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Travel Related
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HISTORY |
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Perhaps no country in the world has had its history so thoroughly
determined by geography as Panamá. In prehistoric times this was a
crucial land bridge in the migration routes by which the Americas were
populated, and from the moment the conquistador Vasco Nuñez de Balboa
emerged from the forests of Darién to become the first European to look
out onto the Pacific Ocean on September 25, 1513, the history of Panamá
has been the history of the route across the isthmus. Balboa claimed
what he called the "Southern Ocean" in the name of the King of Spain,
but received scant reward for his discovery - in 1519 his jealous
superior Pedro Arias Dávila (known as Pedrarias the Cruel), the first
governor of what was by then known as Castilla de Oro, had him beheaded
for his troubles.
In the face of appalling losses from disease in the first Spanish
settlements on the Caribbean, Pedrarias moved his base across the
isthmus to the more salubrious Pacific coast, where he founded Panamá
City in 1519. The new settlement became the jumping-off point for
further Spanish conquests north and south along the coast, and after the
conquest of Peru in 1533 began to flourish as the transit point for the
fabulous wealth of the Incas on its way to fill the coffers of the
Spanish Crown. From Panamá City, cargo was transported across the
isthmus on mules along the paved Camino Real to the ports of Nombre de
Dios and later Portobelo, on the Caribbean coast. A second route, the
Camino de Cruces, was used to transport heavier cargo to the highest
navigable point on the Río Chagres, where it was transferred to canoes
that carried it downriver to the coast. Once a year huge trade fairs
lasting several weeks were held at Portobelo, when the Spanish royal
fleet arrived to collect the gold and silver that had accumulated in the
treasure houses of Panamá and to trade European goods that were then
redistributed across the Americas. The vast wealth that flowed across
the isthmus was quick to attract the attention of Spain's enemies, and
despite ever heavier fortification the Caribbean coast was constantly
harassed by English and other European pirates . In the most daring
attack, the English Henry Morgan sailed up the Río Chagres and crossed
the isthmus to sack Panamá City in 1671.
Though the city was rebuilt behind defences so formidable that it was
never taken again, the raiding of the Caribbean coast continued, until
finally in 1746 Spain rerouted the treasure fleet around Cape Horn .
With the route across the isthmus all but abandoned, Panamá slipped into
decline, and settlement of the interior began to increase. Despite
fierce resistance from indigenous groups the rest of the isthmus had
been progressively conquered in the decades following the foundation of
Panamá City. The forests of Darién and the Atlantic coast had been
largely abandoned once the early colonial gold mines established there
had been exhausted, and provided a refuge for unsubmissive tribes and
bands of renegade slaves known as cimarrones , while the Pacific coastal
plain west of Panamá City was gradually settled by farmers. Trade
remained the dominant economic activity - whereas in most of the Spanish
Empire political power lay in the hands of large landowners, in Panamá
it was always held by the merchant class of Panamá City.
In 1821 Panamá declared its independence from Spain , but retained its
name as a department of Gran Colombia, which, with the secession of
Ecuador and Venezuela, quickly became simply Colombia . Almost
immediately, though, conflicts emerged between the merchants of Panamá
City, eager to trade freely with the world, and the distant,
protectionist governments in Bogotá, leading to numerous half-hearted
and unsuccessful attempts at independence.
Meanwhile, traffic across the isthmus was once again increasing, and
exploded with the discovery of gold in California in 1849. Travel from
the US east coast to California via Panamá - by boat, overland by foot,
and then by boat again - was far less arduous than the overland trek
across North America, and thousands of "Forty-niners" passed through on
their way to the goldfields. In 1851 a US company began the construction
of a railway across Panamá. Carving a route through the inhospitable
swamps and forests of the isthmus proved immensely difficult, and
thousands of the mostly Chinese and West Indian migrant workers died in
the process, but when the railway was completed in 1855, the Panamá
Railroad Company proved an instant financial success. Panamá's
importance as an international thoroughfare increased further, but the
railway also marked the beginning of foreign control over the means of
transport across the isthmus. Within a year, the first US military
intervention in Panamá - "to protect the railroad"- had taken place.
The French canal venture
In 1869 the opening of the first transcontinental railway in the US
reduced traffic through Panamá, but the completion of the Suez Canal
that same year at last made the longstanding dream of a canal across the
isthmus a realistic...
In 1869 the opening of the first transcontinental railway in the US
reduced traffic through Panamá, but the completion of the Suez Canal
that same year at last made the longstanding dream of a canal across the
isthmus a realistic possibility. Well aware of the strategic advantages
such a waterway would offer - the journey of a ship travelling from, for
example, Boston to San Francisco would be reduced from 21,000km to just
8000km if it could cross the continent by passing through Panamá rather
than going all the way round Cape Horn - Britain, France and the US all
sent expeditions to seek a suitable route. It was the French, though,
who took the initiative, buying a concession to build a canal from the
Colombian Government. In 1881, led by Ferdinand de Lesseps , the
architect responsible for the Suez Canal, the Compagnie Universelle du
Canal Interoceanique began excavations.
But despite De Lesseps' vision and determination, the "venture of the
century" proved to be an unmitigated disaster. In the face of the
impassable terrain - forests, swamps and the shifting shales of the
continental divide - the proposed sea-level canal proved technically
unfeasible, while yellow fever and malaria ravaged the workforce,
killing as many as 20,000. In 1889 the Compagnie collapsed as a result
of financial mismanagement and corruption, implicating the highest
levels of French society in what the official described as "the greatest
fraud of modern times".
But the dream of an interoceanic canal would not die. The US government,
never keen on the idea of a canal controlled by a European power and
convinced by its 1898 war with Spain of the military importance of a
fast passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, took up the
challenge. President Theodore Roosevelt in particular was convinced that
the construction of a canal across Central America was an essential step
in pursuit of the control of all the Americas. At first the US favoured
building a canal through Nicaragua, but the persuasive lobbying of
Philipe Bunau-Varilla, a French engineer anxious to profit from the sale
of the French rights and equipment, swung the crucial Senate vote in
Panamá's favour. A treaty allowing the US to build the canal was
negotiated with the Colombian government in 1903, but the Colombian
Senate refused to ratify it. Outraged that "the Bogotá lot of
jackrabbits should be allowed to bar one of the future highways of
civilization", Roosevelt gave unofficial backing to Panamanian
secessionists who had long been seeking independence. The small
Colombian garrison in Panamá City was bribed to switch sides and a
second force that had landed at Colón agreed to return to Colombia
without a fight after its officers had been tricked into captivity by
the rebels. On November 3, 1903 the Republic of Panamá was declared and
immediately recognized by the US, whose gunships standing offshore
prevented Colombian reinforcements from landing to crush the rebellion.
Though it is true that Panamá would never have come into existence as an
independent republic without the involvement of the US, the independence
movement was not wholly a US invention. The Panamanian merchant elite
had good reason to seek independence - rule from remote Bogotá limited
Panamá's ability to trade and involved it in Colombia's endless civil
wars - and had attempted secession 33 times in the previous seventy
years. The difference, in 1903, was the support of the US, and this, as
the Panamanians were soon to discover, came at a high price
The canal
A new canal treaty was quickly negotiated and signed on Panamá's behalf
by Bunau-Varilla. It gave the US "all the rights, power and authority&
which [it] would possess and exercise as if it were sovereign", in
perpetuity over an area...
A new canal treaty was quickly negotiated and signed on Panamá's behalf
by Bunau-Varilla. It gave the US "all the rights, power and authority&
which [it] would possess and exercise as if it were sovereign", in
perpetuity over an area of territory - the Canal Zone - extending five
miles either side of the canal. In return, the new Panamanian government
received a one-off payment of US$10 million and a further US$250,000 a
year. These conditions were so favourable that even American Secretary
of State John Hay had to admit they were "very satisfactory, very
advantageous for the US and we must confess& not so advantageous for
Panamá." Panamá's newly formed national assembly found the terms
outrageous, but when told by Bunau-Varilla that US support would be
withdrawn were they to reject it, they ratified the treaty and work on
the canal began.
It took ten years, the labour of some 75,000 workers and some US$387
million to complete the task - an unprecedented triumph of sanitation,
organization and engineering during which chief medical officer Colonel
William Gorgas established a programme that eliminated yellow fever from
the isthmus and brought malaria under control. The US engineers
abandoned the idea of a sea-level canal, and instead constructed a
series of locks to raise ships up to a huge artificial lake formed by
damming the mighty Río Chagres, an obstacle the French had never been
able to overcome. Together the engineers solved the problems that had
defeated the French, excavating over 160 million cubic metres of earth
and rock, building the biggest concrete constructions (the locks), the
biggest earth dam and creating the largest artificial lake the world had
ever seen. On August 15, 1914, the SS Ancon became the first ship to
transit the canal, which was completed six months ahead of schedule.
An enormous migrant workforce , which at times outnumbered the combined
population of Panamá City and Colón, was imported to work on the canal's
construction, and many - Indians, Europeans, Chinese and above all West
Indians - stayed on after its completion, transforming the racial and
cultural makeup of Panamá for ever. They worked under what was
effectively an apartheid labour system, where white Americans were paid
in gold and the rest - the vast majority of whom were black - in silver.
Dormitories, mess halls and even toilets and drinking fountains were set
aside for the exclusive use of one group or the other, and despite the
success of the sanitary programme, mortality amongst black workers was
four times higher than among whites.
Meanwhile, though their economy boomed during the construction,
Panamanians soon came to realize that in many ways they had simply
exchanged control by Bogotá for dominance by the United States. The de
facto sovereignty and legal jurisdiction that the US enjoyed within the
Canal Zone made it a strip of US territory in which Panamanians were
treated as second-class citizens, denied the commercial and employment
opportunities enjoyed by US "Zonians". And the US agreement to guarantee
Panamanian independence came at the price of intervention - inside and
outside the Canal Zone - whenever the US considered it necessary to "maintain
order", a right they exercised eight times between 1903 and 1936. Though
the Panamanian Government, largely controlled by a ruling elite known as
the "twenty families", was ostensibly independent, in fact it was little
more than a client of the US. "There has never been a successful change
of government in Panamá", one US official admitted in 1944, "but that
the American authorities have been consulted beforehand."
Despite a new treaty limiting the US right of intervention in 1936,
resentment of US imperialist control became the dominant theme of
Panamanian politics and the basis of an emerging sense of national
identity. Maverick politician Arnulfo Arias Madrid - a racist and Nazi
sympathizer who later became one of Panamá's most popular political
figures - led demands for a further renegotiation of the canal treaty.
But the US-backed Panamanian National Guard made sure that no president
who challenged the status quo lasted long in office. Nevertheless, anti-US
riots in 1959 and 1964 revealed the enduring popular resentment of US
domination.
When Arnulfo Arias was deposed by the National Guard after winning the
1968 elections, it appeared to be business as usual in Panamá. But in
fact the coup marked a turning point in Panamanian politics. After a
brief power struggle Lieutenant Colonel Omar Torrijos established
himself as leader of the new military government. Described by his
friend Graham Greene as a "lone wolf", Torrijos broke the political
dominance of the white merchant oligarchy - known as the rabiblancos ,
or "white arses" - in his pursuit of a pragmatic middle way between
socialism and capitalism. Over twelve years he introduced a wide range
of populist reforms - a new constitution and labour code, limited
agricultural reform, nationalization of the electricity and
communications sectors, expanded public health and education services -
while simultaneously maintaining good relations with the business
sector, establishing the Colón Free Zone and introducing the banking
secrecy necessary for Panamá's emergence as an international financial
centre. At the heart of Torrijos' popular appeal, though, was his
insistence on the recovery of Panamanian control over the canal and his
nationalistic opposition to US intervention in Panamanian affairs. After
intensive negotiations a new canal treaty was signed by Torrijos and US
president Jimmy Carter on September 7, 1977. Under its terms the US
agreed to pass complete control of the canal to Panamá by the year 2000,
and in the meantime it was to be administered by the Panamá Canal
Commission , composed of five US and four Panamanian citizens. However,
though a memorandum of understanding made it clear that the US had no
right of intervention in Panamá's internal affairs, the US retained the
right to intervene militarily if the canal's neutrality was threatened,
even after the year 2000.
Noriega and the US invasion
With his main aim accomplished, Torrijos formed a political party, the
Partido Revolucionario Democratico (PRD), and began moving towards a
return to democracy in elections scheduled for 1984. In 1981, however,
he died in a plane crash in the...
With his main aim accomplished, Torrijos formed a political party, the
Partido Revolucionario Democratico (PRD), and began moving towards a
return to democracy in elections scheduled for 1984. In 1981, however,
he died in a plane crash in the mountains of Coclé province. Though the
crash was officially an accident, many Panamanians now believe that
there was some involvement by the CIA or by Colonel Manuel Noriega , his
former intelligence chief. Whatever the truth, Noriega soon took over as
head of the National Guard, which he restructured as a personal power
base and renamed the Panamá Defence Forces (PDF). Though fraudulent
elections were held in 1984 by the following year Noriega had
established himself as effective dictator of Panamá.
Noriega had been on the CIA payroll since the early 1970s and, whereas
Torrijos had supported the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, Noriega quickly
became an important figure in covert US military support for the Contras.
Despite this, the undemocratic nature of his regime and revelations
about his involvement in drugs trafficking began to prove embarrassing
for his erstwhile employers, and in 1987 the US government began a
campaign to drive him from power. Economic sanctions were followed by
the indictment of Noriega for drug offences in February 1988, and after
a US-backed coup attempt by dissident PDF officers failed in March 1988
the confrontation between Noriega and the US began to slide out of
control. On December 20, 1989 US president George Bush launched "
Operation Just Cause ", and 27,000 US troops invaded Panamá. They
quickly overcame the minimal organized resistance offered by the PDF.
Bombers, helicopter gunships and even untested stealth aircraft were
used against an enemy with no air defences, and over four hundred
explosions were recorded in the first fourteen hours. The poor Panamá
City barrio of El Chorillo was heavily bombed and burned to the ground,
leaving some 15,000 homeless. Noriega himself evaded capture and took
refuge in the papal nunciature before surrendering on January 5. He was
taken to the US, convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to forty
years in a Miami jail, where he remains as the only prisoner of war in
the United States. In 2000 he was up for parole, but this was turned
down after George Bush said he would fear for his life if Noriega was
released.
Estimates of the number of Panamanians killed during the invasion vary
enormously - from several hundred to as many as 7000 - largely because
little care was taken in counting the dead, and many were quickly buried
in mass graves. That the invasion was illegal, however, was clear - it
was condemned as a violation of international law by both the United
Nations and the Organization of American States, both of which demanded
the immediate withdrawal of US forces. President Bush gave four reasons
for the invasion: "to safeguard the lives of Americans, to defend
democracy in Panamá, to combat drug trafficking, and to protect the
integrity of the Panamá Canal Treaty." But the defence of democracy in
Panamá had scarcely been a US priority in the past, and Bush's concern
with Noriega's extensive involvement in drug trafficking was also new.
As director of the CIA in 1976 he had increased payments to Noriega,
despite the CIA's detailed knowledge of Noriega's drug links. After the
invasion the flow of drugs through Panamá actually increased. The
invasion was also in direct violation of the canal treaty provision
prohibiting US intervention in Panamanian politics, and though one US
soldier had been killed in the build-up to the invasion, this alone was
scarcely sufficient reason to invade an entire country.
The real reasons for the US invasion remain unclear. Certainly Bush's
desire to appear tough in the domestic political arena played a part,
and the invasion set an important precedent for further US military
interventions in the post-Cold War world. To many Panamanians, though,
the reasons were all too familiar: reassertion of US control over Panamá
and its strategic waterway, and the destruction of the PDF. Not that
most Panamanians opposed the invasion: unlike Torrijos, Noriega was
deeply unpopular, and almost all were relieved to see the back of him.
But most were angry at the excessive use of force and felt humiliated by
the reassertion of US dominance that Noriega's removal involved. Some
likened Operation Just Cause to a brilliant cancer operation by a
surgeon who had been pushing cigarettes to the patient for forty years.
After the invasion, the US installed Guillermo Endara , winner of
elections annulled by Noriega in 1989, as president. In 1994 he was
defeated by Ernesto Perez Balladares, leader of the PRD - the party of
both Torrijos and Noriega. After taking office, Perez Balladares
implemented neo-liberal economic policies - privatization of state-owned
companies, reduction of public expenditure - aimed at meeting payments
on the vast external debt that was the legacy of the Torrijos years:
Panamá still has one of the highest per capita debt levels in the world.
The handover of the canal
In an ironic twist, the presidential elections of 1999 to determine who
would preside over the handover of the canal were contested between
Martin Torrijos, son of the former military ruler, and Mireya Moscoso ,
widow of Arnulfo Arias, the man...
In an ironic twist, the presidential elections of 1999 to determine who
would preside over the handover of the canal were contested between
Martin Torrijos, son of the former military ruler, and Mireya Moscoso ,
widow of Arnulfo Arias, the man Torrijos ousted in 1968. As the deadline
for the handover of the canal and the closure of the last US military
bases drew near, politicians in the US began to express doubts about the
withdrawal, arguing that it threatened US strategic interests. When the
port facilities at either end of the canal were sold to a Chinese
company, some even suggested this was part of a communist plot to take
over the canal. But negotiations to maintain a US military presence as
part of a multilateral anti-drugs base broke down, and on 31 December
1999 Panamanians celebrated the final victory in their struggle to gain
control of the canal and establish full independence .
The US withdrawal was a mixed blessing for the Panamanian economy. Many
jobs were lost with the closure of the bases and the loss of the US
personnel's spending power, but the hugely valuable real estate and
infrastructure Panamá inherited created huge economic opportunities.
Some of these opportunities are being realized, with major
infrastructure and investment programmes under way in the reverted areas,
though critics say they have been handed over too cheaply to private
business and political cronies rather than being used to provide housing
for the poor. And like the ruins of a once powerful empire, some of the
US bases are now dilapidated and abandoned.
The handover of the canal itself was seamless, and so far the waterway
seems to be working as well under Panamanian control as it did under the
US - it's currently being widened to allow two-way traffic and there are
plans to build a new set of locks to accommodate the growing number of
ships which are currently too big to go through. There are also
proposals to establish new dams to provide the extra water that will be
needed if the number of ships going through the canal is to be increased,
though these are bitterly opposed by thousands of peasants whose homes
and land would be flooded. Relations with the US remain complex, with an
ongoing dispute over the US failure to clean up toxic chemicals (including
depleted uranium) and unexploded shells from the bases and firing ranges.
And though Panamá has so far resisted pressure to join in US efforts to
isolate left-wing rebels across the border in Colombia, it seems that
the US Silitary has not abandoned hope of someday returning to Panamá.
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