MORE AMERICAN THAN AMERICA

FEW Americans abroad lead a more comfortable life, or are more self-consciously American, or engender more bitterness in their host nation than the colony of 36,000 U.S. citizens who live and work in the 553-sq.-mi. Canal Zone. Ten thousand U.S. servicemen are stationed at seven Army bases, two airfields and a naval base. Four thousand civilians work for the U.S. Government and its Panama Canal Co., tending the locks, running the railroad and providing the many services needed by a community that includes 20,000 dependents. Military personnel come and go. But the civilians are permanent fixtures. Many Zonians were born there; they regard the Zone as something sacred, a piece of the U.S. plunked down in Latin America. And they raise their children in security provided by the U.S. Government.

Salaries average $8,000 a year--which goes a long way in the Zone. Balboa and Cristobal are model company towns with look-alike houses, bargain-priced groceries, liquor and clothing from Government commissaries, bowling and Hollywood movies at the service centers. Zonians go in for such back-home activities as the V.F.W., Lions Club and Boy Scouts. They have their own schools (including a junior college), country clubs and well-kept golf courses; 1,600 boats are registered at the yacht basin, and late-model cars are the rule, not the exception.

Across the line, Panama City (pop. 273,000) and Colon (pop. 60,000) are crowded and shabby, and the people are poor. The 15,000 Panamanians who work in the Zone do considerably better, with an average annual income of $2,200. But they complain about discriminatory pay scales for equal jobs and other "exploitation," past and present. Only in 1955 did the U.S. abolish the humiliating "gold" and "silver" drinking fountains, toilets and pay lines --segregation dating back to canal-building days when Panamanians were paid in silver, Americans in gold.

Since then, in a series of agreements, the U.S. has upgraded local jobs and wages, though Zonians still draw a pay differential in all job classifications that embitters Panamanians. A Panamanian doctor earns $12,500 as head of the chest clinic at Gorgas Hospital in the Zone; his nearest American subordinate on the staff gets about $19,000. Nevertheless, the money Panamanians take home from the Zone gives the country's economy an important boost. In 1962, U.S. Zone operations poured more than $75 million into Panama, including $23 million in direct purchases and $33 million in wages.

The Zonians consider themselves the first line of defense against a Panamanian plot to seize a piece of U.S. property. They regard each U.S. concession as "appeasement," brought a lawsuit last year in a futile attempt to prevent the joint flying of flags. They have little contact with Panamanians; only about 10% of them bother to learn Spanish. A few Zonians even boast that they rarely cross the border to "the other side." But they do their jobs well and are quite satisfied with their way of life. "They have a right to be proud of building a neat little bit of America in these tropics," says a Zone official. "The difficulty is that in the course of the building they have become more American than the Americans themselves."

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