The aggressive rhetoric of US President Donald Trump has shocked Panamanians, who see the waterway as a source of enormous national pride.
When US President Donald Trump threatened to “take back” the Panama Canal in his inauguration speech last week, Panamanians were reminded of American imperialism of old.
For most of the 20th century, Panama was physically severed in two by the US-controlled Canal Zone, which ran through the middle of the Central American country.
Thanks to Panamanian diplomacy, the international decolonisation movement and waning American interest, the US, under the late President Jimmy Carter, agreed in 1977 to fully relinquish the canal to Panama by the end of the century.
Under Panamanian control, the waterway has been expanded and its efficiency greatly improved. The canal handles about 5% of the world’s maritime trade and the US is its largest user by some distance.
In a message clearly designed to appeal to his right-wing base, Trump has threatened to reassert supremacy over the canal, which was built by the US between 1903 and 1914. He has also vowed to seize Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory.
“America will reclaim its rightful place as the greatest, most powerful, most respected nation on earth, inspiring the awe and admiration of the entire world,” he said in his inauguration speech last Monday as a preface to his remarks on the Panama Canal.
The current US president went on to describe Carter’s decision to hand over the canal as a “foolish gift”, before falsely claiming that Panama has broken its promise to keep the important trade crossing neutral.
“China is operating the Panama Canal. And we didn’t give it to China. We gave it to Panama, and we’re taking it back,” Trump said in what experts have called an unfounded allegation against Beijing.
Panama’s President José Raúl Mulino has reiterated that the Panama Canal is his country’s alone.
“It’s impossible, I can’t negotiate,” he said on Thursday, shortly before a visit to his nation by the new US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “The canal belongs to Panama.”
‘Part of who we are’
Trump’s aggressive rhetoric has certainly shocked Panamanians, whose minds have been jolted back to the years when the US’s presence loomed large over their country.
Marixa Lasso, a Panamanian historian and author of Erased: The Untold Story of the Panama Canal, grew up having to cross the Canal Zone to travel from her home to the beach.
It felt like a “different country” in the middle of her own, she told Euronews.
“The Canal Zone was a colonial enclave in the middle of Panama, close to Panama City and Colón. It was a space which Panamanians could cross — but, unless invited, they couldn’t access most places or any of its attractions,” she said.
“It had a US police force and was ruled by US law. So it felt like a different country right there in between Panama’s two most important cities. Which of course led to tensions.”
Frustration at the US’ control of the Canal Zone led to large-scale protests in 1964. During the unrest, dozens of people died, most of whom were Panamanian students.
Reflecting on what the canal means to Panamanians, Lasso spoke of the country’s joy at recovering an integral part of its identity, a trade route whose origins date back to the 16th century.
“That is part of who we are — this strategic connection to two oceans. In the 20th century, that was taken away from us. And there is enormous pride in having recovered it, using negotiations, international relations and protests to make that colonial enclave go away and recover the transit route,” Lasso said.
Distortion of history
Julie Greene, a historian at the University of Maryland who has also written extensively about the canal, said it is important to remember how the US acquired the territory on which it constructed the waterway.
With American support, Panama gained its independence from Colombia in 1903. Sensing an opportunity, the US quickly negotiated with the owner of a French company that had failed disastrously in its attempts to build an earlier canal.
The resulting Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty gave the US a 50-mile by 10-mile section of Panama, which split the country in half.
As Greene noted, the New York Times described the treaty at the time as a “national disgrace”, saying it would be “a policy of dishonourable intrigue and aggression” to construct a waterway across the isthmus, even if it would benefit the country economically by allowing US ships to avoid the long and dangerous journey around the tip of South America.
This negative portrait soon gave way to a more positive American vision of the canal, one inspired by Theodore Roosevelt.
In 1906, Roosevelt became the first sitting US president to leave the country when he travelled down to Panama to examine the works.
“He went on a brilliant publicity campaign. He visited every part of the works, followed by an army of journalists. He created what I see as this mythology about the canal. That it was a brilliant example of US scientific and technological and medical expertise. And that it was a selfless gift to world civilisation,” Greene said.
Roosevelt’s spin erased the exploitation of workers, who largely came from the West Indies, and the significant role that Panama played in the project. As Lasso explained, the Canal Zone’s 41 Panamanian towns, which were depopulated on the 1912 orders of the then US President William Howard Taft, were also forgotten.
Both Lasso and Greene noted Trump’s distortion of history and incorrect use of figures during his inaugural address.
The US president said that 38,000 lives had been lost during the canal’s construction.
“Around 5,000 people died building the US canal, of whom 350 were Americans and 4,049 were West Indian workers, according to official US records,” Lasso said. “Moreover, we cannot ignore how much Panama sacrificed for the canal, when it lost all the lands and towns built on the route.”
Greene, the author of Box 25: Archival Secrets, Caribbean Workers, and the Panama Canal, explained how dangerous the canal project was for non-American workers, who were forced to live separately from their US peers.
“Caribbean workers were exposed more to disease, they were exposed more to rail-road accidents, they were more exposed to premature dynamite explosions. They talk in their testimonies, for example, about how ‘the flesh of men flew in the air like birds that day,’” she said. “Their lives were extremely hard.”
The historian added that Trump’s comments on Panama are grounded in the discourse started by Roosevelt.
“Over the years, this mythology held that the canal was a ‘magnanimous’ gesture as Trump called it, this selfless gift to world civilisation. Whereas in fact it was imperialism — and it put the Republic of Panama in a subservient, almost neo-colonial relationship to the US for nearly a century.”
Regional relations at risk
Trump’s words risk setting the clock back on US-Latin America relations, according to Christopher Sabatini, a senior fellow at Chatham House, a London-based international affairs think tank.
Just like his threat to impose steep tariffs on Colombia last week over its initial refusal to accept two planes of migrants, Trump’s comments on Panama are a way of “reasserting US primacy in ways that Trump feels is due in all matters, big and small,” Sabatini said.
Sabatini believes Trump does not plan to take over the canal, but wants to pressure Panama’s authorities into reducing costs for US cargo ships and navy vessels along the route. “He feels that it is a right, given that the US built it.”
The US president also hopes his threats could lead to Panama revoking the licenses held by CK Hutchison Holdings, a Hong Kong-based conglomerate that runs two ports near the canal, said Sabatini.
Sabatini is dismissive of the actual Chinese threat, even if Beijing could convince the company to share information.
“In the worst case scenario, they’d provide information, information that would probably be available through other sources,” he said. “Trump is using the spectre of Chinese influence to try to further the urgency of his demands.”
Ultimately, Sabatini believes that Trump will get his way. However, it will not be without its negative consequences, he added.
“Yes, I think he will get what he wants. Panama doesn’t really have a choice quite frankly. But we don’t know what the collateral long-term damage will be of this chest-thumping,” he said.
“The threat of taking the Panama Canal will continue to hang as a shadow over not just Panama but over all what were once thought to be settled deals in Latin America.”
If the US is prepared to threaten Panama, one of its closest allies in the region, other countries will start to worry about whether Washington can be trusted. “It’ll make them wonder whether the sanctity of past contracts — treaties, agreements whether free trade or territorial — are worth the paper they’re printed on,” Sabatini said.
In a region where China has been steadily amassing influence in recent years and where Trump needs allies to stem the flow of immigrants to the US, it is also perhaps unwise to target countries like Panama, said Sabatini.
For Trinidad Ayola, whose husband, a lieutenant in the Panamanian air force, was killed during the US invasion of Panama in 1989, Trump’s threats are a reminder of the painful past.
“When Trump made comments about seizing the canal with the lies that it is being managed by the Chinese, I was reminded of what we experienced in 1989 before the US invasion,” she told Euronews.
Under the orders of George H W Bush, Washington launched military action on 20 December 1989 to depose Panama’s dictator, General Manuel Noriega. Hundreds of Panamanian soldiers and civilians were killed as a result.
Looking back at all of the US’s actions in her country, Ayola, who runs an association that represents the families of the victims of the 1989 invasion, said Panama should not give in to Trump’s threats.
“For us, the canal is the symbol of our sovereignty that cost us tears and blood,” she said.
