What locals seem REALLY interested in is our growing, covert army, in a country which abolished the army after Noriega. Unfortunately since Panama’s neighbor, Colombia, can’t control its clandestine drug production and processing and its FARC rebels, they spill across the border infiltrating the Darien jungle. So the US supports, and maybe encourages, development of this army-but-not-an-army border defense operation of the national police.