How to recognize the American contribution to Panama?

Plans are afoot to build a "Plaza de Culturas y Étnias" at Amador, to be financed by Panama's various cultural and ethnic groups raising the funds for their parts of it. The American Society is playing a part in raising money to honor the American contribution to Panama, and as one might expect the project has sparked various arguments. There are the Panamanian cultural nationalists who, like their US counterparts, take offense at any concept of multiculturalism. The project has also prompted a few Zonians to object over the Internet that the American flag should still be flying over Amador and that gringos should not be just one more ethnic group in Panama but sovereign over a ten-mile-wide strip across the isthmus. From both the Panamanian and American perspectives, the above-mentioned arguments appear to represent viewpoints of the political fringes. But then there are also questions about what kind of representation the United States and its people ought to have at Amador, as there already are a number of monuments to the American presence here. The above memorial to George Goethals, in Balboa between the Canal Administration Building and El Prado, is one of the more prominent examples. Photo by Eric Jackson

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Monteverdi
Should the Americans have a monument?