Arroz con mango
A shambles, a tangled mess — rice with mango, two things that were never meant to share a plate.
Related lesson: Panamanian Spanish: A Survival Guide.
Hear it in context
La reunión fue un arroz con mango.
The meeting was a complete shambles.
Esa contabilidad es un arroz con mango, nadie entiende nada.
Those accounts are a mess — nobody can make sense of them.
¡Se armó un arroz con mango en la fila del banco!
A whole scene kicked off in the bank queue!
What It Actually Means
An arroz con mango is a situation with too many incompatible things happening in it at once: a meeting that went in four directions, a set of accounts nobody can untangle, a family argument that dragged in the neighbours. English reaches for shambles, dog’s dinner or car crash depending on the flavour; Spanish reaches for a plate of food.
Where It Comes From
Pure culinary logic. Rice is the savoury base of half the Caribbean’s cooking, mango is sweet and sticky, and putting them together is the picture of things that do not belong. The phrase is shared across the Caribbean — Cuba is most often credited with it, and Venezuela and the Dominican Republic use it freely — so Panama inherited rather than invented it. That is the normal shape of Panamanian slang: Caribbean stock, local delivery.
How Natives Use It
Nearly always with ser (esto es un arroz con mango) or armarse (se armó un arroz con mango), and nearly always singular. It scales from a chaotic morning to a national political crisis, and it is mild enough for the newspapers, which use it in headlines. That makes it one of the few pieces of slang here you can safely say in front of your boss.
Common Pitfall
Do not read it as a comment on the food — it describes disorder, not bad taste, and it never means something is disgusting. And keep it distinct from its Caribbean neighbour vaina, which Panamanians also use constantly: a vaina is the unnamed thing, an arroz con mango is the tangle several things have got into.