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Also in this section:
Different traditions when it comes to cemeteries
Discipline, Honor, Abnegation

Gringo graves dug up
photos by D. Allen, text by Eric Jackson

In the Anglo-American culture, graveyards are historical sites, treasured repositories of the individuals who made up a community's past, landmarks that are to be conserved long after the lineages of those who are buried there have died out.

Not so in Panama. Here, cemeteries are considered a service to the families of the deceased, with graves to be maintained only so long as the families continue to pay maintenance fees.

The Corozal Cemetery began as an American graveyard in the Canal Zone era. With the former zone's reversion to Panama, one section of the cemetery became an official US military graveyard, but the rest came under the control of Panama City's municipal government. A number of American families disinterred the bodies of their loved ones after the Carter-Torrijos Treaties were signed and sent the remains to the United States for reburial. But a number of American graves were left in the Mount Hope and Corozal cemeteries, and they get no more and no less respect than the graves of Panamanians --- if fees to maintain the graves are not paid to the city, after awhile the graves are dug up, the bones thrown into a common burial pit, and the grave sites are sold (or more properly speaking, rented) to someone else.

Thus we recently saw a number of Canal Zone era graves dug up at Corozal, as shown here.

To the gringo culture, this is a terrible desecration, but in Panama it's the ordinary way of doing business.

Also in this section:
Different traditions when it comes to cemeteries
Discipline, Honor, Abnegation