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PANAMA
Mother
and Man
By
Jheri St. James 
This
scene is likely reminiscent of the area where Estrella Pittman
and her mission team in Panama collected their soil from the
Embara Village. She says, “I was on a mission trip with
YWAM (Youth With a Mission) and we took a two-hour boat trip
up a river . . . We were staying two nights in a very rural
Embera village. These people lived in small huts, and when
it rained the water would stream through the village beneath
the huts, which were on stilts. The village was right on the
edge of the river so that tourists could reach it easily. This
was their main source of income. Every time just a few tourists
would come, every person who lived in the village was required
to put on the costume that their people had worn 200 years,
to give the ‘real experience’ to the tourists of
life in that village. People who would not dress had to stay
hidden in their huts. I got the soil from just off the river
by this village. We spent almost an entire day just playing
with the kids in the river, swimming back and forth across
the heavy current. Our team even cut a vine from this huge
tree on the other side of the river and we swung from it and
jumped into the middle of the river. We were in the middle
of the jungle. It was hot but the river was cool and refreshing.
“Behind
us there were small mountains. These curved with the river
until they were slightly submerged by the dam that had been
built for the lock needed for the Panama Canal. There were
lots of birds, which would start chirping around five in the
morning when the women would get up and start cooking. The
village also had a monkey, dogs and chickens. One of the men
after coming back from work brought a tiny sloth with him and
we watched it slowly climb up a tree. We got to know the kids
and men and women there really well. And we got to share God’s
wonderful love with them. It’s a very tribal village.” Many
parts of Panama look like the Garden of Eden.
But
http://www.panamatours.com/Pancanal/Canal_facts.htm does not
list anything about verdant Panamanian rainforests. It notes
that:
- The
cargo ship Ancon was the first vessel to transit the Canal
on August 15, 1949.
- A
boat traveling from New York to San Francisco saves 7,872
miles by using the Panama Canal instead of going around Cape
Horn.
- The
highest toll paid for a transit through the Panama Canal
until 1995 was paid by the Crown Princess on May 2, 1993:
US$141,349.97.
- The
lowest toll paid was US$0.36 paid by Richard Halliburton
who crossed the Canal swimming in 1928.
- The
San Juan Prospector was the longest ship to transit the Canal;
it was 751 ft. (229 m.) in length with a 107 ft. (32.6 m.)
beam.
- The
Hydrofoil Pegasus of the United States Navy did the fastest
transit of the Canal by completing it in 2 hours and 41 minutes.
- Each
door of the locks weighs 750 tons.
Panama is justifiably world famous for being
the site of the Panama Canal, a crucial navigational and geographical
construction
that was a dream ever since Vasco Nunez de Balboa discovered
the Pacific Ocean in 1513. And he was not the first. Even since
8,000 B.C. the Isthmus of Panama was utilized as a transit route
when man wanted to migrate up and down the American continent,
because this narrow strip of land forms the connecting link between
Central and South America and also separates the Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans. The canal is the most important feature of Panama,
and it has played a major role in the creation of the country
and in its subsequent development—not the trees and forests.
In 1534, the King of Spain, Charles V, ordered
the first studies for the construction of a canal through a
section of the Isthmus.
Although this idea never materialized, the Spaniards built roads
paved with stone that were used to transport, by mules, tons
of gold and silver coming from Peru and bound for Spain. Traces
of these roads still remain today and can be visited. In 1880,
French companies directed by Ferdinand de Lesseps, the builder
of the Suez Canal in Egypt (1869), began construction of the
Panama Canal. But after seven years of fighting diseases and
the indomitable problems of the jungle terrain, de Lesseps was
forced to abandon the project; a wrestling match—the builders
of the Panama Canal versus Mother Nature—Man surrendering
to Her dominion, for now. (Mother Earth 1; Man 0)
In
1903, the province of Panama declared its independence from
Colombia and immediately signed the Hay-Bunau Varilla Treaty,
which authorized the United States to start construction of
the Canal in 1904, which was completed on August 15, 1914,
while World War I was raging in Europe. The Canal was an important
part of military preparedness, enabling ships to easily traverse
from Atlantic to Pacific. (Mother Earth 1; Man 1.)
Originally
the U.S. held sovereignty over the strip of land on either
side of the structure, known as the Panama Canal Zone. In 1977,
an agreement was signed for the complete transfer of the Canal
from the U.S. to Panama by the end of 1999. The entire Panama
Canal, the area supporting the Canal, and remaining U.S. military
bases were turned over to Panama by or on 31 December 1999.
Consisting
of artificially created lakes, channels, and a series of locks,
or water-filled chambers, that raise and lower ships through
the mountainous terrain of central Panama, the Panama Canal
posed major engineering challenges, such as damming a major
river and digging a channel through a mountain ridge. It was
the largest and most complex project of this kind ever undertaken
at that time, employing tens of thousands of workers and costing
$350 million. The canal is made up of dredged approaches and
three sets of sets of locks at each end—Gatún
Lake, one of the largest artificially created bodies of water
in the world; and the excavated portion of the crossing called
Gaillard Cut. At Gatún, on the Atlantic side, the locks
form continuous steps; on the Pacific side, a small lake (Miraflores)
separates the middle and upper locks.
The
entire trip through the canal takes between 8 and 10 hours
plus waiting time. The canal operates 24 hours a day year-round.
Each ship that travels through the canal pays a toll based
on its capacity.
Panama’s
dollarised economy rests primarily on a well-developed services
sector that accounts for four-fifths of the GDP. Services include
operating the Panama Canal, banking, the Colon Free Zone, insurance,
container ports, flagship registry, and tourism. Colon is the
city at the mouth of the Atlantic Ocean side of the Canal.
A slump in Colon’s Free Zone and agricultural exports,
the global slowdown, and the withdrawal of U.S. military forces
held back economic growth in 2000-2003. Growth picked up in
2004 led by export-oriented services and a construction boom
stimulated by tax incentives. The government has been backing
tax reforms, reform of the social security program, new regional
trade agreements, and development of tourism. Unemployment
remains high.
And
what of Mother Nature in all this talk of the activities and
creations of Man? When creating a problem of “jungle
terrain” or cataclysm, Her power forces Man to acknowledge
her, otherwise—not so much. Mother Nature’s cycles
are inexorable; Gaia rules. She creates the seasons and climates;
holds and grows the agricultural products on her surface, i.e.,
Panama’s exports of bananas, shrimp, sugar, coffee and
clothing. Her wonders in Panama include highlands in the west
and east of Panama, wooded hills in the center, and lowland
shelves along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The climate
is tropical, with little variation from season to season. Rainfall
is very heavy on the Atlantic side, less so on the Pacific
coast.
*
* *
At
the Santa Rosa sugar refinery in Aguadulce three shifts of
factory workers, comprising a fleet of 4,000 people, usher
cane juice through machinery, following a particular recipe
of boiling, condensing and crystallizing. The entire process,
from cane to sealed bag, takes only 24 hours. The around-the-clock
operation yields 1.5 million pounds of sugar a day, every day
throughout Aguadulce’s dry season, which lasts a little
over three months.
Out
of respect for Mother Earth, and unlike many other agricultural
industries, the Santa Rosa refinery boasts sustainable agricultural
practices—the refinery reuses the same hectares of land
to grow cane. The stalky leftovers from the crushing process
are burned by the company and used to heat its own steam boilers.
Used water is cleaned and recycled. Another byproduct of sugar
refining, molasses, is a desirable commodity, both used by
farmers to make feed for livestock, as well as by liquor manufacturers
to produce Panama’s rum. Raw sugar is exported to the
U.S. where refining sugar is one of a shrinking number of industries
where the U.S. is active in protecting home-turf jobs instead
of outsourcing them. Interesting that even the production of
sugar, to some a questionable product, can be done thoughtfully
of the earth.
*
* *
Producing
raw sugar is not the only important form of commerce in Panama.
No one is sure exactly when it happened, but once upon a time
someone saw the Mother’s sugar white sands and the emerald
green waters of Panama City Beach and dubbed the area the home
of the “world’s most beautiful beaches.” Development
began on Panama City Beach in the roaring twenties. The beach
was officially opened to the public in 1936. Shortly after
the beach opened, the original Hathaway Bridge was constructed
to connect Panama City Beach to the capital of Panama City.
As Panama City Beach’s popularity began to grow, amusement
parks, mini golf courses, restaurants and souvenir shops grew
up to support the tourist trade. It wasn’t long before
the area around Panama City Beach became known as the “Miracle
Strip.” The 1970’s brought bigger and better attractions,
such as water parks, and a greyhound-racing track. Panama City
Beach features 27 miles of white sand beaches, meeting crystal
green waters and is consistently rated among the top ten beach
vacation destinations in the U.S.
How
did the Panama City Beach sand get so white? Centuries ago
quartz crystals from the Appalachian Mountains washed down
into the northern Gulf of Mexico. The surf ground and polished
the crystals and deposited them on the shore. The sub-tropical
sunshine bleached the crystals to the current sugar-white color.
This sounds like more work of our great Mother Earth.
*
* *
But
all is not shipping through the Canal, raw sugar production
and white sugar-sand vacationing in Panama. Once a mountaintop
where howler monkeys roamed, the lush island of Barro Colorado
in the middle of the Panama Canal is now populated by scientists
at work for the Smithsonian Institution's Tropical Research
Institute (STRI). The tropical forest on the island is one
of the most intensively studied preserves on the planet. The
island's 3,700 acres (1,500 hectares) of tropical rainforest
are a biological reserve that also includes five surrounding
peninsulas on the Panama mainland.
Scientists
at Barro Colorado study many aspects of the tropics—from
animal mimicry and camouflage; to the exchange of gases between
forest canopy and the atmosphere; to threatened coral reef
species; to the genetic diversity of species that once lived
in both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, but are now separated
by the Isthmus of Panama. “The air which we breathe is
born of the breath of our Earthly Mother. Her breath is azure
in the heights of the heavens; soughs in the tops of mountains;
whispers in the leaves of the forest; billows over the cornfields;
slumbers in the deep valleys; burns hot in the desert.” j
Barro
Colorado and other nearby islands were created during canal
construction in the early 1900s when engineers dammed Panama's
Chagras River to make Gatun Lake. The rising waters isolated
a 476-foot (145-meter) peak never cultivated by humans. Since
1923, Barro Colorado has been dedicated exclusively to scientific
research. The institute stewards a unique resource in this
untouched rainforest, currently providing 40 scientists with
a living laboratory in which to test their theories, a worthy
paean to Mother Nature.
Some
of the most complex research at STRI delves into predicting
the future of other tropical areas. STRI scientists model the
future of the Amazon by forecasting the impact of development
and deforestation. "The goal of our research is to project
the condition of Amazonian forests 20 to 25 years into the
future," said William F. Laurance, a biologist at STRI
who uses a type of geographic mapping computer software known
as GIS to analyze complex environmental, demographic, and other
related data. "The basic idea of our models is to use
the past to predict the future," he said.
In
2001, the institute released research based on two GIS models
which incorporated 61 layers of environmental data—everything
from forest cover to infrastructure projects like railroads,
gas, and power lines. The report underscored the potentially
devastating impacts on tropical forests of development projects
planned by the Brazilian government at the time. "Our
results were very disturbing," said Laurance. "Both
the so-called 'optimistic' and 'non-optimistic' models suggested
striking increases in forest loss, degradation, and fragmentation
over the next two decades." The research sparked a major
international controversy over the Brazilian government's plans,
and appears to have stalled one program in particular: Avanca
Brasil, an ambitious plan for accelerated infrastructure development.
The plan received particular scrutiny at the time by the news
media and Brazil's congress and debate on its likely impact
on the Amazon continues today.
“For
your Mother bore you, keeps life within you. She has given
you her body, and none but she heals you. Happy is he who loves
his Mother and lies quietly in her bosom. For your Mother loves
you, even when you turn away from her. And how much more shall
she love you, if you turn to her again? I tell you truly, very
great is her love, greater than the greatest of mountains,
deeper than the deepest seas. And those who love their mother,
she never deserts them. As the hen protects her chickens, as
the lioness her cubs, as the mother her newborn babe, so does
the Earthly Mother protect the son of Man from all danger and
from all evils.” j
*
* *
Are
mankind and Mother Nature at cross-purposes? The Panama Canal,
while altering Mother Nature’s pristine landscape, has
become an indisputable aid in efficient travel both for recreational
and defensive purposes. Even sugar, a product controversial
topic in health studies, can be produced in a reverent, ecological
way. The fine human beings at Barro Colorado Island and their
scientific work are wonderful testimony to awareness of Gaia’s
importance. Created by the Panama Canal, these scientific research
platforms serve to better steward our Great Mother Earth. The
pendulum will continue to swing, with first Mother Nature the
stronger, as in all the recent cataclysmic events around the
globe at the time of this writing (October 2005—Indonesia’s
tsunami, Pakistan’s earthquake, New Orleans’ Katrina),
and sometimes Man flexing his shocking and awesome powers.
But always beneath and below it all: Her fiery core, Common
Ground, the place where all oppositions rest in peace. Thank
you, Estrella. Hail, Gaia!
“I
tell you in very truth, Man is the Son of the Earthly Mother,
and from her did the Son of Man receive his whole body, even
as the body of the newborn babe is born of the womb of his
mother. I tell you truly, you are one with the Earthly Mother;
she is in you, and you in her. Of her were you born, in her
do you live, and to her shall you return again. Keep, therefore,
her laws, for none can live long, neither be happy, but he
who honors his Earthly Mother and does her laws. For your breath
is her breath; your blood her blood; your bone her bone; your
flesh her flesh; your bowels her bowels; your eyes and your
ears are her eyes and her ears.” j
j
Szekely, Edmond Bordeaux. The Essene Gospel of Peace. International
Biogenic Society, U.S.A. 1981.
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