The Christmas and New Year holidays have a special weight in , the small Central American country that controls the homonymous canal of strategic importance that “joins” the Atlantic with the Pacific Ocean. And they took on added weight this year when, on Christmas Eve, the US president-elect threatened that the US would “take back” the canal it handed over to Panama on New Year’s Eve in 1999.
From the “father” of the Suez Canal
The construction of the canal began on 1or January 1881 (when Panama was still a province of Colombia) by a French company under Ferdinand Lesseps, “father” of the iconic Suez Canal, which joined the Mediterranean with the Red Sea in 1869.
In 1903 the Americans took over from the bankrupt French multinational, supported Panama’s secession from Colombia, and completed the job within eleven years by revolutionizing shipping, sealing their dominance of Central America and the world economy.
In 1977, amid the anti-colonial climate that had been strengthened by the nationalization of the Suez Canal in Egypt, the Carter administration agreed with the Toricho administration to hand over full control of the canal to Panama on December 31, 1999. Until then the US would maintain bases in the area for safety while guarantees were provided for the smooth operation of the canal in perpetuity.
On Christmas Eve 1989, the US military invaded Panama, toppled and within two weeks arrested dictator Manuel Noriega, a former CIA agent whom Washington accused of leading a drug-trafficking network that had flooded the US. Noriega spent 10 years in US prisons, was deported first to France and then to his homeland where he died in 2017. The canal came under full control of the Panamanian government on the last day of 1999 as stipulated in the Carter-Torich agreement.
Close relations with China
In the years that followed, the governments of Panama had relations of dependence on the USA, but they also developed close relations with China. The Chinese gradually penetrated the country’s economy and gained a strong foothold by attempting to laterally control the canal which is a hub for global trade and the maritime section of the Silk Road.
In John Le Carré’s spy novel The Tailor of Panama (1996), the Americans invade the country after being misled by a failed British agent that the country’s president intends to sell the canal to the Chinese. In the film adaptation of the same name (2001) the American president is informed that the information is false and stops the invasion before the marines can occupy Panama City.
. “If the moral and legal principles of the grand gesture of concession are not respected, then we will demand the return of the Canal, fully, quickly and unequivocally,” warned Trump, who will return to the White House on January 20.
