These two brand new cruise passenger terminals represent an investment of $100 million dollars; and open more opportunities to offer dock services in Panama. It is estimated that during the cruise season 2007-2008, at least 192 cruise ships arrived at dockage in Panama with passengers, who will have graciously left at least 40 million dollars in their wake.

All these investments have resulted in the recognition of Panama as “Best Adventure Destination”. Panama is a wonderful place to visit. So there may be a new group of adventurers, who are cruise passengers landing in Colon or Panama City, doing cross country visits through the Panamanian highlands and beaches; then either join their ship on the other side of her canal transit, or fly home after extending their adventures overland.

Cruise ships dock at Colón 2000, next to Cristobal Port, the northern entrance to the Panama Canal. Colón is the second largest city in Panama, which was made a free trade zone in 1953. The Colon Free Trade Zone is now a huge merchandise mart for primarily wholesale business. While in Colon at the Cristobal Cruise Terminal (Pier 6), there are piers for two ships of any size. Colon 2000’s glass-and-marble terminal building has a large lounge, an Internet cafe, a huge duty-free shopping mall (part of the Colon Free Zone), restaurants, and craft shops. The entire complex is surrounded by landscaped parkland, and strong security systems.

Princess, Holland America, and Royal Caribbean were some of the first lines to include Colon 2000 as a port of call on some Panama Canal itineraries. It doesn’t hurt that they’re getting incentives by the Panamanian government: Panama has hedged its bets by establishing a 5-year program that pays cruise ships $2.50 to $12 per passenger for calls at any Panamanian port. The incentives grow as the passenger count rises, and additional incentives are offered to lines that register their ships in Panama.

Even though the Radisson is located only 150 meters of the main entrance of the Free Zone, you will want a dependable driver/guide to take you into the Zone. Visitors must show their passports to enter the walled compound, and the rules for purchase vary for many of the worldwide representatives of manufacturers and distributors. Unless you are multi-lingual, a bilingual driver can guide you much more easily through your journey.
Although it is interesting to see the 94 acre (38 hectare) shopping area, it’s mainly for wholesale shoppers.

Many stores do sell merchandise at retail prices, but they will often ask for a minimum purchase or insist on selling in quantity, perhaps a half-dozen items. Some stores will allow visitors to take small purchases with them, but most items must be delivered to the airport or cruise ship, for you to pick up, upon your departure. Be sure to ask the store’s policy and the Free Zone’s rules before buying anything, to avoid a possible problem when leaving the zone. Ah, there’s another good reason for finding a guide with your best interests at heart, some of the drivers have become familiar with the policies of the various companies and can help you with planning where to go.
The most important ingredient to enjoying your visit to the Free Trade Zone, is time. To keep from causing yourself frustration, plan to spend a day and if your driver doesn’t have a map for you, ask for one at the entrance gate.

Remember Panama is only about nine degrees from the equator, and the temperature will be around 90 degrees (30 degrees centigrade) and it will most likely rain before your shopping expedition is completed. There are outside food vendors with a narrow selection of food choices, but there will be no food courts. So if you will expect more, bring it with you. Your choice of light weight clothing, sun screen and comfortable shoes will make a difference, in how much you enjoy your foot travel around this 94 acre (38 hectare) outdoor pedestrian mall.

And remember, tourists can shop wholesale or retail, while complying with the Free Zone rules: Your purchases may be shipped to you by freight, if you bought them at wholesale, with the appropriate customs paperwork. If you bought those products retail, they will be sent to the cruise ship or airport by which you are leaving Panama.

And you must plan to arrive in plenty of time – for your pick-up at the airport or ship package desk – to allow the paperwork to be completed on your purchases. So don’t expect to carry most of your purchases with you when you leave the Free Zone, and do expect to carry them along with you from the ship or airport, on your route home.

Panama hopes to surpass the 1.3 million tourists who chose to visit the country
in 2007 and to reach the number of 1.4 million visitors in 2008. This information came from the Panamanian Institute of Turismo (IPAT). The assistant director of the IPAT, Carl-Fredrik Nordström, claims that “the increase is the direct result of the promotions in North America, Canada, Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe”. The IPAT spent $1.9 million in 2007, on an advertising campaign with the catchphrase “It Remains in You”.

Meanwhile, a recent fire in Colon Free Trade Zone cost more than $20 million in damages and lasted for seven hours because the fire department didn’t have enough water pressure to control it. Warehouse owners have criticized the fire department for having no large fire management strategy and for not arriving fast enough to even have a chance to control the fire.

The canal is probably the most well known feature of Panama. In 1904, the US began constructing the Panama Canal. It took 10yrs and 380 million dollars to build the canal. It is considered to be the 6th Wonder of the World. It is a 50 mile-long transit route joining the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the narrow Isthmus of Panama. A ship coming from the Caribbean must enter the Gatun Locks, a series of stair-like concrete chambers. Electric locomotives called mules (because there once were mules doing this work), located on either side of the locks, guide the ship during this portion of the canal transit. Most people experience the diverse and beautiful isthmus from the deck of a ship or their balconies. Yet, travelers who venture on land will discover a country rich in wildlife and culture.
Some cruise ships that focus on the Caribbean, simply dock at the Colón 2000 port on the Atlantic side, with passengers who visited the Canal locks, took a day tour on the Panama Railway, visiting Portobelo or an Emberá Indian village, and carrying on to their next port of call — without ever entering the Panama Canal.

If fear of crime persists in keeping tourists from visiting in the city of Colon, then most of the cruise passengers will continue to be routed to the Free Trade Zone and never leave the secured area.

Strategies of hope have been begun by the good hearted, but they haven’t had the financial backing to publicize their plans to the people who need to hear it. Nor do Colon’s social activists have the marketing skills to excite the city residents about the remarkable changes in their lives that can start, by stepping through the schoolroom doors.

The government plan appears to be that economic development and better security will have to go hand-in-hand. However security is not equivalent with safety. Well planned free education with its exciting rewards can be offered to prepare locals for their new opportunities and new self images. And then it will be ‘the people of Colon’ will stop their violent neighbors from threatening the security of their community, and the sun will rise on a new future for Colon.

Otherwise Colon may end up being like the city’s gated communities are now, bristling with weapons; and still not truly safe. The citizens of Colon must be re-enfranchised, and education is an inexpensive price to pay. Hopefully soon Colon will be part of a free zone of dreams coming true (zona libra el sueno hecho realidad) for all people of all income levels; and the only things that die will be fear and anger.

The Panama International Merchandise Mart (PIMM) is currently under development near Panama’s Colon Free Zone and is Latin America’s first wholesale merchandise mart. Now you can book a showroom, office, a condo or a hotel room. PIMM will be the largest commercial structure in Latin America with 21,572,782 square feet (2 million square meters) of construction, designed in the shape of a butterfly.

Total investment in PIMM will top 1 billion USD over a 3-year period. There are plans to create more that 31,195 jobs by the end of 2009, within the Mart. You’d think that with all those jobs; that the people who need jobs the most would get them. But it isn’t true. They don’t have transportation to work, they don’t have the clothes to work in, and they don’t have second language skills or good work habits to offer to a potential employer. Who will help?

Today Colón Free Trade Zone, the ‘Zona Libra’ is the largest free trade zone in all of the Americas, with 30,000 workers and 2,500 businesses. It is a place where billions of dollars in goods are unloaded, stored and either sold or reshipped free of tariffs, within a 1.8 sq. mi. (468 hectare) compound. But outside of the compound there are people in despair.

Bathing at a hydrant

Colon’s economy has boomed and busted throughout Panama’s history. Each bust led to unemployment that a generation of Colon’s residents did not recover from. There is some work. A couple of the old American bases have become productive, like Manzanillo, which is now a big container port. The Colón Free Zone has developed so that it managed $16 billion in trade last year. But other old bases are derelict. Coco Solo, once a submarine base is overrun with squatters; defined here as families who would like work and a home; but haven’t found their place in this new world…of big business in Panama.

The Manzanillo Port in Colon – facility

is about to get a $210 million dollar upgrade

Surely the squatters too are part of the Panama government’s plans. The Free Trade Zone is an island of materialism in a sea of unemployment; while poverty and crime keep Colon residents longing to be given life jackets of hope. The education they need to compete for employment is not expensive, by comparison to what their lack of options is costing the people, the city and their country. Tourists are spending hundreds of millions in other areas of Panama, but Colon is considered too dangerous to visit, by many.

Panama’s government hopes to inject new life into the city. With grace, it will be hope that is delivered to Colon instead of just better security options. The world doesn’t need another armed city; it needs communities with solutions. And people who work together, willing to compromise to create those solutions.

Based on the traffic across the isthmus, a company from the United States began work on a Panama Railroad and when completed in 1855; it was the only transcontinental rapid transit in the western hemisphere. The city of Colon began as an island boomtown, with the railroad, growing and then emptying, as travelers came and went. Today, the Panama Railroad terminus is inside the Colon Free Trade Zone compound, and still has a busy role in transportation across Panama.

How many actually died building the railroad and the canal is unknown, they were taken by yellow fever, cholera, dysentery, and smallpox; and no records were kept, for the most part. In the end, the companies discovered that for heavy work in the tropics, no race of men could match West Indian men. Slow-moving, accustomed to heat, resistant to the fevers, these cheerful and humble people played an honorable part in the realization of mankind’s dreams on the Isthmus.

1909 Arrival of SS. Ancon with 1500 laborers

from Barbados, at the Cristobal Port in Colon

Even after hearing that many Colon residents are the descendants of migrant laborers from the English-speaking Caribbean, brought in to dig the canal. It is still surprising to realize that the actual builders of the Panama Canal included only 357 Panamanians and over 20,000 Barbadians. It is dubious though that those people were offered a ride home, after the work was done.

]]> http://colonpanamahotels.com/colon-the-boomtown-that-is-still-busted/feed/ 0 http://colonpanamahotels.com/colon-today-and-how-it-became-neo-classical-ruins/ http://colonpanamahotels.com/colon-today-and-how-it-became-neo-classical-ruins/#comments Mon, 26 May 2008 17:18:02 +0000 admin http://colonpanamahotels.com/?p=7 Today, the city of Colon is not a safe tourist destination. But the government of Panama has big plans that will change that, soon. For now, there is a good reason Colon was chosen as the site to represent war-torn Haiti for the latest ‘Bond’ film. The Caribbean port of the Panama Canal has been compared to some of the world’s most rundown cities.

The current condition of Colon makes a kind of weird sense, when you understand some of the reasons the people of Colon have never developed a sense of community. Primarily, because of a century and a half long parade of huge numbers of people from all over the world, who lived, worked and died in Colon; while planning on going somewhere else. Leaving in Colon a composite society made up of people from all over the world, who had very little in common.

Today Colon suffers from a long term combination of crime, poverty and unemployment. Of those 200,000 residents who remain, only one in three have a proper job. But it wasn’t always that way. Front Street in Colon is about six blocks of once elegant French Colonial style buildings that are disintegrating, primarily since many of them were built in the late 1800’s. At that time, enterprising businessmen brought work to Colon, and the laborers to do it, constructing buildings on the then Island of Manzanillo with lovely turn of the century buildings designed for use as hotels, restaurants and other businesses.

Now, amid the neo-classical ruins, older residents fend off afternoon boredom with booze and playing dominoes, while the younger residents entertain themselves with gang violence, petty theft and high divorce rates. Yet the ebb of fortunes in the life of this city are shifting, enterprise has found Colon, again. How can the residents of Colon be encouraged to believe in the flow of fortune and to have enough hope to become partners in enterprise, when enterprise has abandoned them repeatedly in the past?