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There are many Democrats on the Pacific side—some Zonians estimate 70% —and mostly they support Jimmy Carter. Joyce Ousborn, for instance, says of Reagan: "We don't need another hothead. Carter looks good to me." In the more militant and isolated communities of the Atlantic side, the Americans seem almost exclusively pro-Reagan. At a meeting of the Margarita Civic Council on the Atlantic side, an informal poll found one was pro-Carter, one pro-Ford and 20 for Reagan. "Reagan has the right perspective on the canal," they say.
In the small community of Los Rios on the Pacific side, Jim Fulton, 40, a Canal Zone policeman and his wife, Pat, live with their three small daughters. Many of their neighbors have boats and trailers in their backyards. In the evenings, husbands and wives, barefoot and in shorts, barbecue on their small front lawns. Jim sits at his kitchen table with a friend, one of the 39 Panamanians on the 262-member police force. Fulton, Alabama-born, was raised in the zone; his father worked on the canal. "I'm grateful for what Reagan is doing," says Fulton, "no matter what his motives. But I like Jimmy Carter. I'd like Jimmy to get things cleaned up in Washington and get rid of that goddamned Secretary of State."
In the book-lined sitting room, Pat Fulton is busy on her Ph.D. thesis for Alabama's Auburn University on the Argentine Writer Jorge Luis Borges. She came to the zone ten years ago. "My in-laws gave me the spiel about beautiful place to live, beautiful place to raise kids; it was paradise. For the first 2½ years I thought the top of my head was going to blow off: the boxed-in feeling, the apathy, the cultural wasteland." Now she finds the atmosphere less insulated and isolated. She became head of the Pacific Civil Council and has even traveled to Washington to plead the Zonian case before a House subcommittee.
"When we have had scares about a new treaty before," says Pat Fulton, "there would always be two sides down here. One would say, 'We are going anyway now.' And the other would say, 'No, your kids will graduate. Don't worry. We have had these scares for a long time.' " So they have, but this time there is a different edge to the anxiety.