Panama: The Canal, the Guna and the Country Where Two Oceans Meet
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The Panama Canal is one of the great engineering achievements of the 20th century — a 77-kilometre waterway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans across the Isthmus of Panama, reducing the sailing distance between New York and San Francisco by 13,000 kilometres. The canal carries roughly 5 percent of world trade. When it was dug between 1904 and 1914 by the United States after France had tried and failed, it required the excavation of 232 million cubic metres of earth. The effort killed 5,600 workers, mostly from the Caribbean.
The Guna Yala — the indigenous people of the San Blas Islands on Panama's Caribbean coast — govern their own autonomous territory under a traditional authority structure that has successfully maintained cultural continuity through centuries of colonial pressure. Guna women produce molas — fabric panels made by reverse appliqué, layers of brightly coloured cloth cut and stitched to reveal intricate patterns — that are among the most sophisticated textile art traditions in the Americas. The designs encode spiritual and natural world knowledge. The Guna sell them to visitors; the deeper meaning travels with the knowledge to interpret it.
Panama City contains one of the most unusual urban skylines in the Americas: a cluster of modern skyscrapers overlooking the ruins of Panama Viejo, the original colonial city destroyed by the pirate Henry Morgan in 1671. New Panama and Old Panama occupy the same visual frame, the modern towers and the 350-year-old ruins visible simultaneously from the coastal road. The city has been reinventing itself since the day it was founded.
