Sleeve tattoos like the one above are common in Panama City, Florida, not mention Philadelphia, Portland, Pittsburgh and Phoenix, but not in Panama City, Panama. Across the Central American region, tattoos are rare.
One reason is the association of tattoos with gangs and drug cartels. People with tattoos were seen as part of those groups.
A barista in Panama City who is college age said she and her friends don't get tattoos. No particular reason, they just don't.
I have been living in Panama since November and just noticed that I don't see tattoos everywhere, as I would in any major city in America or Europe.
Today I rode the both subway lines in Panama. The five-car trains are open. You can see from one end of the train to the other. As far as I could see, no tattoos. At one busy stop a security guard with a tattoo got on the train. If I rode a subway in New York, Philadelphia, or DC, I would have a hard time finding people without tattoos.
It was a woman with sleeve tattoos that made me aware that I was not seeing tattoos. When I saw her fully-inked arms in an outdoor restaurant I realized I had not seen sleeve tattoos for months--since I was last in Philadelphia. The woman with sleeve tattoos I saw here was an American tourist, not a Panamanian.
As perception, I know it is much harder to "see" what is absent than what is present so I don't feel too bad about not noticing that people in Panama don't have tattoos. I also wonder if I was simply seeing "normal" for most of my life. Before this century, most Americans did not have tattoos. For fifty years, I lived in the world where tattoos were rare.
Now they are everywhere--in the US.
But not here in Panama.
