Welcome to Cafe Coca Cola

The taxi driver chuckles at my request. Café Coca Cola, he repeats. Kitschy tourist, he is no doubt thinking. But locals go here!—I protest silently, defensive already. Maybe he just likes saying Coca-Cola. There’s a toddler in some old movie—was it Please Don’t Eat the Daisies?—who repeats these words with similar glee: Coca. Cola! Coca. Cola!

The soda’s name, in fact, probably ranks right up there with the historic cocaine and occasional cane sugar (Trump is bringing it here! First time I have agreed with him on anything!) in guaranteeing the universal, timeless appeal of a liquid with so much phosphoric and carbolic acid, it will scour your toilet. But that is not my reason for pilgrimage. Nor do I usually stop at Americanish places in other countries; I have had enough burgers and hard rock and Hollywood. Somehow, though, this café feels symbolic.

Plopped down on a corner of Plaza Santa Ana, Café Coca Cola is part of Casco Viejo, the cobblestoned “old town” in Panamá City, and shares its place as a UNESCO World Heritage site. The oldest café in the city, it opened in 1875 as Nueve Puertas, because at the time, the building had nine doors. Thirst, politics, and the birth of a baby multinational changed that name.

In 1904, the U.S. took over the failed French attempt to build a canal that would connect the Atlantic and the Pacific. As men blasted through a mountain range, built huge locks, and piped away slurry, all in a steamy jungle climate with snakes coiled to spring, mosquitoes biting, and malaria fevers raging…they worked up a thirst. Nueve Puertas poured them some of the first Coca-Cola ever drunk outside the U.S.

In 1906, Coke built factories in Havana, Cuba, where the Cuba Libre (rum and Coke) was already a favorite, and in Panamá City. Splashing gallons of the fizzy soft drink into frosty glasses, Nueve Puertas changed its name—and became the only café in the world officially authorized to use the Coca-Cola name and logo. This was a handshake agreement, though, and in the 1950s, Coke, now corporate, tried to renege. Twice.

The little café won. Now supervisors from Atlanta pay an annual visit, pro forma. They see a place at the fulcrum of two cultures, able to slide down the see-saw toward pasta, fried chicken, and ice cream, then rise to suckling pig, octopus, and flan. Regulars play chess and watch futbol. Tourists grin at the yellowing poster that hangs behind the counter: Marilyn Monroe, drinking a Coke. Everybody checks the crowd, because you never know whom you will spot here.

Che Guevara and Fidel Castro came to Café Coca Cola to plot the Cuban Revolution—at least, that is the legend. What is more likely is that Guevara, who was definitely in Panama in 1953, came to the café to meet with Isaías García, Rómulo Escobar, Luis Ayala Gómez, and Adolfo Benedetti, forging plans to help Argentinians persecuted under the dictatorship of Juan Perón. Who reportedly also paid a visit, with his fiery wife Evita, to Café Coca Cola. As did Pablo Neruda, a poet who once remarked, “Eating alone is a disappointment,” and who used beverage as a literary metaphor: “I want to see thirst in the syllables.”

Julio Iglesias was another reported visitor, and Pierce Brosnan came while filming The Tailor of Panama. These claims seem plausible. But the café also claims to be the last place where the opposition leader Heliodoro Portugal was seen alive before he was captured and tortured. According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, he was “last seen alive in the military barracks in the Tocumen area.” I sigh. Marketing lore.

No, wait. On May 14, 1970, Portugal was in the Café Coca Cola, sipping and talking, when men in civilian clothes dragged him from his chair, forced him into an unmarked vehicle, and took him away. This is confirmed in a book published by the Cambridge University Press. Glancing up at the reverently named Heliodoro Portugal Avenue street sign, I feel my cynicism dissolve.

I am even prepared to believe that Garbo, the idealistic Spanish double agent Joan Pujol García, went to the café every day during his stay in Panamá. AI says no, he was never in Panama. But how in hell does AI think it can track the travels of a master spy? Garbo earned his MI5 handler’s secret name because he was “the best actor in the world,” not to mention a master of disguise. The only spy accorded high honors by both Hitler and King George VI, he fed Germany fake news that convinced Hitler the D-Day attack would come later than June 6, at a location far from the beaches of Normandy.

After his heroic help in ending World War II, Garbo traveled to Angola and “died” of malaria. He then moved to Venezuela, grew a beard, opened a bookstore, remarried, and started a second family. Lightly, he told his new kids he had been a spy, but they rolled their eyes at Dad’s goofy stories.

None of this is any longer relevant to Café Coca Cola, but it’s far too cool to leave out. In the 1980s, the astute British author Nigel West (IRL, a politician named Rupert Allason) learned Garbo’s real name, thanks to a tip from another famous double agent, Anthony Blunt. West poked into the “death” and found Garbo alive and well, which did not surprise his first wife but did shock their children. The two men then collaborated on Garbo’s autobiography.

It does not mention Café Coca Cola. That proves nothing. The café is a place of refuge and chat; maybe a little scheming, but not the high drama West would have privileged in Garbo’s life story. If he sipped a few Cokes in an old diner, that just makes him a bit more human, fond of the everyday pleasures that cut across cultures, the shared lore that brings the world together. That was what the Coca-Cola brand was all about. And that was what the postwar U.S. was about, too. We thrived on sweet energy and hope.

 Read more by Jeannette Cooperman here.