I'm John Batson, New World Report with Professor Abenelis of the US Army War

College, Central America.

Abenel I've been looking at old photographs of the Panama Canal building, 1906 to 1913.

What a fascination.

What they did with the machinery of the times, and you see these men out there recruited

from Columbia, I propose because Panama wasn't a separate state then.

And from the United States, no helmets, no gear whatsoever, just a shovel in their hands,

standing besides these enormous machines digging out the channel as the Panama Canal was

created.

Linking the two oceans and making everyone prosperous, also eliminating the treacherous

travel across the isthmus of Panama, the isthmus of Nicaragua, that often led to

deaths of fever, etc.

That was true for the first two centuries of the United States until the Panama Canal.

I mention all this because Central America is critical to the development and the riches

of the US, and it's deeply troubled by Ortega, certainly, there are other troubles, but

Ortega of Nicaragua, who is darkness visible as I understand it.

However, all of a sudden Gustavo Petro, protest, Ortega says that expelling critics is wrong

and says that you're not with us.

This struck me as an amazing development.

Petro has understood to be popular left guerrilla background, as you say, blaming Ortega for

his bad policies.

Does it surprise you?

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