Panama

Panama is a country on the isthmus joining Central and South America, between Costa Rica and Colombia. The Caribbean Sea lies to its north and the Pacific to its south, and its area is 74,177 km² (28,640 sq mi). Panama City is the capital and Spanish the official language.

Indigenous peoples lived on the isthmus before Spain arrived. Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed from the Atlantic to the Pacific in 1513, and Pedro Arias Dávila founded Panama City in 1519, making it a crossroads of Spanish trade in the Americas. Panama left Spain in 1821 to join Gran Colombia and stayed with Colombia after that union broke up in 1831. With American backing it seceded in November 1903, and the United States finished the canal between 1904 and 1914. Under the Torrijos–Carter Treaties of 1977 the canal passed to Panama on 31 December 1999.

A president serves as head of both state and government in a democratic republic with several parties. Canal tolls remain a major source of income, especially since an expansion completed in 2016 doubled its capacity. Commerce, banking and tourism are leading sectors, and the Colón Free Trade Zone handles much of the trade. The balboa is pegged to the US dollar, which serves as everyday money. Farms export coffee, bananas, palm oil, cane sugar and shrimp, and copper mining, mahogany forests and hydropower add to the resource base.

Guna women sew molas, embroidered panels worn on the front and back of their blouses. More than 350 San Blas Islands line the sheltered Caribbean coast near Colombia. Darién National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, covers the nearly impassable jungle of the Darién Gap. Volcán Barú, the highest point, rises to 3,474 m (11,398 ft) inside a national park. Baseball is the favorite sport, played in a professional winter league.