From Panama City to El Valle

As we drove through downtown Panama City on our way to the mountains, Edgardo pointed out a barrio. The barrio was a jumble of unpainted high-rise apartments; unit was obviously inhabited by many people. The rooms all had either broken out windows or never had any installed and laundry was hung across most balconies along with lot of other unidentifiable stuff. The buildings were run down, dirty, had stained walls and crumbling. Edgardo told us that any US citizen who entered the barrio would probably not leave alive.

This was where Manuel Noriega had his headquarters; he had used it as a human shield. This decision, and the US invasion to unseat Noriega led to death and destruction. Noriega was the dictator of Panama from 1983 to 1989. He initially was on the payroll of the US Central Intelligence Agency because of his opposition of socialist governments in Central America and help controlling drug trafficking. For a while the CIA, turned a blind eye to his association with drug lords (Noriega was playing both sides of the fence here), weapons runners and the corruption in his government.

The 1989 election was rigged by Noriega, and former US president Jimmy Carter denounced the election as fraudulent. The potential loss of transport, including oil, through the Panama Canal was probably too great a financial risk to the US. US army personnel were harassed by the Panamanian military and one off duty US officer was shot. The situation escalated and in 1989 George H. W. Bush ordered the US to attack Panama to capture Noriega. Protection of the Panama Canal, protection of US citizens, restoration of democracy and human rights, and control of the drug trade were cited as the reasons for the invasion.

The US sent in over 50,000 troops and 300 aircraft. The attacks on the barrio caused as many as 5,000 Panamanian civilians to be killed; most died in a fire in the barrio around Noriega’s headquarters. There is still hatred there toward the US; emblematic of the darker side of the love-hate relationship Panama has with the US. The relationship has been long, with its origins in the US cutting the country in half by building the Panama Canal starting in the early 1900’s.

When I had visited Panama City in 1977, the canal was still under United States’ jurisdiction. Tensions existed then in the form of resentment toward the wealthy country that ran the canal in the midst of deep poverty. I will never forget the image of a suburban landscape, where the US military and canal zone personnel lived, surrounded by Panama City. The neighborhood was indistinguishable from the one I grew up in, except for the tropical flowers and palm trees in the gardens. Large mowed lawns being sprinkled, split-level houses, multi-car garages, and large cars were everywhere. Across a low wall and a four lane street was a slum with tar paper shacks and a burned-out apartment building without outer walls where many people lived. Large families lived in one room with no running water. The separation between rich and poor in the US was much better hidden.

There are large disparities between rich and poor in Latin America, but many of the rich build their houses behind walls. The walls often have broken glass embedded along the top or barbed wire to keep intruders out. The walls preclude a casual assessment of the amount of wealth from outside. The other places I had visited in the US, Canada, and Europe did not have the same degree of stark contrast clearly visible from the street between the poor and those with comfortable lives. The disparity was intense, and it highlighted a sharp inequality between my sheltered and privileged middleclass upbringing and the way much of the rest of the world lives.

In my 1977 trip, I felt the tension in the Canal Zone because the Panamanian military was a good bit more menacing than what I had experienced in Costa Rica. The civil service soldiers in Costa Rica were friendlier than the Denver police I had grown up with. The Panamanian military had machine guns slung over their shoulders, tightly cropped hair, and vacant looks in their eyes that I imagined were the looks of stone cold killers. I did not linger in front of them long enough to find out.

These thoughts ran through my mind as we passed the barrio where Noriega had his headquarters and made our way through Panama City west to El Valle. To go west from the city, you must cross the canal. We left the city via the Centennial Bridge over the Panama Canal. The bridge is almost a mile long and over 250 feet high. Large ocean-going ships pass under the bridge with no problem. As we crossed the bridge, I could see tanker ships lined up into the distance waiting to get into the canal. Another line of tankers chugged away into the Pacific Ocean having successfully crossed the isthmus from the Atlantic side. This is one of the great centers of commerce in the world.

The Panama Canal was and continues to be an enormous undertaking. Almost 28,000 workers died during its construction begun in the 1800s by the French and finally completed by the US. Now more than 200 million tons of cargo pass through it each year. The average ship pays $54,000 to go through the canal, resulting in almost $800 million in revenue a year. The US controlled the canal in Panama from when it was completed in 1914 until 2000.

The canal had its positive effects for the study of ecology. The Canal used dams to create large lakes in the center of Panama, and one of these lakes isolated Barro Colorado Island. Early in the history of the Panama Canal this island was protected as a biological reserve, one of the first in the New World.

Since then the Smithsonian has managed the site and it is one of the top tropical ecological research areas in the world. I visited this site in the 1970’s and this was one reason for my choice of career. The research station had a canopy crane so you could get up into the tops of the tropical trees and see the birds and butterflies fly through the canopy. This vantage point really makes it clear that tropical jungles have considerable habitat where people have difficulty reaching; the hundreds of feet of tree canopy is where most of the ecological action occurs. This also was the first place I saw lizards that could run across the surface of the water (JC lizards), live sloths, and many other tropical plants and animals. The long research record at the island makes it an extremely valuable ecological site, and with each year of data the Barro Colorado becomes more important.

The United States had sovereignty of this land that cleaved Panama; an obvious source of tensions between Panama and the US. Eventually the canal was returned to the Panamanians. Edgardo told me that many Panamanian citizens are not so certain that Panama should have taken the tremendous maintenance demand and responsibility for this vital passage from the US. However, the importance of the Panama canal may become a moot point with global warming; summer in North America now leads to an open Northwest Passage through the Arctic Ocean. In the future, with melting of the Arctic Ice cap, the passage could remain open for a large part of the year and take much of the traffic away from the canal. Given that Panamanians know that the US released much of the greenhouse gas that is causing this melting, they may have another reason to resent us. Still, the canal for now is central to the identity and economy of the country.

We made our way west on the Pan-American highway on a beautiful day, leaving Panama City behind, heading toward the high altitude jungles that were our destination. We had to drive west because although the Pan-American Highway is mostly a north/south highway, this part of the highway leads east/west. Because of the curve of Central America and where Panama is located, the country spreads from east to west.
The Pan-American Highway becomes less of a highway in the North American sense as you move away from Panama City. It is certainly not limited access. Pedestrians, bicycles, mules, wagons and other modes of transport move along edges in more rural areas. Small shops have their parking lots right next to the road, and access is not limited. This is a very busy central artery to the country full of trucks and cars.

After an hour or so of driving we stopped at to get fresh empanadas (hot cheese turnovers) and other refreshments. The cheese and empanada shop where we stopped smelled fantastic as any active bakery does. In most of the US, local bakeries are rare, and our lives are less enjoyable as a result. Furthermore, this was an excellent cheese shop, most places in
Central America carry only a few types of simple bland cheese, but this shop was replete with a variety of locally made cheeses. Having native Panamanians as members of our scientific team to educate us on regional delicacies definitely had its benefits.

Our next stop was to secure breakfast and lunch provisions from the grocery store for the next 9 days. This store was emblematic of the US influence on Panama. The landscaped parking lot and exterior of the store in a strip-mall setting would be indistinguishable from thousands of strip-malls in the US. The grocery did not have the variety of items available in North American supermarkets, but it was obviously modeled after the large grocery stores in the US. We purchased food that would keep for a few weeks in the tropical heat (tins of meat, sardines, clams), crackers, breakfast foods, snacks (chips and cookies), and beverages.

This trip marked the beginning of my appreciation for Latin American rums. We each purchased a couple of bottles of rum of different ages (5 to 25 years old). It turns out that Matt chose the store not only for the food, but probably more importantly, for the rum selection. There are many varieties available, and as I would find out, almost all but the very cheapest ones are excellent. Of course we also grabbed some cases of beer, soda, bottled water, and cans of Pina Guava (pineapple and guava juice) and limes (for breakfast or to mix with the rum in the evening). We crammed our provisions into the already full trucks and continued to head toward El Valle de Antón.

We first could see the location of El Valle as a distant peak rising above the hazy tropical plains of Panama. The peak is one of numerous volcanic cones that dot Central America and one of three large inactive volcanic cones in Panama. As we wound our way up the slopes the air became cooler, and our trip became more pleasant.

Small shacks and rudimentary concrete roadside dance halls blaring distorted Latin music and hip hop through large speakers lined the road side. This area at the bottom of the volcano was obviously agricultural and not wealthy. The vegetation was dry and sparse, but slowly began to switch to wetter, greener trees as we moved up in elevation. Simultaneously, the houses began to give way to more expensive haciendas.
This region has a history of one where wealthy Panamanians build second houses because the cool weather offers an escape from the heat of Panama City. Now it is a magnate for wealthy from all over the world including retiring US and European couples. As we found out, this movement toward large second homes is not always so good for the native flora and fauna. Eventually we made our way over the upper lip of the volcano and started our descent into the ancient crater, there we caught our first glance of El Valle.