Truly Sobadenated Clyante
In governance and international diplomacy, life is never as simple as badly punctuated (and improperly capitalized) blathering posts would have some people believe.
History and context are as important as knowing what the hell you’re talking about.
Here’s context.
Spain’s King Charles V (1500 – 1558) ordered the first survey designed to determine if the project was even possible. He was followed by Latin American Liberator Simon Bolivar and U.S. Presidents Andrew Jackson and Ulysses G. Grant.
The idea was to drastically reduce travel times between the Orient and American West Coast ports and Atlantic seaports and take advantage of the 1849 California Gold Rush.
On April 19, 1850 – eleven years before the start of the American Civil War, the United States and Great Britain negotiated the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty with three primary provisions: neither country would build a canal through Nicaragua without the consent and cooperation of the other; neither country would fortify or establish new colonies in Central America; and, when constructed, both nations would guarantee that a canal would be available on a neutral basis for all shipping.
A great idea. It came to naught and expired in 1901 – never having moved beyond the planning stage.
Then the French tried.
Under the leadership of Ferdinand de Lesseps, the “builder” of the Suez Canal in Egypt, the French began excavating in the Colombian province of Panama. During rainy seasons, the barely excavated canal rose as much as 32 feet – drowning workers. In addition to accidents, malaria, yellow fever and other tropical diseases claimed the lives of 200 laborers a month.
Groundbreaking for the French project – a sea level canal - began in 1880 and the effort became a central feature in one of the largest corruption scandals of the 19th Century. French government officials were found to have accepted bribes to hide the financial difficulties of the French Canal Company, which spent over $287 million – a staggering sum at the time – before going bankrupt. The French attempt ended after nine years - at the cost of approximately 20,000 lives lost.
The Anglo-American Hay-Pauncefote Treaty of November 1901 gave the U.S. the right to create and build a canal across the Central American isthmus.
One problem: Panama remained a province of Colombia and Colombia wasn’t anxious to give up territory (and a possible canal) to interlopers.
Enter the Panama Canal Company, (initially) a joint American-French cooperative effort to connect the Atlantic and Pacific across the Isthmus of Panama. The 1903 (United States and Colombia) Hay-Herran Treaty looked good on paper and granted the US the use of the Isthmus of Panama in exchange for financial compensation. However, despite US Senate ratification, the Colombian Senate backed out – fearing a loss of sovereignty and territorial control.
President Theodore Roosevelt had a simple solution: When a rebellion by Panamanian nationalists erupted on November 3, 1903, the US-administered railroad in Panama removed its trains from the northern terminus of Colon, stranding Colombian troops dispatched to crush the insurrection, and Roosevelt sent warships to Panama City (on the Pacific) and Colon (on the Atlantic) to discourage any further Colombian intervention. Panama declared its independence on November 3 and the United States recognized the Republic of Panama on November 6.
Twelve days later the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty was signed, granting the United States the exclusive and permanent possession of a ten-mile-wide strip from the Atlantic to the Pacific – the Panama Canal Zone - in exchange for $10 million and an annuity of $250,00 beginning nine years later, and the American promise to guarantee Panama’s independence.
Chief engineer John Stevens learned from the French mistakes and abandoned a sea-level design in favor of one requiring a series of locks and the damming of the Chagres River to create the (then) world’s largest man-made lake. According to the Panama Canal Museum, in carving their way through mountains and jungles, workers displaced more than 3,531,466,672 cubic feet of earth and rubble, enough to bury the island of Manhattan to a depth of twelve feet.
At the time, the costliest construction project in U.S. history, the Canal was completed in 1915 at a cost of $375 million (approximately $11.6 billion in 2024 dollars) – a year ahead of schedule and $23 million under budget.
Among the vacuous political applause lines of 2024-2025 are declarations designed to create the impression that the United States “built” the Canal in the first decades of the Twentieth Century.
No so!
While American engineers and technical experts supervised the construction and the United States underwrote the cost, the land – five miles on either side and approximately 58 miles from sea-to-sea - belonged to the Republic and people of Panama.
Because American laborers were unprepared and unable to tolerate the oppressive conditions of the Isthmus, the vast majority of the 40,000 laborers who struggled in 90ºF temperatures and torrential rains were imported from Jamaica, Barbados and the (then) British and French West Indies, as well as Europe (Italians) and Asia. To complete one of the “Seven Wonders of the Modern World,” the Americans also imported the Jim Crow laws of the post-Civil War/Reconstruction era.
While Roosevelt’s appointment as Chief Sanitary Officer of Army Major William C. Gorgas, who had successfully eradicated yellow fever in Havana after implementing rigorous mosquito control measures, significantly reduced the numbers of mosquito-borne infections, the amount of pay and quality of medical care laborers received depended on race and skin color.
Skilled - white - laborers were paid in “gold roll” U.S. dollars - twenty cents per hour; non-white unskilled workers received “silver roll” Colombian pesos – half the value of the white workers’ wages - for ten hours a day and six days a week.
Non-white laborers did not enjoy the individual housing, pools and pool parlors or access to commissaries for cheaper clothing and food available to “gold roll” workers. In addition, most facilities had separate entrances based on race and skin color.
The tugboat Gatun makes the first trial run through the Gatun Locks, September 26, 1913
The Panama Canal remains the deadliest construction project of the modern era – 408.12 construction worker deaths per 1,000 workers (40 percent). (It is impossible to determine how many died in building the Great Wall of China or the Pyramids of Egypt.) While the French effort cost 20,000 – 25,000 lives, official US records show 5,855 workers killed in the US construction project.
The construction was dangerous; laborers had to blast through the mountainous jungle and contend with mudslides during the rainy season. Even after they figured out how to control the mosquito population, workers faced drowning, electrocution, and prematurely igniting dynamite. More than 60 million pounds of dynamite were used in the construction and a single 1908 explosion claimed twenty-three lives.
Injuries were part of the Canal construction that remains even more hidden than the 5,855 deaths between 1904 and 1913.
Dr. Caroline Lieffer, now Associate Professor of History at The King’s University, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, writing in TheConversation.com (“The Panama Canal’s Forgotten Casualties,” April 16, 2018) noted:
“Hundreds, if not thousands, more were permanently injured.
“How did the United States government, which was responsible for the project, reconcile this tremendous achievement with the staggering cost to human lives and livelihoods?
“They handled it the same way governments still do today: They doled out a combination of triumphant rhetoric and just enough philanthropy to keep critics at bay…
“Their [laborers’] blood and bodies paid mightily for the dream of moving profitable goods and military might through a reluctant landscape.”
After fifteen-year-old (he probably lied about his age to get the job) Constantine Parkinson lost his right leg and left heel while working as a brakeman on a train carrying rocks on July 16, 1913, his mother appealed for assistance to the Canal’s chief engineer George Goethals.
Goethal’s response:
“My dear lady, Congress did not pass any law … to get compensation when [the workers] [lose limbs]. However, not to fret. Your grandson will be taken care of as soon as he [is able to work], even in a wheelchair.”
On May 25, 1913, Wilfred McDonald (probably from Jamaica or Barbados) wrote Canal Administrators:
“I have ben Serveing the ICC [Isthmian Canal Commission] and the PRR [Panama Railroad] in the caypasoity as Train man From the yea 1906 until my misfawchin wich is 1912. Sir without eny Fear i am Speaking Nothing But the Truth to you, I have no claim comeing to me. But for mercy Sake I am Beging you To have mercy on me By Granting me a Pair of legs for I have lost both of my Natrals. I has a Mother wich is a Whido, and too motherless childrens which During The Time when i was working I was the only help to the familys.
“Truley Sobadenated Clyante,”
In a time of increasing nationalism throughout Central and South America, on January 9, 1964, Panamanian riots resulted in the deaths of three to five U.S. soldiers and approximately twenty Panamanians.
On September 7, 1977, in response to growing Panamanian nationalism, President Jimmy Carter signed the Torrrijos-Carter Treaty, granting Panama free control of the Canal, provided Panama guaranteed the permanent neutrality of the Canal; the Panama Canal Authority assumed full control at noon on December 31, 1999. As part of the treaty, the US ceded the “Panama Canal Zone” – five miles wide on either side of the Canal - to Panama. (Arizona Republican Senator and former presidential candidate John McCain was born in the Canal Zone and, thus, an American citizen by birth.)
In a 2006 national referendum, Panamanians approved a $5.25 billion expansion – effectively doubling the Canal’s capacity. In 2024, the Canal generated nearly $5 billion in revenue – roughly four percent of the country’s GDP.
Desperate to appeal to their adoring hordes, some politicos can fulminate all they want about the Canal. But Panama’s interests are protected by treaty and the honor of the United States.
The Canal belongs to Panama; it was financed by the United States but build largely with the blood, sweat, broken bones and lives of racially discriminated-against men from Panama, the Caribbean, Europe and Asia.
On Sunday, December 29, 2024, The Miami Herald published a column by Andres Oppenheimer, whose work appears in more than 60 US and international newspapers and is one of the most informed reporters on all things Latin American. Oppenheimer interviewed Panama’s President José Raul Mulino after president-elect Donald Trump muttered his threat to retake control of the Canal. Oppenheimer questioned whether Panama might fall into the arms of China, Cuba, Venezuela and other anti-American countries. Oppenheimer reported:
“It wasn’t an idle question. Immediately after Trump made his Dec. 21 threat against Panama — days after his suggestions that Canada and Greenland should belong to the United States — China, Cuba, and Venezuela’s leftist dictatorships were among the first to voice support for the Panamanian government.
“It was a strange scene, because Mulino is one of the most pro-American presidents in the region, and one of the most vocal critics of Venezuela’s regime in Latin America.
“If Trump escalates his threat to retake the Panama Canal, virtually all Latin American governments, from right and left, are likely to side with Panama. Not only have they historically supported Panama’s ownership of the Canal, but many would see it as a precedent that could potentially threaten their own territorial sovereignty…
“Trump appears to have united countries across the region against him on the Canal issue. Even the secretary general of the 34-country Organization of American States, Luis Almagro, has voiced support for Panama after Trump’s tirade…
“On the Panama Canal fees, Mulino said they are established in public meetings by the Panama Canal Authority, which is an autonomous government agency. ‘There’s nothing hidden under the table,’ he said.
“Regarding Panama’s ability to guarantee safe passage of ships through the Canal, he said that it has been very effective. Most U.S. diplomats agree that the Canal has been well managed by Panama. The transit of ships has not been interrupted since Panama began operating it in 1999…
“’The Canal serves the world under a 100% Panamanian administration,’ Mulino told me. ‘Just like the United States cannot have a say on the Canal, neither the Chinese nor any country or group of countries in the world can have influence in the Canal.’
“…Trump may be playing with fire.
“If the U.S. president-elect keeps making veiled threats of a U.S. invasion, or economic sanctions against Panama, the Central American country will have little choice but to get support from wherever it can get it. China, Cuba and Venezuela would be the first to offer help, and the net result of Trump’s bravado could be pushing Panama into their hands.”
Context and history are as important as knowing what the hell you’re blathering about.