Very Special Episodes: A High School Brawl in the Panama Canal Zone

In the 1960s, there were 36,000 Americans living in the Canal Zone. They had Friday night high school football games, sock hops, and Hollywood movies at the local theater. It looked like a mid-century American town had been dropped into the Panamanian jungle — because that’s exactly what it was. But many Panamanians weren’t happy with this “country-in-a-country” arrangement. What would it take to get the Americans to leave? The answer, it turns out, was a bunch of teenagers. * Listen to Very Special Episodes wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Wednesday! Check out Marixa Lasso's Erased: The Untold Story of the Panama Canal and Wendy Tribaldos' books about the history of Panama and the Canal Zone. Hosted by Dana Schwartz, Zaron Burnett, and Jason English Written by Dave Roos Senior Producer is Josh Fisher Editing and Sound Design by Chris Childs Mixing and Mastering by Baheed Frazier Additional Editing by Mary Dooe Original Music by Elise McCoy Research and Fact-Checking by Dave Roos and Austin Thompson Special thanks to our voice actors Chris Childs and Josh Fisher Show Logo by Lucy Quintanilla Executive Producer is Jason English

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