Located between Costa Rica and Colombia, Panama connects Central America and South America. It has an area of 77,381 square kilometers (29,762 square miles). Approximately 3 million people inhabit the country. The majority live in the capital, Panama City. Seventy percent of Panama's population is mestizo (of mixed Indian and European ancestry). West Indians constitute 14 percent of the population, Caucasians 10 percent, and Indians 8 percent. Spanish is the nation's official language, although many professionals and businesspeople in the capital also speak English.

Rodrigo de Bastidas (1460–1526), who sailed to Venezuela in search of gold, became the first Spaniard to reach the isthmus in 1501. By 1502 Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) arrived in the region and established an ephemeral settlement known as Antigua del Darien. In 1513 Vasco Nuñez de Balboa (c. 1475–1519) trekked through the isthmus and discovered a path joining the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This path was later named El Camino Real (the Royal Road). With...