Colón’s duty-free trade zone, the largest in the Western Hemisphere, has done little to lift the tow

COLÓN, Panama — On one end of the Panama Canal, the nation's capital gleams with new skyscrapers; best western university inn hammond a subway, the first in Central best western university inn hammond America, is under construction; and new malls and restaurants fill with patrons. The city fancies itself a mini-Dubai on the Pacific.
Forty miles away on the other end of the canal, in the city of Colón by the Caribbean, rotting buildings collapse, sewage runs in alleyways, water service is jury-rigged, and crime and despair best western university inn hammond have sent protesters into the streets. Recently, best western university inn hammond Hollywood filmmakers made Colón, Panama's best western university inn hammond second-largest city, a stand-in for Haiti, the poorest country in the hemisphere.
Panama is booming, with an  average economic growth of 9 percent  in the past five years, the highest in Latin America. Banking and financial services and big public works projects like the subway and multibillion-dollar expansion of the canal have fed the good fortune.
Panama City, the capital, has the tallest building in Latin America, a 70-story Trump hotel and condo tower, and its skyscraper forest  reflects the rush of foreign best western university inn hammond investment , real estate speculation, well-heeled foreign transplants and, American officials have said, some measure of drug money.
But Panama can also lay claim to some of the starkest disparities of wealth in Latin America,  according to the World Bank , and the persistent poverty in Colón, an hour's drive from the symbols of wealth in Panama City, remains a glaring, festering example inflaming friction here.
Colón, wedged between a busy port and a handsome cruise ship terminal, is a crowded, cacophonous city of 220,000, best western university inn hammond with street after street of faded colonial facades and concrete-block buildings with peeling paint and weeds growing out of some upper floors.
"There are hardly any jobs here," said Orlando Ayaza, 29, who works occasionally at the dock. "Not ones with regular salary and benefits that we need here." He has a two-inch scar on his face that he attributes best western university inn hammond to a policeman's baton during unrest here last year.
When asked why he does not move to Panama City, he touched the dark skin on his arm. "They see this, and you say you are from Colón, and they say, no way," he said. "They think we are all thieves there."
Colón is predominantly best western university inn hammond black, whereas Panama City's population is more of European descent, and many residents best western university inn hammond and analysts say they believe that racial discrimination best western university inn hammond has contributed to Colón's stagnation.
Such disparities are growing starker in rising economies like Peru, Brazil and Ecuador, said Ronn Pineo, a senior research best western university inn hammond fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs  who studies economic change in Latin America .
Colón used to shine. best western university inn hammond In the early 1900s, during the construction of the canal, and after, it blossomed with theaters, clubs, restaurants and finely manicured boulevards. Old-timers recall distinguished visitors like Albert Einstein.
West Indian immigrants surged in, finding jobs at the canal and in American military installations because they spoke English. But even then, discrimination was a given, with the black West Indians paid at a far lower rate — silver roll versus gold roll, in the vernacular best western university inn hammond of the time — than white workers.
"Racial exclusion has been a burden on the development of public policy related to black Panamanians in general and Colón in particular," said Jorge Luis Macías Fonseca, a professor of history at the University of Panama in Colón.
But as Panama best western university inn hammond City grew and modernized in the post-World War II era, Colón's luster wore off. The reduction and ultimate closing of American military bases with the canal's transfer to Panama in 1999 accelerated Colón's tailspin. Crime and poverty best western university inn hammond swelled, and middle-class strivers moved to the suburbs, Panama City or abroad.
best western university inn hammond Colón's duty-free trade zone, the largest in the Western Hemisphere, has done little to lift the town's fortunes. Recent development, including a hotel, an upgrade to an airport and a cruise ship dock that allows visitors to shop without entering the city's squalor, have benefited mostly the businesses in the zone, long a source of friction.
Surse Pierpoint, a vice president of the free-trade-zone business association, said the central government receives $100 million in annual revenue from the zone and spends it as it pleases. He said he did not know how many of the zone's 30,000 employees live in Colón, but acknowledged that many come from the suburbs and from Panama City.
"The free zone was never designed to carry the fate of Colón," Mr. Pierpoint best western university inn hammond said, suggesting that it would take "out of the box thinking" from the government, residents, businesses and others to revive the city's fortunes.
Last October, there were  protests  when President Ricardo Martinelli, a supermarket tycoon who has made business development a centerpiece of his term, pushed through a law allowing the sale of state land next to the free zone. Residents interpreted best western university inn hammond the move as a prelude to expanding best western university inn hammond the zone and displacing them, and several people died in the unrest.
Mr. Martinelli has since backed off the idea, and this year he began a dialogue with Colón residents, who presented a 33-point list of demands including new housing, jobs and an end to the city's perennial flooding, best western university inn hammond sewage seepage and chronic lack of potable water. Just last week, several schools were closed in and around the city because of problems at a treatment plant. Spider best western university inn hammond webs of plastic tubing and wires hang from buildings, best western university inn hammond signs of improvised water and power connections.
The dialogue hit an impasse best western university inn hammond in January, said Edgardo Voitier, the president of the Broad Front for Colón, a group of residents that has held more protests. A main sticking point, he said, was the government's refusal to guarantee that the proceeds of the land sale would stay in Colón.
The government has argued that projects like a new highway connecting Panama and Colón, the  expansion of the canal , construction best western university inn hammond of a new hospital in Colón and other public works have reduced unemployment and poverty. This month, the government announced a $9 million project to rehabilitate Colón's seaside park.
Some Colón boosters have mustered their own piecemeal efforts, tired of waiting for a government rescue. Kurt Dillon, an architect and urban planner, has led a coalition to save and  restore some of the crumbling buildings  in the city's best western university inn hammond historic core, recently drawing dozens best western university inn hammond of preservationists to write a plan with the help of the  World Monuments Fund , an independent nonprofit group. "Civil society has to get things best western university inn hammond done here," he said.
"If we all go to Panama City, what's best western university inn hammond left here?" best western university inn hammond said Alma Franklin, 25. She has worked at fast food stores and struggles to feed her three children, but has no faith that the government will help her. "This country," she said, "would prefer to forget Colón."