By CARLOS SAPIR
As the second Trump administration prepares to take office, Trump himself has suddenly set his sights on Panama, making several statements that he wants the U.S. to seize the Canal back. As it is, these comments are a brazen, imperialist insult. If these comments are in the slightest bit serious, they represent the biggest threat to Panamanians’ well-being since the original construction of the Canal. In addition to being the focal point of the modern economy of Panama and a vital international trade route, the history of the Panama Canal is a history of imperialism and the international struggle against it.
Construction for the Canal was first planned by a French company in the late 19th century, inspired by the success of the Suez Canal in Egypt, with predominantly Chinese and Afro-Caribbean workers traveling to Panama (then still a province of Colombia) to work on the project. European engineers, unfamiliar with the climate of Panama, did not adequately anticipate the wet season, leading to catastrophe, thousands of workers’ deaths, and a stalled project.
In 1903, seizing upon an internal political crisis within Colombia, President Theodore Roosevelt dispatched the U.S. fleet to block Colombian attempts to restore control over Panama—in the process cementing the establishment of an independent Panamanian state under U.S. military control. Construction of the Canal, now led by the U.S., would resume immediately, and in this state of coercion the newborn government of Panama signed a treaty giving the U.S. custody of the Canal and a strip of land surrounding it (and thus bisecting the country), known as the Panama Canal Zone. At the time, even usual cheerleaders of U.S. imperialism like The New York Times denounced the seizure as “an act of sordid conquest.” Although the U.S. was more prepared to carry out the project to its completion, construction was still a deadly endeavor, and thousands of workers would pay the true cost of the Canal’s construction with their lives.
While Panamanians (rightfully) immediately chafed at the handing over of vital assets to an imperial power, and the borders of the Canal Zone became a site of regular protests, the next chapter in the history of the Panama Canal would be set off by a wave of solidarity with international anti-imperialist action taken against another, similar imperial imposition in the 1950s—the nationalization of the Suez Canal by free Egyptian forces challenging the British Empire, and the failure of an imperialist coalition of British, French, and Israeli forces attempting to retake it. Inspired by the anti-imperialist victory in Egypt, protest activity and anti-U.S. sentiment in Panama increased, with students leading the protests.
In 1964, Panamanian high school students marched through the Zone with a Panamanian flag, and were attacked by U.S. police and personnel, tearing the flag apart. Further furious demonstrations followed, devolving into riots as they confronted Zone police forces. Zone police opened fire on the crowds, and the Panamanians fought back against them. The brave Panamanians who lost their lives–and especially the high school students–are commemorated yearly on Jan. 9, known as Martyrs’ Day.
The events of Martyrs’ Day, and the general political climate surrounding it, made it clear to the U.S. government that the writing was on the wall and that the people of Panama would not let them hold on to the Canal indefinitely. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter would sign an agreement with the Panamanian government promising the return of the Canal in 1999. While this treaty was ultimately honored, the intervening years would also witness a first-hand example of what the U.S. military deployment in the Canal Zone meant for Panamanian politics.
Throughout the 1980s, Panama suffered in the shadow of General Manuel Noriega. A Panamanian general, Noriega was also a heavily entrenched CIA asset and had extensive connections to the international drug trade. Following the death of President Omar Torrijos in 1981, Noriega became the country’s de facto dictator from the shadows, with the support of U.S. power. In this capacity, Noriega turned Panama into a conduit for both drugs and counter-revolutionary U.S. military aid to reactionary regimes across the continent, perhaps most infamously including the Contras in Nicaragua, all while assassinating political dissidents, clamping down on protests and rolling back democratic rights. Noriega’s fortunes would sour, however, with the H. W. Bush administration ultimately deciding he had become more of a liability than an asset by the end of the decade.
Following an attempt to dismiss an election result in 1989, the U.S. began to pressure Noriega to resign. Noriega instead doubled down and began to harass the U.S. presence in Panama while officially naming himself as the actual head of state of Panama for the first time. This was a miscalculation, and H. W. Bush responded with a full-blown military invasion of Panama, launched from inside the Canal Zone. Noriega was arrested, and several hundred Panamanians were killed during the fighting.
While Noriega is remembered as a tyrant and a villain by the people of Panama, the U.S. invasion made clear the threat that had hung over Panama’s politics since construction of the Canal began: So long as a foreign military controls the Canal Zone that bisects Panama in two, it holds the true power over the country, and any regime formed in Panama can rule only at its discretion. More importantly, the experience of the Noriega regime demonstrates that the U.S. support for a government in Panama was not based on any sort of democratic principle. It was not Noriega’s mockery of democracy in Panama that caused U.S. intervention—he had been doing that since he first seized power at the beginning of the decade—it was his fall of grace as a CIA asset and an instrument of U.S. power in Latin America that led to his ouster by U.S. invasion.
Today, following the handover in 1999, the Canal is a focal point of the Panamanian economy. It is also mired in ecological trouble, both in terms of the Canal’s impacts on the surrounding areas and also through the threat of climate change putting the Canal out of commission entirely due to shifts in rainfall and water flow. Decisions of how to manage and maintain the Canal must be made by Panamanians, who will live with the consequences, not by unaccountable imperialists in North America.
In 1977, at the time of the Carter-Trujillo treaty, U.S. segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond is reported to have said, “The canal is ours, we bought it and paid for it, we should keep it.” But if workers have a right to the work they create, the Panama Canal cannot belong to imperialist capitalists: It belongs to the workers of Panama, who faced mudslides, disease, and floods to build it, who marched against the Zone for as long as it divided their country, and who continue to operate the Canal today, 24 hours a day, as it meets the needs of international trade and the whims of capitalism. It is only the Panamanian working class, in solidarity with workers and oppressed peoples across the Americas, that can fight to set the Canal to work for the needs of the people and break it away from the capitalist bottom line that it serves.
It is far from certain that Trump will attempt to once again rob Panama of its patrimony; what is certain is that if U.S. imperialism tries to do this, the people of Panama will be there to remind it of why it had to retreat from Panama in the first place. From inside the U.S., we as Workers’ Voice will rally alongside the Panamanian community and all other people outraged by imperialist greed to demand: Hands off Panama!
References
- McCullough, David (1977). The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-24409-4.
- Meding, Holle Ameriga. “The Día de los Mártires—Spontaneous Demonstration, Heroic Myth, or Political Instrument? The 1964 Panamanian Flag Riots in the History of US-Panamanian Relations.” Global Histories: A Student Journal 4.2 (2018).
- Parker, Matthew (28 February 2007). “Changing course”. The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived
- Galván, Javier A. (December 21, 2012). Latin American Dictators of the 20th Century: The Lives and Regimes of 15 Rulers. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-6691-7.
