Like urban hubs throughout the developing world, Panama City's Plaza Cinco de Mayo is a noisy, grimy, impossibly crowded place where traffic, commuters, and petty criminals fight for control of a limited supply of sweltering asphalt. You can spend half an hour trying to cross the square- more if the traffic cop takes a particular dislike to your lane of traffic. Yet only a couple of blocks north, Cinco de Mayo's urban sprawl suddenly vanishes. Decaying concrete high rises give way to rolling lawns and quiet suburban streets meandering between well-maintained homes and pastoral churches. It looks like a comfortable U.S. suburb, and until very re- cently that's exactly what it was.
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机译：像整个发展中国家的城市中心一样，巴拿马城的马可广场（Cinco de Mayo）是一个嘈杂，肮脏，不可能拥挤的地方，交通，通勤和小罪犯为控制有限的闷热沥青而战。如果交通警察特别不喜欢您的行车线，您可以花半小时尝试越过广场。然而，北部的Cinco de Mayo的城市蔓延仅几步之遥便消失了。腐朽的混凝土高楼让位于起伏的草坪和宁静的郊区街道之间，蜿蜒曲折的房屋和维护良好的房屋之间。它看起来像一个舒适的美国郊区，直到最近才是真正的样子。
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