Forces Driving More
burden to commerce, countries like Great Britain contained outbreaks
by drawing wide circles around infected territories and then carrying
out massive campaigns to eradicate and burn all susceptible animals
inside this outbreak zone.
With only a few months under my belt at USDA, I was asked to
be part of the review team evaluating this bilateral foot-and-mouth
disease prevention program. After meeting up in Panama City, our
team headed out on a smooth two-lane highway destined for the mud-
soaked roads and waterways deep within Darién’s jungle. A half hour
after starting, the paved blacktop surface abruptly ended and the earthen
rut-filled road began. Jutting rocks, along with mud holes, tested our
driver’s ability to goose the accelerator at just the right moment to
keep the truck moving without further damaging its already battered
suspension.
As we drove farther, the remote jungle enveloped us. Why urban-
ites stayed away from this forbidding landscape was readily apparent.
From Stephen, the program’s co-director from Panama, I learned that
Darién was where United States special forces trained before deployment
to Vietnam. In more recent years, the province had become a tool for
managing recalcitrant Panamanian government employees: as a last re-
sort, select insubordinate workers were transferred to posts deep within
the jungle. Scarcely any lasted more than a few weeks before quitting,
Stephen told me.
For several hours, the road seemed to delight in bouncing us up and
down or side to side in an unending test of endurance. With each bend
in the road, I would survey the next set of mud holes patiently waiting
their turn to have at us. As the day was ending, we arrived at a rustic
house where we would stay the night, using the last bit of light to eat
a simple dinner of rice, beans, plantains, and small pieces of chicken.
With little to do in darkness before an early departure the following
morning, we bedded down for the evening.
To catch the outgoing tide, at 3: a.m. we awoke and dressed
by flashlight, walked to the river, and boarded a small, US-military-
surplus boat. As the current pulled us through the water in darkness,
remnants of moonlight peaked through the tree canopies. Guided
mainly by memory, our local driver snaked the boat around sunken