Paritilla

About Paritilla:

Paritilla covers 48.7 km² in the southern part of the district of Pocrí, on the side that faces the Pedasí district rather than the sea. A road runs south from Pocrí to the village, and the Ministry of Public Works was out patching the streets of Paritilla with hot asphalt as recently as June 2025. The Cooperativa Arcadio Villalaz runs its own Paritilla–Las Tablas route, separate from the Pocrí bus. Las Tablas is where people go for a bank, a supermarket or the Joaquín Pablo Franco hospital. Around the village lie smaller places such as La Laguna, a hamlet near Cerro Marchena.

Day to day, Paritilla works as the service village for the south of the district. Its health centre, next to the church of Santa Rosa de Lima, is one of only two full health centres in Pocrí; Lajamina and El Cañafístulo have sub-centres, and the other centre is in the district seat. Children go to the Escuela Justo Vásquez, and the Templo Río de Agua Viva stands alongside the Catholic church. The calendar has two fixed points. At the end of August the village keeps the patron feast of Santa Rosa de Lima, and on 4 November it holds its own ox-cart parade with queens, followed by an evening dance.

Ask anyone in Azuero about Paritilla and they will probably mention music before land. The village is known for its tunas, the street bands of drums and sung coplas that carry the tamborito, and for its accordion players. Osvaldo Ayala, one of the best-known accordionists in Panamanian música típica and a Grammy winner for his work on Rubén Blades’ album La rosa de los vientos, grew up here, the son of two Paritilla natives, and is known across the country as “El Escorpión de Paritilla”. The population has been falling slowly for three decades, from 977 in 1990 to 840 in 2000 and 723 in 2023. That makes Paritilla a quiet place to live, and a market where family farms come up more often than new houses.

The land is low and rolling, between 80 and 140 metres above sea level, with pasture broken by small hills such as Cerro Marchena, which tops out at 113 metres, and Loma Buena Vista. Quebradas cut through the fincas, and the ones sellers prize most are described locally as agua viva: water that keeps flowing when the dry season, the verano from January to April, has burned the grass brown. Cattle are the main business, and some parcels have been planted with teak. The district’s beaches lie in the corregimientos of Pocrí and Paraíso, so from Paritilla the sea is a drive, not a walk.

Houses in Paritilla:

Houses here are village homes, built for the heat rather than for show. The kind that comes up has two bedrooms and one bathroom in a little over 100 m², a covered terrace at the front, bars on the windows and doors, and a yard big enough for a vegetable patch and a thatched bohío at the back. A plot of nearly 750 m² around a house like that is nothing unusual here, which is more room than a town lot in Las Tablas gives you. Houses for sale in Paritilla in the village are on piped drinking water and mains electricity; on a bigger plot, ask whether both reach the back of the land and not just the house.

Land and Lots in Paritilla:

Fincas are the core of this market. Parcels of around 15 hectares come up with frontage on the Pocrí–Paritilla road, which stays passable in the rainy season, and some still carry regrowth from old teak plantings. Larger holdings of 30 hectares and more are sold as semi-rolling cattle land with running water, and there are farms of over 50 hectares. Price-wise, a fifteen-hectare finca with a permanent stream here costs a small fraction of a two-hectare beachfront globe on the Pocrí coast. That gap is the main reason buyers who want farmland in Los Santos look inland.

FAQ:

• Is Paritilla near the beach?

  Not on foot. Paritilla is an inland corregimiento, and the closest beaches in the district, Playa La Yeguada and Playa La Candelaria, belong to the corregimientos of Pocrí and Paraíso. You will need a car to reach them, and the last stretch to La Yeguada is a dirt road.

• Is Paritilla part of Las Tablas?

  No. Many sellers advertise land as “Las Tablas – Paritilla” because Las Tablas is the nearest city, but Paritilla is one of the five corregimientos of the district of Pocrí. Check that the title, the survey plan and any building permit all name Pocrí, since that is the municipality you will deal with.

• Can I live in Paritilla without a car?

  In the village, more or less. The health centre, the school, the churches and the corner shops are within walking distance, and the cooperative bus takes you to Las Tablas for B/.1.45. Living on a finca off the main road is different: there you will need your own vehicle, especially in the rainy months.

• What should I check before buying a finca in Paritilla?

  Start with the water. Visit in March or April, at the end of the verano, and see for yourself whether the quebrada that runs across the land is still flowing. Then get a certificate from the property registry to confirm the owner and any mortgage, or find out whether the land is held only as possession rights, and walk the fences with the survey plan in hand. On inherited farms, every heir named on the title has to sign.

• When is the village at its liveliest?

  At the end of August, for the patron feast of Santa Rosa de Lima, and on 4 November, when Paritilla holds its ox-cart parade and dance. Both are a good chance to see the village full and to meet the families who own the land around it.