that are as American sounding as Chris, names
that would go well with the pizza joint or a
sandwich shop. But my mom wasn't so lucky.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
And I was saddled with the name Buadelupe Raquel and
I grew up predominantly in the south of the US,
where no one had ever heard of the name or
could pronounce it properly, and as I got older, I
became guad guadapoop. I did not enjoy a lot of
the nicknames that came with.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
That, so people called you guadapoop.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Not and lived right. That was basically just third and
fourth grade, and then things settled down.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Growing up in a far out suburb of Minneapolis, I
was the only kid I knew with a bilingual parent,
and I actually found it pretty fascinating. She didn't speak
Spanish to us, but if she got a phone call
from her mom or someone else in Panama, she would
start speaking Spanish immediately, and it was like she turned
into a whole new person. She had a new voice,
a very fast voice, and much more exaggerated body language,
(04:08):
lots of hand gestures and facial expressions I'd never seen
before a bit of a tangent. But I've always wondered
just listening to you talk. I remember in high school,
you and I went to Taco Bell and I was
mortified because you were like, Hi, I'd like a jalupa
and could I also get a gordita? And uh. And
(04:30):
it's one of those things where for me where in
high school I took Spanish and I speak a little
bit of Spanish, but I always feel like such an
impost when I throw the accent on. So I can
do the accent, but it feels very uncomfortable for me
to just put on this accent. So I'm just curious
for you speaking both languages, do you have to think
to turn on the accent or does it just automatically
(04:51):
kick on for it?
Speaker 2 (04:52):
It's natural. It's like the reverse is true if I'm
talking in Spanish Kral Highway. That's how we For me.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
It's funny because when I hear it, it feels like
it's like this performative thing. But I just realized, like,
because for me it actually is. Yeah, And I always
thought it was funny that, you know, people will be like, well,
you know, this coffee is from Nicaragua and this coffee
is from Panama, but they won't be like, this is
a French roast.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Well, all I know is that there's a there's a
new movement now I think for for Latins to feel
more comfortable being Latin. And I'll give you a chance.
An example on ABC News on the weekends, it's some
guy from Telemundo that takes over. He speaks English perfectly
as I do, but when he pronounces a reporter who
happens to be Latin, he pronounces it the way it's
(05:42):
supposed to be said, doesn't americanize it, and I.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Guess you know, for me, I guess I'm reacting to
more media types because they probably are purposely laying it
on a little thicker. Oh probably, but just talking to
you to see how like quickly.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
He'll just And it's always been. I didn't speak until
I was three. My parents were very worried. But when
I did speak, it was full sentences and it was
completely bilingual, so I could speak to either parent in
whatever language. And according to my dad, I never stopped
talking after that.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
So how come you never taught me Spanish?
Speaker 2 (06:13):
I have a joke about it, Okay. I used to
always tell this to people. It's like, if they don't
listen to me in English, why waste my breath in Spanish?
But to be perfectly honest, I'm comfortable in both languages.
But your father, my husband, did not speak another language.
He only spoke English, and it felt to me just
like you thought it was weird to talk with the
(06:34):
proper accent. It felt weird for me to be running
a Spanish dialogue past a child and then have a
husband that didn't know what I was talking about, so
it just never seemed appropriate.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
My mom was the oldest of four children, My uncle
Chris was the youngest. She was born in Venezuela, but
because my grandpa was in the Marine Corps, they moved
around constantly. She lived all over Georgia, South Carolina, Portico,
and Panama. My grandmother was Panamanian and my grandfather was
an American from Alabama. Your dad famously spoke fluent Spanish
(07:09):
with an incredible vocabulary, with a very thick Alabama Southern accent.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Horrible, horrible. I'll give you an example. In Spanish, if
you say answer the telephone, my Dad's like conetestale.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
TELEPHONEO roquel telephone, O waqi.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Yeah you got it.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
That dead.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
But his vocabulary was amazing. He just he really studied it,
and he wasn't scared of being laughed at. He didn't care.
It's kind of interesting. All three of my brothers picked
up my dad's southern accent twang. Thing. As much as
they didn't get along with my dad or bucked heads
with them, they wanted to be like him. They wanted
to sound like him, so they really did. All of
(07:51):
them have a Southern twang to them, and they all
sound like my dad.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
I wish I was able to find a better example
of his version of Spanish. But here's a clip from
an old home movie where my grandpa tells my grandma
how beautiful she looks. Wrong it is.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
I grew up with two very proud parents of who
they were. My father was extremely proud of being an American,
a US citizen, and Mama was incredibly proud of being
a Panamanian. Never wanted to be a US citizen. And
because of how I look, which is confusing to a
lot of people, because I have a lot of my
Panamanian traits. What people don't understand is Panama was populated
(08:37):
by just about every race known to man, and so
people often think that we should all look like what
they think Mexicans should look like.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
They're picturing dark.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Skin, dark skin, dark Yeah, exactly, and I have the
lighter skin, green eyes, and fair hair depending on depending
on my age, color, my areas.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Most people in your American meet you don't think you're Panamanian,
or most people in Panama don't think you're Panamanian when
they see you correct or meet you. And I imagine
if you're traveling anywhere else in Latin America, most people
assume you won't speak Spanish or don't speak Spanish, which
I believe you've used your advantage. Yes, at some point
you sat on a plane next to the rapper Lil Jean. Yes,
(09:23):
he thought you were Susan Sarandon. You just went with it.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
I did, because it was like, everybody's to make a
big deal about this little John guy, and I didn't
know who he was. He was there for a concert
in Panama, and they kept saying miss sarand and I
was like I'm not. I was like, what the heck? Yeah, okay, yes,
but don't tell anyone.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Right, And then you got him to autograph a napkin
for you said something like keep on keeping on in
jan Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
And the whole time I had no idea who little
John was. But the back of the plane kept trying
to come up to where we were, so I figured
he might be somebody.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
So all that being said, I know you have a
story of experiencing some racism in college.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Oh yeah, yeah, which.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Is a weird one, just based on purely what you
look like that you would still kind of get treated
that way.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Well, I had never understood it, and actually it still
makes me sad to share this story. But what happened
is I was in my first year of college, and
since my family was down in Panama, a lot of
the special weekends or Thanksgiving or whatever, I would go
to different people's houses. So I went with a girl
named Anne, I won't say her last name. Went with Anne,
and she was from Tobaccoville, North Carolina. So I was
(10:30):
in Anne's room unpacking and I had met the mom.
She was delightful, and I was just kind of getting
my stuff settled in Anne's room when I heard this
man walk in the door and he goes, what the
hell did you bring me a damn spick into this
house for? And that was the first time I cringed.
I had never felt belittled or it was very, very strange,
(10:54):
shrinking feeling just I was like ready to hide. I
wanted to leave. I was going to I felt so bad,
and then rock hel my mother, took over my spirit
and I went charging out there and I said, hi,
I'm loopy and he said, well, hell girl, you're white,
and I said, I'm white, but you're still stupid. I
(11:15):
was really angry, and he ended up being a big
fan of me. He really liked me. But I just
couldn't warm up to the man. It just it broke
my heart that that people are judged by their skin color,
or by their heritage or whatever without knowing them, and.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Even how they order it. Taco bell, Yeah, shut up.
Do you have any connection to Venezuela whatsoever?
Speaker 2 (11:39):
You know what. I don't have a connection with Venezuela.
It was the best years of my parents' lives. They
have wonderful memories of it. Obviously, I left when I
was a month old, and I've never been backed. I
had of Venezuelan passport for a while. When I was
traveling through Europe. They were looking for Americans at the time.
I was back when planes were being hijacked and all
that stuff, so I hid my American one and travel
(12:00):
with the Venezuelan and the Panamanian one. At that time,
you had to give your passports at the hotel when
you were there, So I gave the Venezuelan one because
I thought, what the heck, who cares, I'm American, Panamanian,
Panamanian American. I'll grab whichever one I want when it's convenient.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
You've lived in Minnesota for thirty years. Do you consider
yourself a Minnesotan.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
You know, sadly, no, you know, I still feel it's crazy.
I don't. When I moved to Minnesota, I was overwhelmed
that there was no people of color, hardly at that time.
I didn't hear people speaking different languages. Everybody was blonde,
blue eyed. I put my daughter in preschool Alia your sister,
and she came back and I said, eh, yeah, I
(12:41):
was preschool. She goes, Oh, it was fun, mommy, but
tomorrow I need yellow hair and blue eyes. You know.
It was just like it was overwhelming to me, and
I just never it just never felt like me there.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
And I remember we went to a fud Ruckers. I remember,
seven years older at fud Rutgers and like cornered, a
bus boy may sit down. You gave him money to
sit down with you Spanish.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
I had missed it so much, and you know that's
an American place.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Fo.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Being Panamanian is a huge part of my mom's identity,
and a lot of that comes from the pride instilled
in her by my grandmother, Roquel. For Roquel, being Panamanian
was her identity, and for good reason. She was from
one of the founding families of Panama. Raised in high society.
Her family was part of the country's ruling elite. So
(13:41):
I'm assuming not everyone listening knows everything about Panama. Here's
a quick crash course on the Republic of Panama, most
famous for the Panama Canal, it is the country that
is the isthmus that connects North and South America. For
over three hundred years, Panama was a colony of Spain.
Eventually it became part of Colombia. In the late eighteen hundreds,
(14:03):
The French started to build the canal, but gave up
after too many workers died from malaria in the extreme
working conditions. At some point Teddy Roosevelt got involved and
America secretly helped Panama gain its independence from Colombia. Once independent,
America came in and built the canal, finishing it in
nineteen fourteen. The Panama Canal was run by the Americans
until the year two thousand, when it was handed over
(14:25):
to the Panamanians. Canal aside, Panama is an incredible place,
a tropical paradise with mountains, beaches, jungles, filled with Spanish
forts and ruins, incredible wildlife, and lots of different cultures
ranging from traditional Spanish to those of dozens of indigenous
tribes that inhabit the Jungles and nearby islands. And apparently
(14:46):
my grandmother Rockhell's family had a lot to do with
Panama's history once it became its own country.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Okay, we'll start with my grandfather, who is the true Panamanian.
His great great grandparents were given land and in Panama
by the King and Queen of Spain. One of his
brothers or cousins was actually president of Panama at one time.
My grandfather, Nairilito was involved, heavily involved in the war
(15:13):
between Colombia and Panama when we fought the Colombians for
our independence, and he was given the job of going
and bringing back the General of Columbia.
Speaker 4 (15:22):
Which he did, but he had to, like, he had
to like stab him first with the sword.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
I guess.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
The sword was kept in a display case in my grandparents'
living room.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
That made my grandfather a very important person.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
He remembering there's still blood on the sword.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Yes, yes, and that sword remains in its sheath, which
has been taken out to show me the brown, crusty
blood on the tip.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
I remember seeing the sword when I was ten and
seeing the dried blood on.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
It made an impression.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
It definitely made an impression. It's displayed in a living
room or was.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
With all his medals. He had a lot of medals.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
When it came time for Antonio Valdez to get married,
he went back to Spain.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
He was going to be in a duel with somebody
that had insulted him from Columbia and they were going
to have a duel, and this Spanish colonel it was
trying to dissuade them from doing it, so he ended
up not having the duel. The colonel talked him out
of it, brought him back to his home, and that's
where he met Maya Walita, my grandmother, the daughter of
the colonel Abwalita, my grandmother. Her family was very connected
(16:26):
to the Spanish monarchy, and she was a young girl.
She was only like fourteen or fifteen, but that's who
he ended up marrying. He married her at fifteen and
brought her back to Panama.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
They had a one year honeymoon throughout Europe, and Maya
Walita hated Panama with a passion. To her was an uncivilized, disgusting,
dirty country now think about it. They got married in
nineteen oh three, so the canal was in the process
of being built. It was dirty, malaria, everything, And she came.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
From a very refine going to a different planet.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Oh yeah, she was not a happy camper, and she.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Probably felt the same way you feel about Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Not true, no, not true, not true. But I will
say that when my grandfather died, when he died many many,
many years later, she packed her bags and got the
hell out of there. She when she was not it
wasn't like all I spend the rest of my life here.
This is what I do. You know what, that might
be a little bit like Minnesota, you know what. She
might be right, She was transplanted. It was never her country.
(17:29):
She never felt an allegiance to it. She didn't like
the Panamanians, I don't think.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Okay, So it was your grandfather's brother that at some
point was president of Panama.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Brother or cousin. I'm still unclear on that up.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
But the founding families, oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
The Valdez with an s. Okay, yes, my mother was
always insistent. I knew that.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
And then so your mother, Raquel, my grandmother.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
She grew up among these founding families. So it was
it was a group of five or six families, and
everybody knew each other, and Mama was very proud of
who she was. As a matter of fact, when your
father came to visit Panama when Dad and I first
got married, she took him around Panama and then went
to the White House and she said, Oh, I'm Raquel
Valdez and I'm here to show my son in law
(18:16):
the White House. So I'd like to go to Yeah, yeah,
that Casa Panama, the White House of Panama. Anyhow, it
was pretty funny. Your dad was like shocked, beyond belief
that we could just walk in there, and she's walking
us all around and showing us where she used to
hide as a little girl and what she used to do.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
So, yeah, visiting my grandparents' house was always an adventure.
I'd see two cans and iguanas in the backyard. Lizards
from outside would come inside, crawling on the ceiling while
we were eating dinner. At one point, they had two dogs,
a pet monkey, and about twenty parrots that lived in
cages in the backyard. My grandma Raquelle trained these parrots
(18:54):
to say a boiloh whenever my grandpa walked by. I
found this one video from the late nineties of Grandma
talking to the parrots. At this point there were only
two of them left.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Only give you alone.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
She Raquel was not the type of doting grandmother who
made cookies and knitted socks. She was very intimidating. Even
though she spoke English, she mostly spoke to my sister
and me in Spanish and expected us to speak Spanish
(19:39):
back to her. She would often lose her patience with
us when we wouldn't speak Spanish because we couldn't speak Spanish,
because we didn't speak Spanish. She was a stickler for
table manners and etiquette, never letting go of her high
society upbringing. She would refer to me as Mia Moore,
which was nice, but she would often refer to my
sister as the girl in her day. Roquel was larger
(20:02):
than life, a huge personality who did whatever she wanted
and got away with everything. She was the Bell of
the Ball and, for all intents and purposes, a real
life Disney princess.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
My mother was dropped at gorgeous. She made Elizabeth Taylor
look plain. I remember asking, why why is Mama the
only pretty one of your four girls? I said, she's
got those beautiful green eyes, and the rest of them
are fish belly white, and she's got that nice tan.
And my grandmother, my Walita, looks at me and she sighed,
(20:35):
and she goes a lupita Los Moros, the moors. The
more invasion of one hundred years ago is why she
had one dark child. So to me, my mother was
one of the most gorgeous women I've ever seen in
my life. Emerald green eyes, double set of black eyelashes,
(20:56):
kind of not darkish skin, but you know, skin that tans,
doesn't freck like mine, and jet black hair.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
And you got stuck looking like Susan.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Sarandon well or John Herndon.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Somewhere between the yeah yeah, great segue into who is
John Herndon?
Speaker 2 (21:12):
John Herndon so the.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Opposite of Roquel? My grandpa John was born into a
dirt poor family in rural Alabama in nineteen twenty nine,
or is he like to call it the height of
the Great Depression? Long story short, He lied about his
age and joined the Marine Corps as a teenager. He
spent three years stationed in San Diego, where he learned
to speak Spanish, and that got him transferred to Venezuela,
(21:38):
where he worked as a guard at the US Embassy
in Caracas, the same embassy where my great grandfather Antonio
Valdez had gotten his daughter Roquel a job as a
way of keeping an eye on her because she was
such a troublemaker straight out of a rom com. My
grandfather sees her at the embassy and asks her out,
but she turns him down because he's just a door man. Later,
(21:59):
one of my grandpa's his buddies asked him to tag
along on a double date, and it turns out that
Roquel just happens to be my grandpa's date for the night,
much to her surprise, They fall madly in love and
it becomes a huge scandal in Panamanian high society.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Naturally, my grandparents were not excited because this was not
the best match in heaven for Rockel. But the long
and the short of it, my grandmother was against their marriage.
But Maria a Walito, again always failing my mother. He said,
if that's what she wants, that's what she gets. So
there were two requirements. John Herndon had to a become
a Catholic and b become an officer.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
In record time, he became a lieutenant and a Catholic
and they were married. They stayed married for sixty nine
years until my grandmother's death in twenty twenty two. Based
on the stories I've heard from my mom, those sixty
nine years sounded like one very long episode of I
Love Lucy. Despite being madly in love, John and Roquel
(22:57):
drove each other nuts.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
I grew up involutable household. They argued about the color
of the sun, when the sun was going to come
up or go down, the sky was, you know, about everything.
They agreed on nothing. They were extremely passionately in love
with each other. It was very bizarre. My mother was
all about family, bloodlines and who was who, and Dad, unfortunately,
(23:19):
being a product of the South and a racist, was
all about skin color and it's like you know, and
would say horrible things about people. And Mom would think
horrible things about people, but she was educated enough not
to share it verbally. So between them, it was really
hard for me to ever feel like I could go
out with anybody because I just never was going to
please both of them. As a matter of fact, I
(23:41):
have a funny story to tell you and then we'll go.
As I'm growing up, my father's always Lapita and Lapita
was a nickname he had for me. My name is Lupitea.
That's a nickname, but he's Southern, so it came out Lapeita.
So he's like, Lapita, let me tell you something. What
you want to do is marry yourself an American. You
don't want to marry a lad And I said, why not, Daddy,
(24:02):
And he said, listen, a Latin guy, he's going to
fool around on you. You know, you want a guy
that's going to be loyal, It's going to be there
for you. He's not going to be fooling around. I
was like, okay, and my mother would go, Loupita, whatever
you do, do not marry a gringo. But I was like, why, Mama,
you married a gringo yourself. And she said, gringos want
(24:23):
to know. If you can cook and clean and wash
and the work of a maid, why would you want
to marry a gringo. And I said, Daddy told me
that they're loyal and stuff that Latins get mistresses. And
she goes, tell me, what could be better? They bring
you a maid to do the job of the maid,
and then you have to just get jewelry they bring
you because they have a mistress and they feel bad.
(24:46):
So this is how I grew up. And with these
two sources of information coloring what I should.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Do, John and Raquel drove each other nuts. John lacking
the refinement of Raquel's high societ upbringing, could be an
embarrassment for her, and Raquel, because of her high society upbringing,
was a constant source of embarrassment for my grandpa, always
getting him in trouble with his superiors in the military.
She did whatever she wanted, and if she got in
(25:13):
any trouble, she would always ask her favorite question, don't
you know who I am? I'm Roquel Vardes, daughter of
Antonio Valdez, et cetera, et cetera. The best example of
this is when they were living in Panama. The best
shopping in Panama at the time was on the American
Army base because you could get some really good deals.
So my grandma used to sneak her friends onto the
(25:34):
base and bring them to the store. One day, she
got caught and she was arrested by the military police.
She stood in front of the judge and immediately demanded
an apology because don't they know who she is? She
is Roquel Valdez, the daughter of Antonio Valdez. After the
end of her rant, she ended up receiving an official
apology from the judge and was given a military escort home.
(25:55):
When my grandpa found out about this, he was mortified.
Much later, when Roquel was really deep into Alzheimer's, she
would still find ways to push my grandpa's buttons. I
remember one time they were trying to get in the
car to go somewhere, so she decided to put her
purse on top of the fridge and then tell my
grandpa that she couldn't find it. And I just sat
there and watched while she was laughing maniacally while he
(26:16):
was stomping all over the house trying to find her purse.
But I think my favorite example of this is when
I was in college. I was doing a road trip
with John and Roquel and we were at some truck
stop and my grandpa was pretty controlling with what she
could eat. He was worried that she had diabetes and
didn't want her to have any sugar, but Roquel loved sweets.
So as we're sitting at this truck stop having dinner,
(26:37):
I watched as she pushes her fork off the table,
and my grandpa immediately goes Roquel, bebbe, what are you doing?
And as he bends down to grab the fork, she
grabs all of the sugar packets off the table and
stuffs them into her bra and gives me a wink.
That was Roquel and that was John. These were my grandparents,
and they were a lot. The bottom line is that
(26:58):
John and Roquel were huge persons, and even though they
shared a Disney like love story, the reality of their
lives wasn't always that pleasant. It was a reality that
wasn't easy for my mom and her brothers to grow
up in. I think too, that did de disnify it
a little bit. You know, both Roquel and John charming
(27:18):
in their own way, but also pretty flawed in their
own ways. Very I know, Grandpa was abusive and heavy drinker.
It was Roquel abusive or not at all? She did
he ever abuse her?
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Or hell no, no he did.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
And my mother, you know, this is a woman who
nobody touched, had touched or anything. She was She was
just destroyed, you know, she just didn't know how to
stop it. It was a hardhouse to grow up in
because Dad was trying to raise us with his southern
poor way of beatings and reprimands and commands, and Mama
(27:57):
was spoiling her boys rotten. I was just trying to
stay alive and lay low. But my brothers were always
trying to prove to my dad that they were men
and they didn't have to do what he said. And
then Mama was always on the side trying to help
them stay alive too.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
It was.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
It was very hard. It was. It was not an
easy place to grow up with.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
My grandpa came from a family of alcoholics and he
was a pretty big drinker. He would often give out
beatings to my mom and her brothers when my mom
was older. One of these beatings was witnessed by some
of the Panamanian in laws, and after that, my grandpa
never touched her again. But my mom's brothers weren't so lucky.
One of my mom's brothers got it the worst, and
(28:36):
Roquelle ended up sending him to live with family in
England for a while.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
You know what my dad ruined my high school graduation
was drunk off his butt, and he was a mean drunk.
He wasn't like some people are funny drunks, so he
did have a drinking issue. I remember my mother had
a statue of the Virgin Mary, and she had Novena's
lit and one of it was just so he would
quit drinking.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
I have to say that at some point my grandpa
did quit drinking and the abuse stopped. The version of
John Herndon that I grew up with was sharp, witty,
and very funny. I never saw him do anything cruel
or abusive. But that being said, neither my mom nor
my uncle's made any attempts to hide or excuse the
way my grandfather treated them. Somehow, at some point my
(29:20):
mom forgave him and they worked it all out, and
for all of my life they were extremely close. But
as I've heard, that wasn't always the case.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
I lived to get out of that house.
Speaker 4 (29:31):
You don't know how it was embarrassing for me because
I always have managed to make really nice, decent friends,
and then for them to see kind of the weirdness
I lived with was kind of a little embarrassing.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
But I didn't know different. I wasn't that embarrassed about
my family. It was my family, no, But I just
was tired of the beatings. It's so unnecessary. I wasn't
even that pad of a kid.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
I don't even know what that was for mine was
he always from having a smart mouth, actually.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Because I was always too fearful to break any of
the rules.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
My mom left for college when she was seventeen. She
would come back in the summers, but as soon as
she could officially be on her own, she was gone.
(30:29):
Now I've covered some of my grandpa's worst traits, but
he wasn't all bad. Like I said, I only ever
knew him as a good guy, a good guy who
was a bottomless pit of wild stories. Growing up in
the woods of Alabama, he was always into hunting and fishing,
but it was when he returned to Panama in the
nineteen sixties that he was finally in his element. Any
(30:51):
free time he could get he spent fishing, scuba diving,
exploring the rivers, islands and jungles of Panama.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Dad loves fishing, skin diving, hunting, all that. So he
would go on these excursions and we didn't care. We
were just glad he was gone. And I'll be honesty,
and he brought back some crazy stuff. I mean, I've
seen a shrunken head and a bottle. It was disgusting,
and he brought that he traded Budweiser's for them.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
That's right, Budweiser's. On all of his excursions, my grandpa
would bring a case of Budweiser with him, often trading
hot cans of beer with different indigenous tribes around Panama.
There was a room in my grandparents' house overflowing with
art and artifacts that he'd collected over the years, hand
carved canoe paddles, pottery carvings, and sculptures. It was a
(31:33):
room full of things that should have been on display
at a museum, but were instead on display alongside Mouldy
nat King Cole and Willie Nelson records. The walls of
this room were covered with framed photos from different fishing trips.
Each photo came with a different story. For instance, there
was the giant snapper he caught while snorkeling in a reef.
He didn't have an air tank and had to hold
his breath for two minutes while the snapper pulled him
(31:54):
deep into a sea cave. This is how he told
the story.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
This little island in a reef right pried and flow
the island and I didn't have nothing else to do
that when I said I'd just put all my stuff
and jumped in there and swim around, and it's pretty
underneath then and there just saying came out and looked
at him, and so I shot him, which is a
normal reaction.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
The first time he took my dad's scuba diving, he
warned him that there were sharks in the water. If
they had black tips on their fins, they were harmless,
but if they had white tips, my dad should watch
out because those ones can be aggressive. My Grandpa went
in the water first and my dad followed a few
seconds later, and the first thing that he sees fifteen
feet below him is a shark with white tiped fins
and my Grandpa yanking on its tail. My dad immediately
(32:45):
lost his shit and desperately climbed back into the boat.
There was also the time when my grandpa took my
dad on a two day fishing trip with Chiliico, who's Chilico.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
He had a checkered past, killed a couple of people
that had only spet some tam had a proved.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
Well, he was going up there for our protective Koiba Island,
or Koiba Island as my grandpa called it, was an
infamous prison island off the coast of Panama. Known as
the Alcatraz of Central America. This island was home to
Panama's most dangerous criminals. The island is still notorious, teeming
(33:22):
with hundreds of crocodiles, venomous snakes, and surrounded by shark
infested waters. Shark infested waters that happened to be great
for fishing, so my grandpa took my dad out there,
eighteen miles into the ocean in a fifteen foot long
aluminum fishing boat. They spent two days fishing around Koiba
Island and camped out on a nearby island. Chiliko was
(33:43):
there as a bodyguard because he'd been a former inmate
on the prison island. My dad did see some escaped
prisoners rowing away on a handmade raft, but luckily there
were no other encounters with the prisoners. A few months later,
an American couple visiting a nearby island weren't so lucky.
They were actually murdered by some escaped prisoners. But one
(34:09):
of my favorite Grandpa John's stories is the one where
he came home after going eighty miles up the Cayuga
River into the depths of the jungle and came back
with the National Geographic Camera.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Crew, the whole National Geographic team that it was doing
an article for National Geographic on the jungles of Panama,
where no white man had been before.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
My grandpa had been in the jungle for two days
with his buddy Johnny Weed. They were hanging out drinking
hot Budweisers by their campfire when a scared native couple
asked for help. They were being chased by members of
another tribe, the Kunyas. My grandpa and his buddy kept
them hidden while the rival tribe came looking for them.
We'll never stayed there that night.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
Sure enough, there in the middle of the night, what
if delco Kuna krima bonner and a Cayukta.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
And on the war pay and all that?
Speaker 3 (34:57):
So I four in it or just sap it all
over the.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
The next day, my grandpa woke up, looked across the
river and saw something unexpected.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
Hey it was a long married grego there standing on the plank.
He couldn't believe his I be and hey, uh, I
started talking to him, Mad, I'm going to keep a here.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Obviously, he ruined their whole storyline and stuff. So they
were going to try it in Columbia. So Dad so
I would just come and stay with us. So they
slept in our living room on bags and stuff for
a couple of days till Mom had it and threw
everybody out.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
There's simply way too many stories to tell about John
and Roquel, way too many to fit into a podcast,
But I'll leave you with one last story that sums
it all up. This happened when my mom was fifteen
and my uncle Chris was five.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
My grandfather, my Willito, passed away and we inherited a
great deal of land in Panama.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
The land that they inherited was a large chunk of farmland.
At this point, my grandpa had retired from the military
and loved the idea of spending his retirement as a
rancher in Panama. Raquel loved the idea too, so they
packed up all their stuff, all four kids, and returned
to Panama.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
As we were getting near Panama, the Panamanian government was
overthrown and a dictator took over, and that dictator was
called Rios.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
In nineteen sixty eight, Omar Efry Torrios was part of
a coupdata that overthrew the Panamanian government. He never took
the title of president, but instead settled for maximum leader
of the Panamanian Revolution. But he didn't do it alone.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
He had the help of a man named Altamirano Duke.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Ironically, Duque's parents were best friends with my mom's grandparents.
The two couples had neighboring properties, but my mom's grandparents' property,
the one they had just inherited, had the water rights,
and Duke wanted that land. Duke owned and edited the
largest newspaper at the time, and asked that in return
for his support for Torios, he'd be given the land
(36:59):
that he wanted. So to Rios gave it to him.
But okay, so the land that you guys lost just
happened to be that land, that Duque one, so that
had the water. It's not all of the founding families
lost their land.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Happened, No, I just won that Duke wanted that Duke wanted.
So with that said, my mother was livid. She knew
it was hers. She treated it like it was hers.
She built little houses on there, they bought cattle, they
bought horses because she knew it was hers.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Remember earlier when I described Panama as a lush mountainous
tropical paradise. Well, the land that they inherited was the opposite, flat,
dry and extremely hot.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
So one weekend we went out and we were having
a family picnic, and so my little brothers were on
smaller horses. I was on this black stallion from hell,
and my parents were on their horses, and all of
a sudden, there's this dust trail coming towards us of jeeps,
three or four of them, and as they get closer,
I see it's all Wardia, which is the Panamanian military.
(38:03):
Ata Mirano Duke was with them, and they've got machine guns,
and they said, you're under arrest, mister John Herndon and Roquel,
you're on private property. And so they made my dad
get down and Alda Mirano Duca, who's an asshole. He's
got a pistol to my dad's head. After it gets
off the horse. I'm wetting my pants. I'm like, oh
(38:25):
my god, what is going on. I'm seeing machine guns everywhere,
all kinds of stuff, and I'm seeing my dad, who
at that time I thought was the oldest man in
the world. Somehow, in a matter of seconds, he had
taken the gun away from Altamirano duke had duke on
the floor, eating dirt and the pistol at his head.
My mother gets down beating the colonel with a purse.
She had a purse. She's riding a horse with a purse,
(38:47):
screaming at him, saying, do you have any idea who
I am? The atrocity that you have done here? All
of Panama will be scandalized by what you have tried
to do here. I am Draquel Victoria Valdez, lailor antoniol
Bertovaldez thought that along. In the short of that, they
packed themselves up in their jeeps and they left. So
Dad's like shaking. He's like, okay, hell, we're all getting
(39:09):
out of here. We're going back home. Everybody, pack it up,
We're going.
Speaker 4 (39:13):
And Mama would not leave that area until she went
to the guardhouse and got an official apology from that colonel.
It was hysterical and as I rock, Helle, baby, no, no,
we can't. Let's just keep going. We don't want to
push our luck. She's like, they cannot speak that way
to me.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Honest to God. The colonel came out and apologized to her.
I think he'd made some calls to Panama and realized
that he had really done some bad stuff.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
The Roquel, who I am maybe ten years old, at
a pizza hut and Excelsior, Minnesota, and they told this
would be a fifteen minute wait for her seat, and
she said, I do not wait for pizza, and that
(39:57):
in Minnesota was terrified and.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
We didn't have to wait, did wit.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Roquel spent the rest of her life trying to get
the land back, but never did. One of my mom's
brothers is still working on it. But now the families
of several of the illegitimate children of Antonio Valdez are
claiming it's theirs as well. These are the parents that
my mom and my uncle Chris grew up with, and
this is just a taste of the world that they
(40:27):
grew up in. My whole life, I've been hearing stories
about the wild and crazy exploits of John and Roquel,
and after a childhood of being raised on all of
my grandpa's crazy adventure stories, one could see how I
might want to have an adventure of my own. On
the next episode, hitch hiking, train hopping, and floating down
the Mississippi on boats made out of garbage, the incredible
(40:49):
adventures that inspired me to go on my bike trip.
But first, this is one of the last recordings I
have of my grandmother Roquel. Here she is singing along
to Time, one of her favorite songs with my mom.
(41:30):
Special thanks to my mom for being such an open
book and sharing all these stories. Uncle Chris is a
production by Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network at iHeart Podcasts.
It's created and hosted by me Ian faff I. Wrote, directed, scored,
edited and mixed this episode. The show is executive produced
by Hans Sanhi and Will Ferrell and co produced by
(41:51):
Olivia Aguilar. If you want to see what else I'm
up to, go to ianfaff dot com or check out
my instagram. Spring Break nineteen eighty four. Thanks for listening.
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