Zona Libre de Colon: My JCK Assignment that Never Got Published

Robert James FGA, RGA, GG
President, USGI

Waking up this morning to events taking place in Venezuela, I was reminded of an assignment I got years ago while working as the Caribbean Editor of the JCK publication: Vista Joyera. My Senior Editor, George Holmes, asked me to go to the Zona Libre de Colon in Colon, Panama to check out the jewelry stores there and report on one of the largest duty-free shopping areas in the region. I made my plans and all was well until the night before the flight when I received a notice from the U.S. State Department informing me that Colon, Panama was off limits to U.S. citizens due to the dangerous situation there.

Of course, I went anyway. After all, I traveled to 28 islands a year and had been living and working in the Caribbean for many years. So, I knew my way around and knew how to  deal with local problems. But….I had never been to Panama. Yikes!

I flew into Tocumen Airport in Panama City to stay the night, then  catch a local airline flight to Colon the next morning. Arriving at the local airport I realized it was just a small runway in the middle of the barrios of Panama City, with a few small airplanes whose airworthiness was in obvious question. And yes, one of those was mine. I was told at the airport that there was one flight to Colon and one flight back each day. And to be careful not to miss the flight back because nobody stayed overnight in Colon. First sign of what was to come.

The plane was full of business men. No women. They owned stores in the Zona Libre de Colon but none dared to live there. They would commute on this plane in the morning and return each night. And, as I was told, nobody ever dared to miss the flight back at night.

Upon our arrival at the small airport there was a line of taxis waiting and everyone went directly to the taxi and to the zone. All was well. So far.

I had with me a copy of the Vista Joyera magazine with my name on the masthead, just to  show who I was and why I was there. The first thing I noticed was, throughout the zone there were no customers. None. The streets were full of locals who were just hanging out on the sidewalks but not one customer. There were big jewelry stores, Rolex and Omega stores. Huge appliance stores. Electronics. You name it, it looked like a run-down version of  5^th Avenue in New York, but no customers.

The first real issue  was that no one would talk to me. I would go into a large jewelry store and explain I was doing a story on the zone for JCK, and they would just tell me they had nothing to say and to leave. The other issue is that as I walked from store to store, a small group of men would mirror my walk along the back alley behind the stores. Not just once, every time I crossed from one to the other this small group would mirror my path in the alley. Watching me as I walked.

I saw two people get knives pulled on them just down the block where I was walking. I realized this was not the place where I should have worn my Rolex Submariner. I kept my long sleeves pulled down despite the tropical heat of Panama.

Finally, I got to one store where an old Jewish business man pulled me aside and said: “You should leave this area. No one is going to talk to you and you are not safe.”

I told him I did not understand, that I was with Jewelers Circular/Keystone and wanted to write a positive story about the  Zona Libre.

“That does not matter. You look like a CIA agent. Before the U.S. military took away General Noriega this place was full of CIA agents dressed in white shirts, khaki pants, and cowboy boots.” As he said this he pointed to my….white shirt, khaki pants, and my Nocona cowboy boots. Oh, sh$t! He went on to say: “When General Noriega was in charge we had law and order. Nobody would commit a crime out of fear. Now, since your CIA took away General Noriega we have anarchy. And you are dressed like the people who did that to us. We hate you. You must leave”.

I immediately left the store and was followed once again by the cadre of young men watching my every step. At the nearest corner I saw the one working phone booth in the zone. It was the old phone booth type and had been hit by a car, but the phone still worked. I called my wife back in Florida in what I  thought was a calm tone, but she later explained I was anything but calm.

Let’s recap so far: I travelled to a place the State Department told me to stay out of. Gone to a place ruled quite literally by anarchy. And was dressed as one of the guys the local people blamed for all of their crime and violence.

It was 11am local time, the return flight did not leave until 3pm, and I was not sure how I was going to get to the next block much less the airport. So I used my years of traveling in the islands to turn to the most powerful group in the place….the taxi drivers.

I had seen entire island’s economies come to a standstill by a strike by the local taxi union. These old guys driving the taxis were the fathers and grandfathers of the island families, so being with a local taxi driver was sort of like having your own security force. Nobody, not even the local gangsters, would screw around with a taxi driver.

I also knew the average income in Panama in 1995 was around US$200 per month. So….

I walked quickly and with purpose to the nearest group of taxis and in my broken Texican Spanglish asked if anyone ¿Hablas inglés?

One older gentleman said, “Yes, where do you want to go?”

I told him I would pay him $200.00 to just drive me around but get me to the airport by 2pm. I knew this was a month’s salary for him and it was the best $200.00 I had (or have ever) spent.

We got into his taxi and he drove me through the streets of the zone with me crouched down in the back. “Just stay down for a while” he told me.

We drove out to the outskirts of Colon, visited the Gatun Locks of the Panama Canal, and then stopped at this little roadside bar that was the driver’s favorite hangout. I knew we were OK since he was a local and apparently well respected by the way people waved at him.

The two lessons I learned early in my travels to the out of the way places in the Caribbean islands: 1. The local beer is always cheap, and 2. Everybody in the bar loves the guy buying the beer. I was known as the “Beer Guy” in Ocho Rios, Jamaica because whenever I arrived at the local hotel I stayed at I would walk down the street handing out $1 bills to all the local street people. You see, Red Stripe beer at the time was $1 a bottle so I always traveled to Jamaica with $50 in one dollar bills. When I arrived I would buy every street person I encountered a  Red Stripe beer. As a result, I could always walk the streets in safety, even the back streets of Ocho Rios, since I was the “beer guy”. Same applied to this little hole in the wall bar in the barrios of Panama. I ended up having a great time until it was time to head to the airport. Then….oh, damn….we go out and one of our tires is almost flat and we have about a 30-minute drive to the airport.

I honestly believe it was the Angels who kept that tire inflated just enough to get me to the airport. It was so close to flat that in any other situation no one would risk driving on it. But the driver and I knew if I did not get to the airport on time I would be in serious trouble. Dangerous trouble. But we made it and sure enough, the flight back contained everyone who had come over that morning.

This was not the end of the adventure, however, there was one more chapter that I would later find would get my story killed by JCK and never published.

The hotel in Panama City had a small casino. I went down to play a little blackjack that night and sat next to an older gentleman at the table. He was from Birmingham, Alabama, and worked for a steel foundry there. It seems the parts for the operations of the Panama Canal were so specialized and so old that they had to continue to be supplied by the same steel foundry that made the original parts almost 100 years ago. He was the sales rep for the foundry and traveled to Panama because his company had the only dies to make the replacement parts for the canal.

The interesting part was yet to come. He laughed when he told me all of his invoices and pay checks came from the Chinese government, not the Panamanian government. Unknown to the general public at the time, when President Carter handed over the Panama Canal to Panama, they turned right around and sold control of the canal to China. At the time, this fact was strictly kept quiet by the U.S. Government State Department who refused to admit the situation. As a result, when I  included this conversation in my story, I was told the story had been “killed” by the publisher. I would later find out why.

I would also find out that, at the time, the Zona Libre de Colon was a major money laundering operation by the Colombian cartels. Which explained why the stores were so successful with no customers anywhere in sight. That was all I needed to know to let the whole thing drop. I still traveled extensively throughout the Caribbean at the time and fully realized that I could easily be fair game if I ruffled the wrong feathers when it came to this kind of thing.

Denouement

There is one more story that happened on the way to the airport. I was talking to my taxi driver and, unbeknownst to me, he drives up a hill and stops in front of….you guessed it, General Noriega’s villa. The dictator himself is in a jail in Miami, but my taxi driver pulls up to the gate and says: “Go…take a picture”. So I figure, what the hell. How many people can say they visited General Noriega’s home in Panama. So, I get out and walk to the gate.

From out of nowhere I am faced with Panamanian Defense Forces, and there I am still dressed like a CIA agent. Damn. One of the soldiers says: “No se permiten fotos. ¡Váyanse ahora!”. I knew enough to know what that meant.

I jumped back in the taxi saying to him, half pissed-off and half laughing “pinche pendejo”. The taxi driver was laughing his head off. “You didn’t take a picture!” he said. I was laughing with him and we had a great time back to the airport and finally boarded the American Airline flight home.

The Real Lesson

For all those protesting the U.S. Constitution and burning the U.S. Flag, I have to smile a sad smile at their naive stupidity. These people have never found themselves in a place where true anarchy exists. They have not felt the realization of no longer being under the protection and freedom provided by our Constitution and the powerful military that protects that freedom. Defend the police? You have no idea what that looks like. I do and it’s scary as hell, I assure you.

There are places in this world that would make these protesters and anarchists pee in their pants. Dangerous places where monsters are lurking and protections we take for granted do not exist.

This was one of many experiences I had while working and living in the Caribbean islands. It was the best of times, it was worst of times. To borrow the words of Charles Dickens.

I look forward to sharing more with you.