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Well I have been writing a lot – maybe too much – about the mountain views of both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in Panama. The most dramatic view of both oceans is located on a remote mountains trail in Cocle province Panama. At the peak of the mountain trail you can see both oceans; the spot is so close to both the Pacific and Atlantic that you can see donkey trains being led up mountainsides by farmers as they approach the peak of the trail from both the Atlantic and Pacific sides of Panama. The place where I began my journey in search of this very unique view was the town of El Cope and specifically El Cope National Park; the Park lies to the east of El Cope in the cloud covered foothills of the Cocle Cordillera. In my futile search for the mountain trail and its incredible view of the two Oceans, I found some hidden valleys and wild rivers that were little known to people outside the local population. When I had visited this spot in June of 1997, I had come with a government agency which at that time was known as Irenare; today Anam: that June day we visited a pine tree plantation which rested on a high, small thin mountain that overlooked a long valley in which you could see 50 miles in every direction. In the valley below you could see cattle and horses and behind you was a young pine forest of, say, 6 to 8 years. Later that day we ventured onto the mountain trail that led to the view between the oceans: but on this trip, when I searched for the mountain trail I could not find it: as hard as I tried, nothing looked familiar to me. The El Cope section of Cocle province was a favorite spot of the former dictator of Panama, Omar Torrijos; his favorite spot being the remote mountain town of Coclesito, where he had a farm, airport and fields: he died near Coclesito in a plane crash in July 1981. The interior of Cocle province as you head west towards the Costa Rican border opens up and as you travel west you find yourself walking across wide-open long valleys that run parallel to the Pan-American highway far from the coast, the coast where the Pan-American highway snakes along the Pacific Ocean. This a place that time has ignored: and for this reason the place is very attractive to visit. I had visited El Cope many years before, but knew the national park and surrounding areas were little known and accessible to exploration. To arrive to El Cope you turn off the Pan-American Highway about 20 miles west of the town of Penonome and to the right.

The first bridge in the remote town of Bajos Llanos.

Main street El Cope, Cocle, with the National park covered in clouds.

The development of Bajos Llanos and El Cope were initiated by Omar Torrijos; both towns were Torrijos's’ personal favorites and you can see this was true by the well-built houses and schools that are dotted along the road as you descend the into the valley of Bajos Llanos. Torrijos was originally from the town of Santiago in Veraguas province Panama. He had come from a middle class family and made his way up the military to eventually become Panama’s dictator from February 1969 to July 1981. Torrijos was a man the people of Panama loved because he truly represented the small-towns of Panama. If you ask people about Torrijos most people in Panama will tell you that they saw him one time or another coming out of some place drunk: a movie theater, a restaurant, a meeting, on T.V. or a news conference. Hard drinking and fast women were part of Torrijos’s image, an image that both Panamanian men and women found acceptable. In short, Torrijos was a symbol for how to have a good time in Panama. Torrijos’s strongest legacy is the small middle-class he created in the interior of the country: this middle-class was largely made up of powerful men - local patrons - who wanted to have more say in government. These men who backed Torrijos in the 1970s were from the same families who controlled Panama in the 19th century when Panama was mostly under the control of Colombia, though Panama was never seen by Colombia as an integral part of the Colombian nation. The Colombians called Panama the Provincia Negra (Black Province) in the 19th century. Many people in Panama saw Torrijos as a positive force in the development of Panama, but he did one thing that hurt his country greatly: the quality of public education died under Torrijos. At one time Panama spent more money on education than any other country in North or South America. And Panama’s well-endowed educational system produced quality graduates. After Torrijos the educational system collapsed: the best indicator as to the health of a community is the quality of its public schools and Torrijos ignored this fact. And Panama as result became more reliant on outside resources for its development.

I climbed along the mountain roads of the Park and could not find my way to the mountain trail I was in search of and after about two-hours walking, searching and asking I gave up my search as the mountains were slowly enveloped by dark thunderheads. I will go in search of the trail and the photo I wanted for this article in January when the rains are gone and the winds pick up.
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Love In Latin America: Panama And The U.S. When the U.S. Southern Command was still located in Panama there was a constant stream of young Panamanian women who came to Panama City from the countryside in order to find an American husband. Many left their families and never returned: I must have met eight or nine families over the years that never knew where their daughters had ended up, where in the U.S. they lived or how they were doing. Other Panamanian women, normally from the middle-class, would tell me that they had married an American with the idea that living in the U.S. would be one long happy shopping spree at Sears, but when there were no maids and they were cooking and cleaning and living in worse conditions than what they had left in Panama, they left their husbands and returned home. One woman who had been married when she was 20 to an American soldier - she was in her mid-forties when I spoke with her – told me she was so excited about moving to Kingman, Arizona, with her new husband, but when she arrived everything was cowboys and Indians and everyone thought she was Mexican or Native American. And white Americans treated her like she was inferior and therefore one day caught a plane back to Panama without telling anyone – she never returned.

A view on the road to Bajos Llanos from El Cope. The view is from the Pacific side of Panama towards the Atlantic side.

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But the strangest outcome of Panamanian–American relationships were those that were completely anynonmous, where the man and woman knew each other for only one night and only one side of that equation knew the single encounter had produced a child. In Panama there are men, and it always seems to be men, that look exactly like American service personnel that live the life of a poor Panamanian farmer. They are a strange anomaly as they look so American, but are so Panamanian in behavior. In Panama they are pretty much ostracized on the surface except for their blue eyes.

If you want to have a sexual encounter in Panama and you live at home or don’t have your own place, then you must head to what is known as a push-button. Of all the hotels in Panama these are probably the nicest though it’s an hourly rate. You drive into a garage and the garage door closes behind you and then you walk through a door into a hotel room. You pay the two hands that come through the little window and you can order drinks or whatever and there are mirrors and music and vibrating beds. Now you might think cheap, but the push buttons are taken seriously and the service and quality of everything, depending on the push-button, is normally top-notch. Some of Panama’s richest businessmen earned their money building and operating push buttons. One push button in the interior of Panama has a sign as you exit that say “another satisfied customer” and a big smiley face. Do be careful when you visit Panama, as AIDS is a problem.

More On Investing In Panama

Remember, please, please, get yourself a local lawyer if you plan to make an investment in Panama. Get a lawyer and build a relationship with him or her because if you do your ass will be covered when things go wrong. Lot of schemes flying around Panama right now so look and invest in a lawyer to protect your money. Now where to invest your money. Well what do you want? Golf course and retirement leisure: Altos del Maria or Altos del Cerro Azul: Boquete I don’t know about, but hear it’s nice, but a little tight. I always recommend Costa Arriba in Colon; this is the area around Portobelo and Isla Grande. San Blas no way. Look San Blas is an Indian preserve; you buy land there and you will be up against an Indian village and its patron. Years ago – in the 1970s there was an attempt to build a huge hotel and airstrip in San Blas and it was even backed by the military government at the time; it was scrapped because the Kuna Indians who live in the area protested so strongly that the government had to back down: I give the government lots of credit for backing down over this issue. Here’s another story from the San Blas. Again in the 70s, there was an American, whose name I can’t remember right now, but who had a hotel in the San Blas called Islandia. His dauighter was known for her great beauty. The permission to build the hotel was granted from the Kuna Indians; the lease allowed the American to build a small-resort on one of the San Blas Islands. The deal was that he could build the resort but would have to leave after 8 or 10 years. The resort was built and things went along just fine, then the 8 or 10 year lease was up and the owner was told to leave; he didn’t want to: he was told to go or there would be problems. On the day the lease was up some of the Kunas went to the resort and an altercation ensued in which the American owner of the hotel was shot in the leg. The Kunas who had done the shooting escaped on boat into the night. As they were escaping some Kuna friends of the American who had heard the shooting showed up to help take the injured to a medical clinic. As they were carrying the injured American to a boat, more Kuna friends of the American appeared and the new arrivals thought the Kunas that were carrying the injured American to the boat to get medical attention were the ones who had done the shooting: and they shot a number of the Kunas who were trying to help. At least one or two people died. Now is that something you want to experience?

The Pacific Coast of Panama down at the bottom of Los Santos near the Veraguas border is where I would buy. Go and see; I won’t give any more clues than that.

Neo-Cons

Well, for the longest time I didn’t know what neo-con meant. Of course I knew neo-con – meaning neo-conservative from the 1980s – but was surprised to hear the term brought up from the dead. I thought neo-con was like con artist. Saw their photos in the last Vanity Fair and thought they didn’t look very healthy. Richard Perle, is he still around? I briefly met a man by the name of Richard Burt who had been Ambassador to West Germany in the 80s and had then gone on to be under–secretary of state to George Schultz in the Reagan administration: he had battled with Perle in the 80s and thought Perle a dangerous man then. What is the neo-cons vision of America: strong-imperialistic America? America pushing open markets and democracy around the world whether you like it or not. The idea that everyone will accept open markets and democracy is as realistic as the old socialist bullshit about a classless-society. As a son of the American Revolution, I always prefer the liberal-revolutionary America to the state-security America that has predominated lately. I don’t like the idea that the only way to be patriotic is to be a security-paranoid conservative. Yes there are threats from outside, I agree, but to solve those threats all threads of American thought have to have some influence in policy.

Quotes

“It’s foolish to try to live on past experience. It is very dangerous if not a fatal habit, to judge ourselves to be safe because of something that we felt or did twenty years ago”.

“I have made a great discovery, I no longer believe in anything. Objects don’t exist for me except insofar as a rapport exists between them or between them and myself. When one attains this harmony, one reaches a sort of intellectual nonexistence – what I can only describe as a sense of peace – which makes everything possible and right. Life then becomes a perpetual revelation”. 

“Yes I would, because, if I was in hell I would always feel I had a chance of escaping. I’d always be sure that I’d be able to escape.”

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