Word: panama
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Thus, in the seventh week of the cruel stalemate over the hostages, tensions mounted again-in Iran, the U.S. and also in Panama, where the deposed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi took up residence on the Pacific resort island of Contadora. In Panama City, several hundred leftists marched through the streets, spray-painting FUERA EL SHAH (Shah get out) on trees and walls and hurling stones at the U.S. embassy. A squad of 30 helmeted officers mounted on motorcycles charged a ragtag band of 100 marchers, led by part-time Radio Commentator Miguel Bernal. The police and National Guard beat...
...biggest was a 60-ft. by 90-ft. flag that hung on the George Washington Bridge between New York and New Jersey. Americans also mailed the hostages hundreds of thousands of Christmas cards, including one that was 10 ft. by 64 ft. and signed by 22,000 people in Panama City...
Home now for the deposed Shah is Contadora, an island a little more than a mile square lying 20 miles off Panama in the Pacific Ocean. Part of a necklace of 226 other islands called Las Perlas (The Pearls), Contadora earned its name -Spanish for counter-during the 16th century when it was used by the Spaniards as a place to count their catch from the surrounding pearl-rich waters. In the 1920s, a mysterious disease killed off the oyster beds, and for decades Contadora remained just another of the obscure-if beautiful-islands that speckle the Gulf of Panama...
Today Contadora is Panama's star resort, with a government-owned casino and 210-room hotel (average room price: $70 a day). About 80 weekend homes owned mostly by wealthy Panamanians dot the beaches and hills. Palm, papaya and banana trees shade the island, and peacocks and deer roam freely. Temperatures climb to a torrid 95° during the day, but drop to a breezy 70° in the evening. The resort is just now entering its busy season, with the hotel booked solid through April. And, understandably, the tourists worry about the island's most famous guest...
...Shah's own security staff of eight has already been beefed up by at least 50 members of Panama's guardia. So far, the Shah has ventured out rarely, but when he goes out for the simplest of reasons, so goes the entourage: when he walked his Great Dane on the island's main beach last week, ten security men walked with hun and a red sedan filled with more guards drove behind. It is a measure of the Shah's exile that in those circumstances any place can feel like home...