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travel

A useful but not entirely positive guide

"Kilometer 0," a point in Panama City near where the Transistmica ends --- under an overpass leading to the Corredor Norte, near the Hosanna Temple and the Hospital Santa Fe --- is the place at which highway distances to and from the capital are measured. This sign, bearing the logo of the government's IPAT tourism bureau, may be a very useful guide to those of you who are not familiar with the dimensions and driving distances of Panama.

However, by omission the sign also says some unfortunate things about the tourism policy that entertainer Rubén Blades, the director of IPAT and a member of the Torrijos cabinet, oversees. Notice that no distances are given to Colon, Portobelo, Changuinola or any other Atlantic side location. Notice also that there are no distances given to anywhere in the eastern part of the country.

IPAT habitually puts its imprimateur on privately produced promotional materials that use only white models to portray Panama, which is an overwhelmingly nonwhite country; or which advise people to avoid the largely black Atlantic side; or which tell people that all of the Darien is too dangerous to visit. These situations are tell-tale signs that, despite the tourism minister having been a United Nations anti-racism ambassador, the Panamanian tourism industry is dominated by a wealthy fringe of the nation's white minority which is largely centered in Panama City and whose members wrongly believe that all visitors share the same prejudices that they harbor.

To be fair, some of the foreign investors in tourism here are even worse. The Colombian-run Decameron, for example, started out by telling their guests that Cocle province outside of their premises is a dangerous high crime area and in one incident had the sons of the American owners of one of their residential development homes arrested simply because they were young black men in the area late at night.

Abusive situations like these are one of the reasons why opposition to the recent island and beach tourism law was so emotional. The underlying fear is that local people will be treated as third-class non-citizens who are barred from once-public places they have long enjoyed and who will be excluded from the benefits of any national tourism development.

Photo by Eric Jackson