Happy Home

My greatest fortune is my childhood... I grew up with freedom, my parents were very kind with me, I learned everything at the right time, played a lot, was popular in the park nearby where the neighborhood kids used to play baseball. My parents taught me to be proud, to enjoy life healthily, to seek knowledge through my studies and to smile a lot (I was always smiling, running, playing baseball). I had a soccer ball that I used to use right after finishing my homework for the day, which I used to finish early each day, after school... I had a very happy childhood that somehow I still carry and will always carry with me... perhaps that's why I still smile a lot...

At the tender age of 4. Red ink fell over the picture after it was developed, as can be seen near my nose. Otherwise, the picture is rather clear in revealing the facial features of a kindergarten child (me), age 4, living in Panama City, in a neighborhood known as Betania.

Throughout my life my main sources of inspiration have been my parents, both of whom were Spanish professors (they are now happily retired after serving the Panamanian Youth for so many years). I grew up in a home filled with books, intense dialogue and much intellectual challenge. To work as a professor, to do research and to inquire for the truth, to enjoy intense intellectual discourse and to teach our Youth, this is the vocation that I inherited from both of them; to me this is the family business. Today my parents are retired, while my brother Hector and my sister Lorena are an industrial engineer and a public administrator, respectively. They all live in Panama City. We are all extremely close, and this has been so throughout the different phases of life.