Author: Liz Larroquette

When we went into strict quarantine for the second time, it was spirit-crushing. We had just started to taste a little freedom when we were quickly put back into not being able to go out, except for three days a week for a couple of hours each day. Women could go out on Monday, Wednesday and […]

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to rearrange lives and industries. We will never go back to “normal” and we aren’t sure what the “new normal” will eventually be. There are signs of where things are going, and it is wise to look at the trends and attempt to make some sense of them. Two of the trends […]

COVID-19 has upended my life, but not all of it has been bad. The fact that as a country last week, Panama marked over 1,000 deaths and more than 53,000 confirmed cases is devastating, but watching the positive changes we have been forced to make, has produced some definite bright spots.   It used to be […]

It’s no secret Panama continues to struggle with COVID-19 and on July 7, 2020, announced a total of 39,334 positive cases and 770 deaths. The good news is the aggressiveness of the government’s measures to find, track, isolate and contain the virus is working. International travel has been shut down until at least until July 22. […]

Rooting out corruption and closing the income gap for Panamanians was promised when Laurentino “Nito” Cortizo was sworn in as the newly elected president of Panama on July 1, 2019. Fast forward a year and neither of those initiatives is the main focus of the man who promised: “complete transparency” along with job opportunities for thousands, […]

Yesterday was officially the first time in almost three months that we could move freely in Panama. “Opening up” started by being able to run, walk and even ride a bicycle outside, but yesterday was almost total freedom. It was both glorious and frightening. Everyone wanted to resume some kind of normality but we’ve gotten so […]

Our lives will forever be changed by COVID-19. I didn’t know I could slow down, and I certainly didn’t know I could actually cook, but I do both now with ease. I read books and I make a great curry. I’ve watched as Mother Earth has begun a cleansing. You can see the Los Angeles skyline. […]

Recently we hosted a webinar with Jose Manuel Bern of Empresas Bern, one of the most respected business leaders in Panama, speaking on a variety of topics ranging from his father’s fight with the COVID-19 virus to how Panama might look after the country returns to some kind of new normal. The webinar was very well […]

It’s hard to think about anything other than COVID-19. It’s not just the fact you can’t move about freely, or that suddenly you don’t have a job to go to, it’s that this invisible monster impacts every aspect of daily life. Almost everything is out of your immediate control. Keeping focused and planning for when we […]

I wake up each morning and quickly check the reported numbers for COVID-19 in Panama, somehow thinking maybe they won’t be too bad. The map on the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resources Center site showed 2,250 confirmed cases and 59 deaths in Panama as of today, April 8, 2020. With 149 new confirmed cases, we continue to […]