This month the site of the old Balboa High flagpole becomes a nationalistic shrine, as hallowed as any of the nation's more significant religious places. The original flagpole is long gone, but on its site there's a flagpole with fountains and the names of Panamanians who gave their lives for their country that January engraved on the inside of somber columns. Though it's nothing like that in size or primary function, at the new front entrance to the Panama Canal Authority's "Centro de Capacitacíon Ascanio Arosemena" --- the old Balboa High School --- art and architecture combine to leave the sort of impression that an American gets from standing in the Lincoln Memorial.

A seminal event in Panama's existence, a significant turning point in US-Latin American relations, the beginning of the end of the old Canal Zone --- that's the nature of what unfolded at this place. It's right that Panama pay respectful homage.

A block and one-half up the street, there's a little rubble at the base of what was a pedestal, surrounded by three tiny shrubs, where the old statue stood. Really, the shrine that was mysteriously destroyed a little before Christmas was a mediocre cliche in concept, executed without much inspiration in the socialist realism genre. It was a small, low budget affair, fine for a high school lobby but inadequate for the conveying the importance of what happened on The Day of the Martyrs in 1964.

There is a remarkable ignorance about these events among Panamanians who learned about it in the schools here, with lots of distorting partisan spin placed on the subject. Few Americans who weren't there recall the incident.

This, in a nutshell, is what happened back then.

After John F. Kennedy's assassination, the new Johnson administration put a bunch of JFK's foreign policies on hold while it conducted reviews. One of these policies was an agreement to fly the Panamanian flag next to the American flag in the Canal Zone. LBJ couldn't easily back out on a deal made by his predecessor, but he might limit the symbolism by reducing the number of US flags in the Zone. That provoked a large portion of Zonian society. In an flag-raising intiative that was begun by a Canal Zone cop and then embraced by a substantial majority of American high school kids and their parents, Zonians said "OURS."

Then a little group of precocious young radicals from the Instituto Nacional picked up the gauntlet, setting out to raise the Panamanian flag at Balboa High, where the American flag had been raised against the governor's order. Though they never got to raise their flag, the students and their symbolism said "OURS."

The pushing, the shoving, the tearing, the shooting and looting and burning, these unfolded over the next few days. By the end of it all 27 souls had lost their lives and the Panamanian and American governments weren't speaking to one another.

The Instituto Nacional kids who went down to Balboa High that morning were bright and idealistic and most of them thought that Fidel Castro's a really swell guy. Speaking for themselves, they represented a small fringe of public opinion. Those who erupted in protest after the flag was torn, by contrast, represented a substantial majority of the Panamanian people. If the Zonians were ready to emphasize the point by raising Old Glory and ripping up the isthmian Tricolor, then Panamanians of nearly all social classes and walks of life were ready, in their own multifarious ways, to call the nation's dibs on its own midsection.

The source of many Zonian (and American) historical errors about the Flag Riots --- as the Day of the Martyrs is called in US military history --- is confusion of the political inspirations of the Instituto Nacional kids with the demand of the Panamanian nation. In January 1964 Panama said "OURS." Kids like 17-year-old Estanislao Oribio, who was shot through the neck while carrying a Panamanian flag onto the grouds of the old Tivoli Hotel, gave their lives to emphasize the point. In 1964, along the "Fifth Frontier" that disappeared in 1979, people of diverse political pedigrees fought in the streets with American soldiers, Canal Zone cops and in a few places the Guardia Nacional. Cars bearing Canal Zone plates were trashed on city streets. In the Interior American-owned businesses were vandalized. In Colon three Panamanians and three US soldiers were killed. In banana country the unions refused to load the gringos' fruit. And in the presidential palace, Roberto F. Chiari broke diplomatic relations with the United States. When crunch time came, Chiari said "OURS" for the Panamanian nation, and that was the beginning of the end of the Canal Zone.

The Panama Canal Authority has the sense to realize the importance of the site to Panamanians and the money acknowledge it well.

Why not just leave the site, or restore it as it was, with just an inobtrusive plaque? In one sense, the new construction brings to my mind what the early accretions to and around the black stone altar at the center of the Kaaba in Mecca must have been, or what Jerusalem's Temple Mount may have looked like a few millennia ago. Sacred causes have a way of kitsching up sacred places.

Ah, but the soft sell is un-Panamanian and was not to be. The canal authority's new training center entrance is to be a House of the Holy, not a mere "point of interest" on tourist maps.

Even though my style would have been different, the new monument to The Martyrs of 1964 has been done tastefully and effectively, in my opinion. It's a place to ponder not only what the fallen of those days sacrificed, but about all the obscure citizens who gave their all for Panama in so many different ways. It is a place to be reminded that some things count for more than aquisitive success in this society. Administrator Alberto Alemán Zubieta, Canal Affairs Minister Ricardo Marinelli and the rest of the folks who operate our nation's principal industrial asset have done well for Panama this time.