Even today, the Canal Zone is more American than Laredo.
It's more american than NY, LA, Boston, or SF.
From my experience it’s becoming more Chinese than American every day. Yet they still rely on out technology and know how to keep everything working.
That's not saying much.
I went to army Jungle Warfare School there in 1986 and even then the "Canal Zone" was largely defunct. But the bases handed over to the Panamanians looked like New Orleans after Katrina they'd been looted and stripped of everything including sewage pipes in the walls of buildings. Even the railroad we built to run alongside the canal was given to them and in just a matter of months the officials in charge had allowed it to decay to the point that the US Military declared it unsafe to ride and banned all Americans from boarding the durn thing. Even the Lock System itself, an engineering marvel of the world began to go bad with no maintenance or care. This is what happens when the FIRST WORLD treats the THIRD WORLD as an equal. I know that is so un-PC and more than a little arrogant but that's life.