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🇵🇾 Paraguay /Economy & Trade

Panama Opens Center Linking History and Nature After $7.7 Million Investment

From ABC Color · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

Newswire Official statement New plan
  • Panama opened a visitor center at San Lorenzo National Park and fortress after an investment of more than $7.7 million.
  • The center aims to support conservation, scientific research, tourism and environmental education while showcasing the country’s colonial history and biodiversity.
  • President José Raúl Mulino also inspected restoration work in Portobelo, where a separate $12.2 million project is 56% complete.

Panama has opened a new visitor center at the San Lorenzo National Park and fortress, bringing together the country’s colonial history, cultural heritage and natural environment after an investment of more than $7.7 million.

A country that does not value its history can hardly build a future of greatness, and that is what we are opening today: a look at what we were, what we are and what we will be.

· José Raúl MulinoThe Panamanian president described the visitor center as a link between the country’s past, present and future.

President José Raúl Mulino inaugurated the center in Colón province on the Caribbean coast. The facility is intended to strengthen conservation, scientific research, tourism and environmental education. It sits inside San Lorenzo National Park, near the Spanish colonial-era fort, and will introduce visitors to both the area’s natural heritage and the historic fortifications of the Panamanian Caribbean.

Mulino said Panama’s history and untouched nature existed together in a way that made the country unique. “A country that does not value its history can hardly build a future of greatness,” he said. He also criticized the practice of opening unfinished projects for publicity, saying that doing so should belong to the past.

Opening a project for the photo without finishing the works is disrespectful to Panamanians. That should belong to the past.

· José Raúl MulinoMulino emphasized that the newly opened center had been completed before its inauguration.

Culture Minister María Eugenia Herrera said the center would help turn cultural heritage into one of Panama’s main assets. “We are opening the doors to tourism, progress and our history,” she said.

We are opening the doors to tourism, progress and our history.

· María Eugenia HerreraThe culture minister presented the center as an investment in Panama’s heritage and tourism.

During the same Caribbean tour, Mulino reviewed restoration work in Portobelo on the Church of San Felipe, home to the altar of the revered Black Christ, as well as the Chapel of San Juan de Dios and surrounding areas. The project, designed to protect the national heritage site, has a $12.2 million budget and is 56% complete. Sixty-four people, mostly local workers, are directly involved. Mulino said he had promised the Black Christ before the election that he would restore the church if he won.

I made a promise to the Black Christ of Portobelo a week before the election, and here we are fulfilling it.

· José Raúl MulinoMulino linked the Portobelo restoration project to a promise he made before the election.
About this summary

Originally published by ABC Color in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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