
Editorial cartoon in the NYT, 1903.
Donald Trump and his cohorts want to take back the Panama Canal. According to Trump and those who support this desire, this is because China controls the canal. To begin, the second sentence is a bald-faced lie used to justify a narrative that is rampant with lies. According to NBC News, dated January 23, 2025, and other sources, China doesn’t control the canal or its operations. Two private corporations based in Hong Kong operate ports on each end of the canal. The ports are used to dock ships and to load and unload cargo. Several corporations from different nations lease and operate similar ports on the canal. The canal is operated by Panama, just as it has been since 1999, when it was returned to Panama after years of negotiations with the United States. The return of the canal was strongly opposed by the rightwing in the US. In fact, Ronald Reagan had made it an issue during his reign in the White House, donning his best Teddy Roosevelt makeup and riding rough through the nation of Colombia, killing natives to create the country of Panama.
That’s right. Washington created Panama. It had been part of Colombia—a nation created by another invader, Spain. After other attempts to build a canal that would shorten trade routes for the US and other ships had failed, including one across Nicaragua, a scheme was hatched to build one across the isthmus that became Panama. The first problem faced by the schemers in DC was to get the land. Colombia did not want to give it up. Now, according to most US history books, there were some Colombians who didn’t want to be part of Colombia anymore and wanted secession and independence. Coincidentally, the land they wanted for their new nation was where the schemers to the north wanted to build their canal. Let me make it clear. The secessionists were not indigenous people; they, too, were colonizers. So, like most of the history of the Americas after Columbus landed, the colonial settlers were dealing with other colonial settlers in stolen land.
Like many real estate hucksters, Donald Trump seems to think the world is all land that can be bought and sold. It doesn’t matter if it’s a suburban tract in New Jersey that’s going for a million dollars or a sovereign nation with part of it on the Arctic Circle. Or homes in occupied Palestine stolen at gunpoint from their living owners—often a family who has lived on the land for generations. Every piece of property is up for sale. It’s just a matter of finding the right price. That is a generous take on what the Trumpists in DC talk about doing in regard to Greenland and Panama. I think another analogy is more apt. Hitler called it der Anschluss. This event is how the takeover of Austria by the Nazi Wehrmacht is described. It’s a German word meaning “the joining or the connection.” Briefly, this took place when German troops entered the territory of Austria in March 1938 and took power. Resistance was mooted; it came from certain elements of the Catholic Church (as in the film “The Sound of Music”), the Austrian left, Jewish citizens and a few others. Austria was part of the Third Reich within a couple of days. A more modern version is playing out in the occupied West Bank in Palestine. Whichever analogy the reader might choose, the fact is that the current regime in DC seems intent on reclaiming what was never truly theirs on the Isthmus of Panama.
Let me return to the history of Panama’s “creation.” As noted above, the common story in US history textbooks is that Panama gained independence in 1904 “with US support.” If one digs deeper and goes beyond US-friendly sources, you will discover that Panama was actually part of Colombia. The French, under the direction of the capitalist who built the Suez Canal in Egypt and with the cooperation of the Colombian government, had started a canal project on the Isthmus. However, his company ran out of money and abandoned the project. Washington, under the direction of Teddy Roosevelt, the man some historians consider to be the first modern imperialist in US history, made an offer to the Colombian government to finish the project. This resulted in the Hay-Herrán Treaty, which would have granted the United States a lease in perpetuity over the land on which the canal was built. The US offer was unanimously rejected by the Colombian parliament. Their reasons included the amount of compensation and, more importantly, a loss of sovereignty over the Colombian land being discussed. Once the treaty was rejected, businessmen led by José Agustín Arango and Manuel Amador Guerrero and supported by various US capitalists, began organizing a movement to secede from Colombia. After obtaining support from the United States, the secessionists began their moves. The Colombian military responded, sending five hundred conscripts on a merchant ship to the Isthmus. Teddy Roosevelt sent the USS Nashville in response, using the cover of a treaty that provided for US intervention if the Panamanian Railroad was threatened. After a couple days of minimal combat, a fair amount of duplicity, a threat of bombardment from the USS Nashville and one casualty (a Chinese man), the nation of Panama was proclaimed. It was then turned into a US protectorate (or colony.) Roosevelt bragged, “I took the Isthmus, started the canal and then left Congress not to debate the canal, but to debate me.” The New York Times called it a “sordid act of conquest,” which it was.
Washington removed Panama’s status as a protectorate in 1939, making it an independent and sovereign nation. However, treaties put in place between 1903 and 1939 established a region along the canal as a US zone. This area, known as the Panama Canal Zone, was an occupied zone under the control of the US military. US troops and civilians living in the zone answered to US laws and were immune from prosecution by Panama’s legal system. Those Panamanians who worked for the US were poorly paid and subject to the whims and requirements of the Pentagon. The workers who actually built the canal were mostly imported, first from southern Europe and then from the islands in the Caribbean. These workers were allowed very few, if any, freedoms.
Following World War Two, Panamanians began to actively oppose US control of the canal and the Canal Zone. Protests, often led by students calling for Panamanian control of the Zone and canal, erupted. By the 1970s, many in the US government agreed with the idea of giving the Panamanians control of these lands. In 1977, Jimmy Carter signed the Torrijos-Carter Treaty, which took effect in October 1979 and return the Canal and the Zone to Panama over the course of twenty years. Despite virulent opposition from the US right, the treaty was confirmed by a two-thirds vote in the Senate. Over the next twenty years, the rightwing would bring up the treaty as proof of the Democrats “treachery.” Ronald Reagan made it an issue during his 1980 and 1984 presidential campaigns. George HW Bush invaded Panama in 1989, using the lie that the Panamanian president (and CIA asset) Manuel Noriega was a cocaine trafficker. (Bush himself was at least tangentially involved in cocaine smuggling himself in the Iran-Contra affair). In a comedic sidenote to the invasion, the US mainstream media sent photographs of what Washington claimed was a pile of cocaine around the world. It turned out that the powder was cornmeal. Noriega was kidnapped and held in US prisons for years. This episode is useful when examining the current narcotics trafficking charges brought by Washington against Venezuelan President Maduro.
That brings us to 2025, when Donald Trump is vowing to take back the Canal and recently sent his Secretary of State Marco Rubio to Panama to assess the situation. Perhaps someone told Trump about Teddy Roosevelt’s braggadocio: “I took the Isthmus, started the canal and then left Congress not to debate the canal, but to debate me.”