Panama Canal

Why Today Is an Anti-American Holiday in Panama

Jack Kelly — Wed, 09 Jan 2019 22:35:40 +0000

Why Today Is an Anti-American Holiday in Panama Jack Kelly Wed, 01/09/2019 - 17:35

Panamanians gather in the streets after the riots in 1964. (Michael Rougier/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Few Americans know that January 9 is a national holiday in Panama, and even fewer know why. Today is Martyrs’ Day—commemorating an outbreak of violence between Panama and the United States in 1964. The confrontation left four Americans and twenty-two Panamanians dead, and it deeply strained U.S.-Panama relations. It marked the beginning of a process that would induce the United States to relinquish its rights to the Panama Canal in the decade that followed. And “it all began,” as LIFE magazine reported, “because there was one vacant flagpole at Balboa High School.”

The history of U.S. involvement in Panama goes back to the 1850s, when Americans heading for the California gold fields trekked across the isthmus. Soon New York investors were building a lucrative railroad to accommodate the travelers. A riot in 1856 signaled local resentment of the North Americans’ encroachment.

The U.S. handed over the Canal Zone to Panama in 1999. Panamanians today still remember when the process began.

In 1880 President Rutherford Hayes declared his country’s intention to build “a canal under American control.” The United States intervened militarily in Panama a dozen times during the second half of the nineteenth century, all leading up to President Theodore Roosevelt’s support for an uprising that gave Panama independence from Colombia in 1903. The Americans then used their leverage to conclude a treaty that gave the United States control of the ten-mile-wide Canal Zone in perpetuity and the right to intrude militarily in Panamanian affairs.

Sovereignty over the Zone remained a bone of contention after the United States finished building the canal, in 1914. Protests in 1955 prompted President Dwight Eisenhower to make minor concessions to the Panamanians, but he would not relinquish the perpetuity provision of the original treaty. After more demonstrations in the late 1950s, the United States allowed the Panamanians to fly their flag at one location in the Zone. President Kennedy, eager to improve U.S. relations with Latin America, agreed to talk about the issues of dispute between the countries.

The U.S. fleet off the coast of Panama in 1906. Wikipedia.

Any hint of concession worried the ultrapatriotic U.S. citizens who lived and worked in the Zone. Kennedy’s declaration that the U.S. and Panamanian flags should be flown together at all nonmilitary sites prompted Zonian students, with the encouragement of adults, to raise the Stars and Stripes alone outside Balboa High School on January 7, 1964. The teenagers guarded the flag for two days before a group of 200 Panamanian students marched from nearby Panama City intent on raising their own banner. During the ensuing scuffle, the Panamanian flag was torn.

Thousands of angry Panamanian citizens took to the streets, forced their way into the Zone, and attacked American-owned businesses. The Canal Zone police were overwhelmed, and the U.S. Army took over, responding to the violence with tear gas and rifle fire. Ascanio Arosemena, a 20-year-old student on his way to movie, stopped to helped to evacuate some of the wounded. He was shot dead.

Thousands of Panamanians rioted, the Canal Zone police were overwhelmed, and the U.S. Army responded to the violence with tear gas and rifle fire.

Demonstrators attacked the “fence of shame” that divided the Canal Zone from the rest of Panama. The Colombia ambassador to the Organization of American States pointed to the barrier and declared, “In Panama there exists today another Berlin Wall.”

Panama broke diplomatic relations with the United States on January 10. Some Panamanians demanded that the U.S. hand over the Canal Zone immediately. Sporadic shooting came from both sides of the border. American soldiers trying to eliminate a sniper in an apartment building instead shot and killed Rosa Elena Landecho, an 11-year-old girl.

The cover of LIFE Magazine on January 24, 1964 featured the Panamanian riots. Wikipedia.

With the Panamanian National Guard unwilling to intervene, the fighting went on for another four days. Rioters sacked some Panamanian as well as American businesses. The new United States Information Services library, part of the Kennedy administration’s effort to win the propaganda war in Latin America, went up in flames. American embassy personnel destroyed sensitive documents and fled, though the embassy was not invaded.

Life blamed the events on ”patriotic but misguided Americans who did not realize that they were away from home.” President Lyndon Johnson, facing his first foreign-policy crisis and realizing that the Panamanians would use the violence to pressure him for concessions, warned them not “to try to exact a new treaty from me by force.”

The riots caused $2 million in damage before the National Guard stepped in to quell the violence on January 14. The incident focused world attention on U.S. policies in Latin America and on the lopsided 1903 treaty in particular. “The plain fact is that we must begin treating Panamanians as people,” said the Canal Zone’s governor, Robert J. Fleming.

Panamanian president Roberto Chiari restored diplomatic relations in April. After his election later in 1964, President Johnson agreed to talk about “an entirely new treaty” to delineate U.S. rights in the country. After three years of negotiations, a new pact was concluded that would eliminate the perpetuity clause, but opposition inside both countries kept it from being enacted.

By the 1970s America’s two-ocean navy and long-range bombers and missiles had obviated much of the strategic military importance of the canal. Talks on a treaty to return the zone to Panama began early in the decade and were concluded under President Jimmy Carter in 1978. Congress reluctantly went along.

Operation of the canal was gradually passed to the Panamanians.

Keywords

Our President Violates Tradition by Traveling Abroad

Alexander Burns — Tue, 07 Nov 2017 13:06:46 +0000

Our President Violates Tradition by Traveling Abroad Alexander Burns Tue, 11/07/2017 - 08:06

Theodore Roosevelt made the dirt fly in building the Panama Canal.

On November 9, 1906, 111 years ago this week, The New York Times ran an article declaring that the President of the United States was about to violate “the traditions of the United States for over a hundred years.”

Theodore Roosevelt had already done many daring and unexpected things. He had gained national renown for resigning his position in the Navy Department so he could fight in the Spanish-American War, and his brash personality remained a cornerstone of his popularity. On this particular November day, he was about to do something that no sitting President had ever attempted. He was going abroad.

One of the hallmarks of Roosevelt’s administration was its engagement with the rest of the world. The President kept up active correspondence with numerous European monarchs and heads of state. He supported efforts to create institutions of international arbitration and an international court of justice. And he was an avid interventionist who supported an expanded military role for the United States in the Western Hemisphere. In that very same year, 1906, the twenty-sixth President was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to conclude a peace between the warring nations of Russia and Japan.

In 1906 Roosevelt toured construction of the Panama Canal. He was the first President to travel abroad while serving in office.

Perhaps of greater consequence than all these other international projects, though, was his interest in the tiny nation of Panama. For years, American and European merchants had looked toward the Isthmus of Panama with ambitious eyes. The narrow strip of Central American land was a tempting location for a canal between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific. Generations of businessmen and voyagers had found their travels and shipping frustrated by the immense landmass of the Americas. In order to transport goods to California from the East Coast or Europe, shippers had to either send their vessels on a long and dangerous journey around the southern tip of South America or have them unload at a port somewhere on the Atlantic or Gulf coast and complete the trip by land. Roosevelt was far from the first American to reason that there must be a better way.

Roosevelt climbed aboard a steam shovel in Panama while inspecting construction of the Canal.

In November 1906 he was setting out on a journey to survey the progress of his project to build that better route between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Seven years earlier, in 1899, Congress had created an Isthmian Canal Commission, charged with plotting out a route for a canal through Panama, but it had taken several years and multiple treaties to guarantee the United States access to and ownership of the land needed to begin construction. Finally, in 1903, the United States under Roosevelt had arrived at a deal with a new Panamanian government by which the U.S. would control the canal’s route across the isthmus as well as a five-mile strip of land on both sides and a few islands in the Bay of Panama. In exchange for this, the government would pay Panama $10 million initially and $250,000 each year starting in 1912.

It was a remarkably good deal for the United States. Some observers grumbled that it was too good, particularly given that it had been arrived at only after a new, U.S.-friendly Panamanian government had seized power by force. When Roosevelt disembarked in Panama, however, there was no sign of bitterness or resentment on the part of the Panamanian people. His ship arrived in the middle of a storm, but the weather did little to dampen the energy with which he was received. As he rode through Panama City in the pouring rain, with his wife beside him, he looked out on buildings and streets that had been scrubbed clean in anticipation of his arrival. He could see flags flying in window after window. He basked in the knowledge that his hosts had formally declared a day of “joy and exalted enthusiasm” in honor of his arrival.

The trip was far from just ceremonial, though. Roosevelt wanted to see firsthand the progress that was being made on the construction of his canal. Contemporary accounts of his expedition highlight the characteristic rigor of his travels. Intentionally visiting the grittiest of the work sites, he didn’t hesitate to tramp through mud or ride on horseback in order to gain access to unfinished portions of the canal. He also went out of his way to witness the conditions in which the project placed its workers. On one of the first days of the tour, he and the First Lady decided not to attend a lavish luncheon to which they had been invited, at the luxurious Tivoli Hotel. Instead they visited a mess hall in which canal workers ate their meals. Sitting down among several hundred laborers, the Roosevelts dined on a 30-cent lunch. At the Cristóbal work site, the President spent most of his time touring workers’ living quarters.

When Roosevelt sailed for home aboard the battleship Louisiana, he had been away for two weeks altogether. Before leaving Washington, on November 9, he had said, “Good-bye: I am going down to see how the ditch is getting along.” Returning, he confirmed that it was already far more than a ditch. It would be a legacy of his Presidency that remains an invaluable world treasure to this day.

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Panama’s Canal

Frederick E. Allen — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 10:36:36 +0000

Panama’s Canal Frederick E. Allen Fri, 01/21/2011 - 05:36

Samuel Eliot Morison Award 1978

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 17:19:33 +0000

Samuel Eliot Morison Award 1978 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/20/2011 - 12:19

Of A Merry Christmas Past

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 17:01:28 +0000

Of A Merry Christmas Past Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/20/2011 - 12:01

A Man, A Plan, A Canal, Panama!

David McCullough — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 16:27:11 +0000

A Man, A Plan, A Canal, Panama! David McCullough Thu, 01/20/2011 - 11:27