Historic preservation

Do you recognize this place, and can you guess what famous American was born here?

Photo: Rose Cromwell

Read on…

This is Coca Sola, the former Naval Base in Colon, Panama.  John McCain was born in the base hospital here, and his family lived in one of these barracks.  When the United States Navy abandoned the base in the 1970s,  the barracks were to be used as temporary housing, but, somehow have ended up as a permanent community.  Of sorts:

There is basically no infrastructure in Coco Solo. Only a few places of running water without the community of 200 families. Some people have electricity, but most do not. No trash collection. The streets are incredibly flooded. It is very isolated from Colon City, it is hard for families to commute for work or school because of the lack of buses or lack of money to take buses.

The quote is from a “facebook” post by Rose Cromwell, who was trying to raise seventy dollars to hold a Christmas party for the Coco Sola children. I hope she raised her seventy bucks since I didn’t find out about this until I read about Rose and her low-key charity project on Banama Republic. You may want to read the post, and if you have a couple of bucks, send it on.