‘It is this canal that has created both the economic prosperity and the environmental jeopardy in which the country finds itself today.’

Holly Bruford visits Panama, as seen on BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are this week.

After a year and ten months in Central America I thought I had come to understand the diversity of the region its people, culture and infrastructure as fully as possible. But then I arrived in Panama.

Looking out across the calm waters of Panama Bay from the old city on its western curve to the new city rising in the east is like discovering a new continent.

The water seems not only to divide a capital city but also two eras: crumbling colonialism from 21st century globalisation. Nowhere else in Central America do you see the glistening high-rise, industrial power and the western pace of life.

Panama is the most economically advanced country in the region. For middle class families in urban areas life is similar to that of North America with good access to health care and elementary school enrolment at 90%.

Crossing

Located at the narrowest point of crossing between the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans, Panama has been a strategic trading route since the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century.

The canal, completed in 1914, has provided a vital thoroughfare of international commerce and with North America’s ownership of the canal lasting for most of the past century, it is understandable that no other country in Central America has been so dominated by the United States.

North America’s trade is here, her commerce, fast food, shopping malls and cinemas. Her people are also here, many left over from the US controlled ‘ Canal Zone’ days, and more recently arriving to set up home in one of the deluxe retirement villages sprouting up across the country.

Despite the inevitable US influence however, there remain similarities with the Central American region, which continue to frame Panama as a country, rather than a colony, in its own right.

Although only seven of the original indigenous tribes exist today and make up as little as 5% of a population infused with Spanish, African, West Indian, Chinese, Indian and European descendents, they nevertheless capture the cultural charm embedded throughout the region. Equally indelible and equally widespread comes the racism, manifest in the national illiteracy rate. Generally low at 6% it reaches a staggering 50% among the country’s indigenous population.

It would seem the gap between rich and poor is as common here as it is throughout the region, only in Panama the contrast is starker: within 30km of Panama City’s high-rise banking district, the native Emberá continue to practice subsistence agriculture in the rainforest.

Distribution

And although Panama may have the highest GDP per head in the region, income distribution is so polarized that poverty remains widespread. 37% of Panama’s 2.8million live in poverty. 21% live in extreme poverty.

In addition, the all too familiar environmental problems across Central America are no less in Panama. Although more land has been set aside for habitat protection than any other Central American country (almost 30%), deforestation is clearly evident and mangrove swamp and coral reef are being destroyed at an unsustainable pace as human expansion, industrial growth and pollution take their toll.

The sharp contrasts I have found in Panama - the fusion with the West and the deep roots with the past - show how quickly the country has progressed, most evidently during the last century with the completion of the Panama Canal.

It is this canal that has created both the economic prosperity and the environmental jeopardy in which the country finds itself today.

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