On the sidewalk along Vía Argentina, one of Panama City’s busiest streets, a Colombian bodybuilder passes digital nomads from the US and Europe at laptops in a café. Beneath a statue of boxer Robert Durán, a Venezuelan professional leans out of an expensive SUV to hear a fellow Venezuelan migrant recount how she recently crossed the Colombian border through the mosquito-ridden swamps of the Darién Gap, as her child holds a bowl to collect money. A block down, a tour guide leads retired Americans scouting beach and mountain homes into an traditional eatery and introduces them to ropa vieja, chimichurri, yuca, plantains, and other Panamanian foods. Despite their differences, these foreigners were all drawn to Panama in part because in a region plagued by civil unrest, inequality, inflation, broken borders, and economic mismanagement, it is unusually safe and secure.
Panama’s currency is stable, as it uses both the US dollar and the Balboa, which is pegged to the dollar. Its political stability is partly a result of the 1977 Carter-Torrijos Treaties it signed with the US, which guarantee Panama’s permanent neutrality—and that the US can use its military to defend the Panama Canal against any threat to its neutrality. As 72% of all ships passing through the Panama Canal are headed to or from the US, the US considers maintaining security in Panama vital to its national interest. And Panama abolished its standing army in 1990, following the lead of neighboring Costa Rica, which abolished its army in 1949. The 2022 Global Peace Index ranked Panama the second-safest country in Central America after Costa Rica.
Francynat León is an English and Spanish language instructor from Venezuela who has lived in Panama City since 2014. From 1999 to 2013, she lived through the Hugo Chavez administration, which expropriated industries and destroyed Venezuela’s economy. Amid rising inflation and food shortages in the early 2000s, she began researching other countries and found Panama had both low inflation and high political stability, a rare combination in Latin America. While a “pink tide” of left-wing socialist leaders swept over much of Latin America in the 2000s, Panama has been immune, in part because of its close ties to the US. “Panama is bulletproof,” says León.
By contrast, nearby Colombia and Venezuela have long been plagued by civil unrest. Medellín and Caracas are among the world cities with the highest “extreme risk,” according to the 2022 Cities@Risk Security Index. Hence some 25% of Venezuela’s population and 5% of Colombia’s now live abroad, which helps to explain why Panama City is loaded with Colombians and Venezuelans. The number of Venezuelans in Panama further escalated last October, when the Biden administration closed the US border to Venezuelans seeking asylum. This suddenly stranded thousands of Venezuelan migrants in mid-journey in transit countries from Panama to Mexico. Prior to the change, Biden administration policies had induced a staggering 40-fold increase in US Border Patrol encounters with Venezuelans from 4,520 in FY 2020 to 50,499 in FY 2021 and 189,520 in FY 2022.
Despite its overall security, starting this past July, Panama had its first major social unrest in decades. Amid inflation due to COVID and the Russia-Ukraine War, protesters across the country blocked the Pan-American Highway, and in August the teachers’ union went on strike. But unlike some of its neighbors, Panama has no talk of civil war on the horizon, no Marxist rebel guerillas plotting in the countryside, no cartels taking over whole towns. Drug trafficking does go on here, but in isolated areas like the backstreets of San Miguelito and the distant jungle coastline of Darién province, and without the extreme violence common in the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.
Panama is also one of Latin America’s popular destinations for expat workers and retirees from the US and Western Europe. Many come seeking some combination of affordability, a tropical climate, urban life, Hispanic and indigenous culture, and nature. Some seek a sunny paradise where they can live by the beach and go fly fishing, or sip local coffee in a mountain town while looking up at cloud forests on the slopes. And some seek simply normalcy. “America is not the same country I grew up in,” said a fellow expat teacher who, like me, has lived for several years in Panama. Like many others, he has no plans to go back.
Panama has a long history of receiving migrants from outside the Americas. Since the 16th century, it has been a “crisol de razas,” a cultural melting pot where Spanish, indigenous, and black populations have mixed. Starting in the mid-19th century, large waves of Chinese, Europeans, Barbadians and other West Indians, and South Asians arrived to build the Panama Railway and later the Panama Canal. The Chinese often intermarried with other races such that today, some estimate that 20% of Panamanians have some Chinese ancestry. Many Panamanians are a genetic mix of three or more racial groups, which helps bring society together around a common multicultural identity. The US-controlled Panama Canal Zone era (1903-1979) brought American culture and hundreds of thousands of US soldiers and civilians. And steady Jewish migrations over the centuries have led to a well-established Jewish community of 20,000, which has produced three Panamanian presidents, including the current president, Laurentino Cortizo.
In Panama City, people entering a bus or a restaurant often say “buenas,” short for buenos días or buenas tardes. Not to anyone in particular, to everyone. And someone usually says buenas back. If you sit next to a stranger, they often say “buen provecho,” “enjoy your meal.” And when they get up to leave, “permiso,” excuse me. These are signs of traditional civility and fraternity, civic virtues declining in some circles of the US, in part due to polarization promoted by social media and identity politics. While Americans tend to discuss national politics incessantly and publicly, Panamanians generally do not (although they do on the internet). In fact, it is rare to hear anyone in Panama arguing in public about anything at all. The “decent drapery of life,” as Edmund Burke put it, is still hanging. And civility and traditional values are among the reasons why many Americans are moving to Latin American countries like Panama.
In Book 8 of The Republic, Plato described an oligarchic city as “not one, but two, a city of the rich and a city of the poor, dwelling together, and always plotting against one another.” Panama City only partly fits this description. Unlike many other oligarchic societies in Latin America, despite its glaring inequalities, Panama is relatively safe, low in crime, and politically stable. But to be sure, the rich have their luxury enclaves, like Costa del Este and Punta Paitilla, and the poor have their decrepit barrios, like Curundú and El Chorillo. “This wealth dichotomy exists in many cities throughout the world,” wrote Jessica Reilly, “but in Panama City it all happens within sight of [$4.2 billion in cargo] floating past their drying laundry every year.”
Like Latin America in general, Panama is a land of contrasts, with the fourth-highest inequality in Latin America, as measured by the 2022 GINI coefficient. Sleek skyscrapers of glass and steel line Panama City’s Pacific coastline; yet there are huge piles of trash on almost every block in many central areas of the city. Panama’s postal service does not deliver mail domestically door to door; yet the country is a global shipping hub at the crossroads of the Americas and hosts the Panama Canal. Some 14,000 ships pass through the canal each year, connecting Panama to ports on every inhabited continent.
Panama is far from perfect. It is rainy for eight months of the year, service can be slow and unreliable, inequality is high, and it has a major trash problem. But many of those moving to Panama are not looking for perfect, just a stable place where there are no wars or socialist takeovers, where crime and inflation are low, the currency is stable, rent and health care are affordable, the weather is warm, the internet works, the products they need are available or can be shipped from the US via forwarding services in Miami, and people have traditional values and generally get along. Panama ticks all these boxes, promising that it will remain a magnet for migrants long into the future.
