From Kate Dailey at BBC, a recollection of the lifestyle of thousands U.S. citizens like John McCain who lived in the Panama Canal Zone, a stamp-sized America, yes, yet a dreamworld all its own:

“For almost 100 years, thousands of Americans lived a life of luxury in secluded tropical communities close to the Bay of Panama. Known as ‘Zonians,’ they maintained one of the world’s great engineering feats – the Panama Canal.

Established in 1903, the Panama Canal Zone constituted a home away from home for the Americans who built and maintained the Panama Canal and the workers who supported them.

The zone was an area of 533 square miles that ran the course of the canal and was controlled by the US. Families were given generous benefits, including subsidised housing, ample holiday time, well-stocked commissaries and attentive staff.

Its residents enjoyed the beautiful weather and more relaxed lifestyle of Panama, while also living in comfortable American-style housing, experiencing a top-notch American education and enjoying all the perks of US citizenship.

‘It was a strange kind of artificial place,’ says Michael Donoghue, author of Borderland on the Isthmus: Race, Culture, and the Struggle for the Canal Zone. His father travelled through the zone during World War Two, and compared it to ‘a small southern town transplanted into the middle of Central America.'”