Those who were born in the old Canal Zone, and especially those born at the old Colon Hospital, which was run by CZ authorities but located in the territory of the Republic of Panama in its pre-treaty sense, may know how maddening it can be to get a US passport. But if one part of the State Department bureaucracy has occasionally created nightmares for Coco Solo Hospital babies --- "We can't take a Canal Zone birth certificate: you were born in the Republic of Panama," the clerk said --- in Panama the US Information Service has created a website to help people find the Canal Zone and Panamanian documents they need and thus get around many of the paper headaches peculiar to the Zonian subculture. If you need Canal Zone birth, death, marriage, divorce or other records and are wondering where to look, check out this website at http://www.orbi.net/usispan/request.htm, and know that somebody in the US government is doing a good job.

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