Once upon a time, arts and music had colorful wheels that traveled all over the city, to the countryside, and back. The daily commute was a party, and the art was for everyone to enjoy, regardless of their social class or education. We’re talking about Diablos Rojos (Red Devils), the famed colorful buses that have lit up the streets and roads of Panama for five decades and more.
The story begins in the 1960s, when second-hand yellow school buses started to get imported from the United States to Panama City to serve as cheap transportation around the Canal. In 1973, when dictator General Omar Torrijos broke up two large transportation companies and allowed owner-operators of private buses to compete for routes, the old yellow machines became Diablos Rojos as we know them: artists were hired to give the machines colorful exteriors, both in an effort to create unique and appealing identities for each one and to hide their age. The art on the buses was as expressive as it was honest—often celebrating the bus owners family, tributing a well-known artist or an athlete, or reflecting aspects of daily life in Panama.
Diablos Rojos became moving steel canvases that offered art for free and, with it, spontaneously generated a unique art style that was in itself democratic, for anyone to understand and admire regardless of their education or social class.
The interiors of Diablos Rojos were no less impressive: the old school bus green leather seats were refurbished in red, and the interior walls were decorated with lights and decals. The sound system was also an integral part of each machine, offering the passengers (and, often, passersby when the volume went up) a unique selection of popular tunes. So important was the music —an essential element of Panamanian life— that passengers are said to sometimes have waited for the driver with the best tape collection or taste. And emerging musicians would also use Diablos Rojos as a channel of distribution, handing their new tapes to the drivers in the hopes that they would get played. This had a role in the early stages of reggaeton, as the tapes of the original artists of the genre —born out of the cultural melting pot of Panama City, when the descendants of West Indian workers started creating their own version of dancehall, called “reggae en español”— gained popularity on the buses long before it became a global sensation.
For all these reasons, Diablos Rojos became more than just a means of transportation. They were public spaces, public galleries, and channels of culture and music that celebrated a national identity that was proudly different from the elitist mestizo vision of Panama (or similar social structures that dominated life all over Latin America).
In 2008, the Panamanian government, considering them noisy and dangerous, began the removal of Diablos Rojos off the streets, as a plan to centralize and modernize transportation with a public MetroBus system was put in place. The official end of Diablos Rojos came in March of 2013, when 1,200 machines were decommissioned and dismantled in a field that had once been a U.S. Air Force Base.
Some Diablos Rojos still operate today, mostly outside of the city or survive as a tourist attraction but, for the large part, a whole way of living died when those buses were taken off the streets and highways of Panama, one by one.
There may be hope to turn that legacy of art and transportation into something special, though. That’s why we have created a non-profit called Ruedas de Colores de las Américas, a project that aims to leverage that unique, colorful connection between transportation, public art, community and culture that Diablos Rojos brought to life, and turn it into new, entertaining opportunities for gathering, enjoying the unique visual arts and music, and telling the stories of those personalities and communities through the rituals of transportation and daily personal connections.
Our dream is not only to rescue and display some of the remaining pieces of Diablos Rojos art that still can be found, but also to create traveling art exhibits that bring that spirit to life across the Americas, showcasing the rich cultural tapestry of the continents.
What makes the project unique is the perspective of creating cultural and economic value through highlighting the overlap of transportation, music and art. Diablos Rojos are not the only time public transportation has served as a canvas or moving gallery for art, nor the only vehicle that has also become a channel of distribution for new music. Many other examples exist across the Americas and the world. But they serve as the inspiration for expanding what has been done before at the crossroads of art, culture and public transportation.
At a time when digital ways of interacting have taken over personal interactions and AI promises to create even more ways of being distracted without connection, the value of real, in-person experiences that celebrate culture and people’s stories will only increase.
If you are interested in supporting this project with funds, art or work, click here [LINK TK] or contact us at.
We believe in the idea of building a better world and bringing people together, one small journey at a time. If you believe in this too, it’s time to act.