The Virtual Record of My Opinionated Rantings

On a warm day in September, sitting in a swing outside of Roemer Hall I met Ruben, a freshman student from Panama. Wearing his Abercrombie shorts and Chuck Taylor’s, he seemed more than acclimated to the American social scene.

I figured I break the ice with a pretty standard American greeting.
“How much influence does American media have on you in Panama?”

The answer was “a lot. We are very, very influenced by American media.”

I asked him to clarify.

He told me that on cable, he “had 300 channels, and 230 of them were American. 70% of our broadcasting is from the states.”

He said that for international news, almost everyone watches CNN (and BBC, but we don’t care about those silly Brits, do we?), but for obvious reasons they watch local television for national news.

Ruben’s favorite shows are all on MTV. I learned this when he started talking about shows I’ve never seen. Then again, I spend more time on the internet than in front of the TV.

Not only did he know more about American television than I do, but also about American fashion. When I asked him about what sort of American advertisements he’d seen, he mentioned Abercrombie, Dolce and Gibbana, and American Eagle. “These brands I’m saying, I knew them from before I came here.”

I asked if he and his friends act and dress like Americans and he said that depends a lot on your social circle and social standings. “Cheap places sell American clothes, but they’re knock-offs.” He and his friends watch American television and he arrived in the states with an Americanized wardrobe.

“How about American movies. How many do you have in Panama?”
“Oh…a lot…”
“All of them?” I asked.
“All of the good ones. About 85% of the movies are American. When you go to the movie theater, most of them are American.”

In Panama they have access to newspapers like The New York Times and The Miami Herald, but when I asked if he read them often he replied no, that only the “elite people read those.”

“Does the government have any restrictions on the media?”
“No,” was his simpler reply. There are no restrictions on speech, but he said they also don’t have many problems with things like hate speech that would require governmental interference.

When I asked him about the internet, he told me that he has a Facebook account and his homepage is MSN. After a short pause to swap Facebook information, we got back to business.

Ruben was great at beating me to the punch when it came to questions. “Panama has a lot of different kinds of people…but mostly Americans. Americans and Panamanians obviously.” He went on to say, “If you have a country that is mostly Spanish people, they will be influenced by Spain…a small country might not be influenced by much…we have a lot of Americans, so we are influenced by America.”

I would try to make a better conclusion, but I don’t think I can.