(29) As what he calls the "defe

nses" to the valley loom ever larger, it becomes fertile," yet "death to any black man"-a secret reserved for white men and to be opened exclusively by them-a little intimacy between strangers, bound by their lack of melanin

. Finally, as a still to be discovered entity, it becomes "my" valley and the lure of big Capital is hurled aside: I had ceased to care if Akron got its rubber or not. I didn't want this lovely wild valley to be overrun by thousands of degenerate Jamaica negroes like those who worked on the Panama Canal. I didn't want its harmless and attractive Indians oppressed and exterminated. It wa

s EMRTC"my" valley. (35) The Blind Spot: The Closer You Get, The Greater the Mystery How strange a thing it is. Marsh ruminates, that unknown tribes exist in the Darien Isthmus within a few miles of one of the world's great shipping routes. To him it is "one of the numerous blind spots of Latin America," comparable to the slums under the Brooklyn Bridge that exist unbeknown

to the strap-hangers who pass above in the trains. The curious thing, he states, is that the closer you get, the greater the mystery becomes. (11) How curious, we might want to add, that this blind spot is to be characterized, in the Darien, at least, adjacent to the great U.S. Canal, by whiteness, twebmaster@emrtc.nmt.eduh