In a city as wild with light, noise and chaos as Panama City, you had better look twice before braving a zebra crossing. At any moment, a vehicle best described as a carnival on wheels, complete with reggaeton blaring out of its speakers, will come careering down the street, screeching to a halt only to squeeze another passenger onto its already crammed decks. Known as the ‘Diablo Rojo’ (the Red Devils), these are Panama’s notorious public buses––the intensity of their sound and speed matched only by the electric montage of colors and cartoons decorating their exterior. Ever since the post-war years, Diablo Rojo drivers have hired local artists to turn these old American school buses into moving business cards: the louder the music and the bolder the visuals, the more passengers you pick up. “Nothing is subtle in Panama,” says Eoin Mclaughlin, who directed today’s Short on Sunday on one of the most prolific Diablo Rojo artists, Andrés Salazar. “Everything's in your face: sex, violence, drugs and color. Moderation is pointless. If you want your bus painted, then you really want it painted.” Constantly changing the designs to reflect the sounds and styles of the time, the Diablo Rojo artists covered their yellow-painted steel canvases with a jumble of tropical landscapes, religious iconography and portraits of Latin America’s most-loved artists, actors and athletes. Encapsulating the shared and personal experiences of contemporary Panamanian life, these mobile artworks have become, as Salazar puts it, an essential part of the country’s folklore. Today, the Diablo Rojo are being discarded in favor of more pallid, air-conditioned metro buses, and these unique pieces of history are quickly disappearing. “Andrés speaks with the passion of a man who has spent his whole life creating a body of work, a whole movement, only to see it scrapped as his time draws to an end,” Mclaughlin adds. “That he maintains the importance of his work, and yet accepts the end as he does, is something quite powerful.”—Hanne Christiansen

Hanne Christiansen is a freelance journalist and broadcaster who has contributed to Dazed & Confused and Vice, among others.