Hands of Stone

by Christian Giudice

  That “two or three years later” was 23 February 1968, at Duran’s pro debut. They met and talked and Eleta was impressed with the young fighter. Duran, for his part, needed financial backing, and knew that the cultivated Eleta was one of the most influential men in Panama. The contrast with the capricious little street urchin could not have been greater.

  Carlos Eleta Almarán was born on 16 May 1918, the son of wealthy landowners. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Malaga, Spain, and his MBA at Bryant College in Providence, Rhode Island. In May 1941, he married Dora Boyd and would have four children: Carlos, Sandra, Alberto and Raquel del Carmen. Groomed for success, the tall, straight-backed, dignified Eleta stepped into his father’s business and eventually found himself as a major player in the importation and distribution of brand names such as Chesterfield cigarettes, 7-Up and Fiat. He set up the first TV channel in Panama, Canal Cuatro, and somehow found time to write a string of popular ballads, the most famous of which, “Historia De Un Amor,” became almost a second national anthem. He played tennis to championship standard, bred racehorses and was now looking to manage prizefighters.

  In Eleta, Old World gentility met New World vigor. Meticulous in dress and grooming, with neat, receding white hair and a slim, athletic build, he could talk with kings and beggars with equal ease. He was as friendly with contacts like the Kennedy political dynasty and sports stars like Joe DiMaggio as he was with boxing trainers and stable grooms. But his charm and grace hid a ruthless side, especially when it came to business, and like any successful man he made enemies. Some hinted darkly at his ulterior motives and cunning nature. He hated being pressured and was known for his frugality and willingness to end friendships on a whim. What he wanted, he usually got.

  “After the Mendoza fight, [Roberto] recognized me from the day at my house and asked me to handle him,” said Eleta. “He had another fellow managing him. I talked with Vasquez and told him I didn’t want to interfere with him and Duran. He said he would give me Roberto for three hundred dollars.”

  Duran, however, remembers that Eleta actively pursued him. A skilled boxer named Eugenio Hurtado, the husband of Duran’s aunt Gladys, had recently lost a close bout and went to see Eleta to ask for a rematch. He asked Duran to accompany him. “I went with a writer named Papi Mendez to talk to Eleta, but I didn’t pay any attention to him. Hurtado asked me for a favor, and said he would give me twenty dollars to go with him. For twenty dollars, I was there. Eleta started talking to me and not Hurtado. I wasn’t even paying attention to him. He kept saying over and over that he could help me. I realized he was talking to me, but I played the fool. Hurtado finally signs the contract to fight, and Eleta gives me twenty dollars. Now, twenty dollars and twenty dollars and I have forty dollars.”

  It says everything about Duran at that time that he was more interested in having forty bucks to spend in a bar than he was in an offer to manage his career by the most influential businessman in the country. He was in good company; Hurtado had a penchant for blowing his boxing purses and never thought about the future. “Once he won a bout and earned $3,000, and was lost for four days with nothing for the house,” Duran told a reporter from La Aficion.

  However, Carlos Eleta would not be denied. “The next day, Eleta calls me and tells me that he wants to help me with my career. And Eleta wanted to know if I wanted to sign a contract or just a handshake deal. I was [only sixteen] and I told him, however he wanted to do it. Eleta tells me that real men either sign the contract or shake on it. We shook hands and that’s how he became my manager.”

  The well-connected Eleta could offer far more than the jockey Vasquez. “Vasquez couldn’t support me because he was always asking to borrow money,” said Duran. “The only reason I started with Eleta was because he would pay media members to try to persuade me to let him become my manager. A lot of people told me not to mix with him because he was a thief.”

  For all his natural talent, Duran was raw, a volatile mass of energy. “He was a fellow who couldn’t read and write,” said Eleta. “And he had very little attention. It was very difficult to sit him down. We tried to take him to school and that was impossible for him. He was like a wild animal. Duran never kept anything inside, never. He liked to go see animals but he never had attention for anything.

  “Before his wife was in the picture, he never told me about other girls. He was afraid to tell me these things. He was not the type of person who was easy to get to know. Before Roberto ever became a champ, he would tell me he wanted to be like Robin Hood. ‘I will give it all to the poor,’ he said. Nobody thought he was going to be so great. They knew he would be good, but not that great of a fighter.”

  Perhaps Eleta’s most significant role was as a surrogate father. Referred to by most as Senor Eleta, to Duran he became “Papa.” Eleta was someone he felt he could trust, someone stable. As tough as he was, Duran yearned for a man to replace his absentee father and Eleta filled that role.

  Local notoriety also began to bring the good-looking cholo female attention, but his first girlfriend was not a popular choice with Clara and other family members. She was a black girl, or champundun in colloquial parlance. Race and class were inextricably linked in Panama, as in most societies, and blacks were at the bottom of the ladder. “She was a very dark girl,” remembered Toti. “But he loved her a lot. He wanted to marry her but my mother did not agree. She thought it was only a game.” Every good boxer on the isthmus lived in the spotlight, and by now many Panamanians gossiped daily about Duran. His love life was an instant topic of interest, so Duran went to his step-father, Victorino Vargas, for advice.

  “I told him not to marry her, for he was going to become famous, so that in the future he could probably be able to get a prettier woman,” said Vargas. “He did not want anyone to know. Because he was young, and like all young people, they do not want others to know. But when I realized about this relationship, I told him he should marry another woman.”

  The relationship didn’t stay a secret for long. During a live TV interview, he explained to the public that he was dating a “black woman” and had plans to marry her one day. But the relationship would fade as Duran turned his attention to boxing. Every one of Duran’s family members spoke of the affection that girls had for him. “Oh, the girls loved my brother,” said his sister Anna. “They would always ask about him and call the house at all hours of the night. But he was a very good brother to me, very protective.” Fighting came first. “Most of his time was for boxing,” said Toti. “He enjoyed being with women a lot, even when he was very young, but he did not take them seriously. It was like his sport, but not all the time.”

  With the wealthy Eleta by his side, and willing to do whatever it took to make his fighter a champion, Duran now had a foundation. Even before his pro debut, he had begun to attract a following. “People saw the revelation when I was about fifteen or sixteen years old,” said Duran. “I was going against the best boxers of Panama, and they weren’t burnt-out fighters. They had a lot of experience.” In the locker room before fights, Plomo and his brother would bet each other which hand Duran was going to knock out an opponent with. “Boom, I would knock out the guy with my right hand, and I’d tell Plomo that I told him it was going to be the right hand.”

  WHILE DURAN was learning the arts of both boxing and survival, another Panamanian was already an expert at both. In the early Sixties, Ismael Laguna, the “Tiger from Santa Isabel,” was the idol of all impoverished young boxers. Laguna was one of their own. Born on June 28, 1943 in Palmira on the coast of Colon, he too had skipped school, shone shoes and sold newspapers on the streets, and fought to protect his patch and his nine brothers and sisters. “I had eight or nine fights for breakfast,” said Laguna. “Even when there wasn’t a fight, I would tell someone to put gum in my hair so I could find one. If there wasn’t a fight, I would go look for one.” Colon made other Panama slums look like Club Med. A mainly black area, it was home to fight fanatics who would shout “olé” at ri
ngside just as they did at bullfights in other countries. To Laguna, it was “the land of champions where the boxing tradition started from the time of Panama Brown.”

  Laguna moved to Santa Isabel when his father, Generoso Meneses, was elected mayor of the region. Despite being caught up in gangs, and spending time in jail for picking up girls’ skirts to see their panties (preferably red), Laguna would avoid the path that derailed many of his friends. One day, when he was twelve, he saw a national boxing champion, Carlos Watson, pulling a big crowd on the beach and inviting people to spar with him. Even though Watson said he wouldn’t punch hard, there were no takers – until the fearless little Laguna stepped forward. “I was very skinny like a worm,” said Laguna. “I went to spar with Watson and the people were saying, ‘Don’t do that. He’s going to whip you,’ but I put the gloves on and we went at it.”

  At first Watson held back on the youngster, but once he realized he was in a fight he tried to pick up the pace, out of desperation rather than bravado. “I opened a cut that he already had over his eye and the crowd was cheering because they always like the weak one,” said Laguna. “At the end I was making him move back and people were screaming because I was making this guy look like horseshit.”

  Furious, Watson hurled punches at the youngster but Laguna was a shadow, and as the blood flowed the professional called a halt to the bout. “That was how I got started in boxing,” said a smiling Laguna. “They used to call me Tigre because I would cut the cow’s neck and drink the blood. Before that, Cuerito was a nickname when I was younger, which meant little pieces of meat.” One of the young Laguna’s jobs was skinning and cleaning cattle skins after they were butchered.

  Soon he was in the gym, and after a brief amateur career he turned pro at seventeen. He was a natural, with sleek, supple movements and blur-fast hands. Laguna was a good-looking negrito with soft features, a kind soul who rarely disrespected his opponents. Only if something stirred him would he strike back. He would fight through a thicket of lusting women; however, his biggest contingent of groupies was the entire nation of boxers following his example.

  Laguna came to epitomize the typical Panamanian boxer: a flashy mover who slid in to throw punches and then slipped out without a scratch. The fans loved his style, and they were a knowledgeable audience. In the Forties, they had followed the widly popular Young Finnigan, while in the Fifties and Sixties stars like Isidro Martinez, Jesus Santamaria, Sammy Medina and Antonio Amaya boxed with grace and panache. But none of these spirited pugilists would ever win a world title. Amaya was called “Campeón Sin Corona” – Champion Without a Crown – after he was robbed on two occasions in title bouts, while Martinez was tabbed as the “most beautiful boxer I’d ever seen” by Laguna.

  Yet no one touched the people like Laguna. Tall, lithe and charming, he made boxing hugely popular. He also made it a spectacle, sometimes wearing white gloves to show his opponents’ blood stains during fights. “Ismael Laguna was a beautiful natural boxer,” said Carlos Eleta. “Just beautiful to watch in the ring.” Yet even at the height of his fame, he noticed the little urchin called Roberto.

  “The first time that I met Chaflan, I was in a hotel restaurant and this man comes on the table with Duran and starts dancing right on the table,” he said. “It was crazy. Then I gave him twenty dollars and you should have seen his face. He thanked me – ‘Oooh’ – it was like I was his best friend. Back then, Duran was still young and wasn’t known yet.”

  Duran dreamed that one day he’d be like Tigre. One day the Panamanians would chant “Doo-ran” when he landed a punch, the same way they now chanted “Tee-gray,” and he would dress in the stylish clothes and shining jewelry of a champion.

  In 1965, Laguna stood on the verge of greatness, his path blocked by a formidable world lightweight champion from Puerto Rico, Carlos Ortiz. Dangerous on the inside, sleek and unhittable from the outside, Ortiz had no boxing heroes but himself. “I always wanted to be Carlos Ortiz,” he said. “I never wanted to be anyone else.” They were due to fight on April 10 in Panama. Ortiz ran into Laguna in a local gym to hype the fight and there saw his challenger flitting in and out like a moth. “You couldn’t see him because he was moving so quickly,” remembered Ortiz. “I was thinking, ‘Oh God, what did I get into?’ He was very skinny and he wasn’t built like a fighter. He was fast and tall and he had everything. I knew I was going to have a hard time. But I trained for the best and I saw how he was. I wasn’t going to be surprised when I got into the ring.”

  Laguna didn’t plod or charge, follow or chase; he glided, juked and jived, offering a free shot and then immediately retracting the offer. His head and body moved as if he were dancing to a João Gilberto bossa nova. “When I stepped into the ring, this kid looked like a flash,” said Ortiz. “He was so fast that I couldn’t believe it. When he moved, it was the fastest thing I’d ever seen in the ring [but] I thought I was going to have an easy time because he wasn’t that tough. He was just a good kid, slim and fast, but he looked like I could knock him out.”

  There were also the foreign soil, the weather and the fans to contend with. Panama’s weather separates into two distinct periods, the dry season or summer (la seca) between December and April, and the wet season or winter (el invierno), which covers the rest of the year. The normal daily temperature is around 30 degrees Celsius and varies little throughout the year. What strikes outsiders is the humidity, which vacillates widely and can make a stroll down the street feel like a Turkish sauna. Ortiz found the heat came in swathes, stifling breath and sapping energy. Other foreign boxers concurred. The people were also fight mad and vociferous in support of their men.

  “It was a big thing in Panama because they never had a championship fight there. I couldn’t even walk outside,” Ortiz recalled. “Every place I went they were heckling me and saying bad things. ‘You’re going to get killed,’ but I was used to this stuff. I didn’t mind. I got a big surprise because he was better than what I thought. The fight started and I started boxing him and looking for ways to counter his moves and do what I wanted him to do. And he wouldn’t do it. I was the aggressor [but] he would counter everything that I threw at him.”

  Meanwhile, a penniless, fourteen-year-old Roberto Duran was trying to hustle his way into the stadium to get among the thousands of red, white and blue flags, having first climbed on a car roof to catch a glimpse of his hero. As the fight progressed, men raised their fists in triumph, women hugged and cried, and people of all sizes screamed for “Tigre.” Duran, who eventually coaxed his way past the guards, studied every punch, and saw a master class from his fellow countryman.

  “I was worried,” said Ortiz. “Every round, I came back and asked my trainers how I was doing. They just told me everything was going well and I was winning the fight. But I didn’t see it that way.” He was right. Ortiz couldn’t find Laguna with his punches, and the Panamanian won a unanimous decision and the title. “I never got tired that night,” said Laguna. “My trainer told me I was winning and to keep pressing the action. It was the greatest moment of my career. Even now I can still see myself in the ring. I will never forget.”

  Panama had its champion. Laguna had taken the soul of Al Panama Brown, the missed opportunities of Antonio Amaya and Isidro Martinez, the sorrow of Sammy Medina, the virgin dreams of Roberto Duran, along with the hopes of every man or boy who’d ever stepped into a Colon gym and threw a jab, and carried them into the ring that April night.

  “I was a child then,” said Duran. “I was a wrestler at that time, while I sold newspapers and cleaned shoes. The important fights were held in the big stadium, and all the champions would get there to walk around. But that was placed on a very high position, so people used to get up on top to be able to watch over the ringside. I saw the trucks up there and thought how in hell I would get there.

  “At round fourteen, they opened the doors, and in the middle of all those running, the piece of wood broke, and I fell down together with all the other people who
were standing there. I was the youngest of all those people and they were all falling on top of me. When I finally got up, I saw that all the others were already around the ringside. When I got there, round fifteen was about to start. Then finally when Laguna won, he was given a huge trophy which was like a goblet. I looked at him and thought then that I would be even more important than that man. And this is what really happened. At present, besides God, I am even more important than Laguna.”

  The teenage Duran sought out the new champion and told him, “Laguna, I will be just as good as you or better.” They were meant as the words of an admirer, but Laguna was too busy to hear them. This was Tigre’s moment. “When we left, Laguna had his car parked there, a big car, and many people were surrounding his car. I was among them. I then saw Laguna trying to drive slowly because there were so many people around him, but one guy stood in front of the car, defying him and trying to hit him. But Laguna just stared and kept on driving slowly. In the end, people started shouting that we had a new champion. Then I went back home.”

  From that moment on, for every young boxer it was about being Tigre. Even years later, Duran would still sparkle as he interrupted a young reporter: “For me it was always about Ismael Laguna.” He was Duran’s idol and still is. “When Duran sees me he still comes up to me and gives me a kiss,” said Laguna. “Sometimes he jokingly tells me that I gave birth to him.”

  Not only did Laguna show how to defend himself in the ring, but also how to conduct himself outside of it. Duran would watch and listen, devouring Laguna’s instructions, but would still then do his own thing. “All his life he’s been the same and does whatever he wants,” said Laguna. “In the ring sometimes I would tell him to throw the jab this way, and he would do it another way. But he’s always been like that.”