Becoming more Panamanian

I haven't posted on here in a while. This an excerpt I ran across while reviewing transcriptions in preparation for a conference next week. This person,  a high ranking ACP official who grew up in Silver/Rainbow City in the Canal Zone on the Atlantic coast, makes a distinction between being of West Indian parents and becoming Panamanian. For him, becoming Panamanian meant building a future in the country of Panama, not looking to go to  the US or return to the Canal Zone life...

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me: When you moved to this side [he moved from the Atlantic Coast to Albrook, former Canal Zone on the Pacific Coast] and you were thinking about where to live, did the fact that you were living in Clayton mean anything special?

him: No. It wasn't, I was not looking towards being in the canal zone necessarily. Even though I was coming from living in Gatun. I had been living in Sabanitas and I had already, I think, over the period of time that I lived in Cativa and I lived in Sabanitas, I had given up on that Canal Zone link. I , in fact, was becoming more and more Panamanian I think in my thoughts, in my way of being.

me: What do you mean by that?

him: Not feeling...so...I was losing that vision, that everyone else would have had that the hopes (me: in the US?) was in the US. So I started seeing potential. And I started looking for us to develop options over here. And hoping for the government to really make things works. So I was not looking for, I want to be back in the Canal Zone. There was nothing like that in my mind. What was really looking for was an escape from the traffic. So when the options came up for to buy into those buildings, I just moved at that. Because it meant being able to get a place that was going to be outside of the traffic channels...