Thank-you my intention is to give people who read the Board the best overview that I can provide.
I have a Panamanian friend and he told me look - its like this - this country was founded by pirates so we are pirates - I like that - so I am always careful when I deal with Pirates....
Just to advise - Panama is a country that is a mixed bag of people - blacks, East Indians, Indians, Chinese, mixed people and whites - very large jewish population here too - they control the trade - particularly the Free Zone.
All the high enders (people with money) here know each other and its amazing to watch these guys do business - which is always over the phone. The corruption is at all levels and you don't get anything done without favours - most countries of the World operate this way.
However in politics these guys are ruthless to each other - very little loyalty and it appears that some of them are open to the highest bidder or will give you nothing unless you give them a little support...
The Indians here are on the bottom of the socio-economic rung - however they are the fastest growing segment of the population - number around 350 to 450,000 people - it depends here because Indians self identify so there are no official numbers. As a I mentioned there is a large group of Indians that are supporting mining on their own - they are pushing Martinelli to to give them a piece of Cerro Colorado - which is a juicy project with over 33 billion pounds of copper - the Government unfortunately does not want to share with the Indians so I suspect this will create problems when the Government tries again to create a new mining law...
It is important to note that most of the mineral wealth of the country is located in Indian country with the exception of our project - I think Inmet has a couple of Indigenous communities in their neck of the woods... We however are good because we have no Indian communities in our area...
Its is also good to understand that Panama has a love hate relationship with Gringos (as Americans are affectionately known here) - the Canal was a good thing - however the Americans did very little in terms of making a positive social impact - never really helped the country develop a bilingual education system or taught people to kinder to each other....
Yes there are a lot of retirees here - Panama is a great place to be - lots of golf courses, things are in-expensive and the people are friendly and there are lots of retirement communities throughout the country....
