THE HEMISPHERE: Panama by 1950

Men who build the inter-American Highway are heroes in the villages of Mexico and Central America. Engineers are given free meals, free rides on buses, are often made guests of honor at special fiestas. Villagers, unconcerned with the highway's long-distance aspects, as a link in inter-American unity, see it in its local character, as an immediately useful road. The road ends age-old isolation, makes it possible to get bananas to market, to exchange them for huaraches and cooking pots, to trade Honduran lumber for Salvadoran sugar and corn.

Willing Workers. Villagers have...

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