This is Panama. We had to go to Panama City to get a copy of my wife and son's passport "authenticated". The passport office in David, where we requested and received new passports from them, "wasn't authorized". What should be very simple processes are often not so simple here. But it's slowly getting better. The hardest part of obtaining the E-cedula was getting the required documentation from Immigration (in PC, of course). I never received the document acknowledging my pensionado visa, and that was a major effort requiring multiple trips to PC. Immigration never seemed to be able to find the paperwork that I submitted several times to get the original document, so it was like deja vu each time. Then you need another letter from Immigration before you can apply for the E-cedula. I ended up hiring an attorney in Chiriqui, Marcos Kraemer (abogado@cwpanama.net) who had runners that took care of Immigration. Still took a couple of months. The process at Tribunal Electoral is pretty straightforward, and easy to do with some Spanish. Otherwise, it was worth it to me to hire an attorney due to the Immigration paperwork issues. We were in and out of TE in a few hours. Would have been quicker if the computer system hadn't gone down while we were there, and if there wasn't an extra step required because I'm married to a Panamanian.