Control of the Panama Canal, once a key issue in Ronald Reagan’s US presidential campaign and a hot topic for people ranging from movie legend John Wayne to an unpredictable US senator of Canadian descent, appears to be back as a hot topic in Washington.
President-elect Donald Trump has eased into the campaign and transition with a series of complaints, sometimes inaccurate, about Panama’s management of a key passage that helps ships sail between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in a much less time-consuming way than would otherwise be the case.
“About 40 percent of containerized trade destined for the U.S. goes through the Panama Canal, so it’s in the nation’s commercial interest to keep the Panama Canal running smoothly,” Dennis M. Hogan, a professor of history at Harvard University, told the CBC. Current.
The US controlled access to the canal for decades until then-President Jimmy Carter signed treaties in the late 1970s that eventually handed it over to Panama in 1999.
Trump was asked at a news conference on Tuesday if he could guarantee that as commander-in-chief he would not involve the US military in any dispute with Panama over the canal.
“I’m not going to commit to that. You may have to do something,” Trump said, without elaborating.
The resurgence of the issue comes as Panamanians on Thursday will once again mark Martyrs’ Day, which resulted after several days of riots and gunfights beginning on Jan. 9, 1964, that killed 21 Panamanians and four American soldiers. On the same day, a state funeral will be held in Washington for Carter, who died on December 29.
According to historians16th-century Spanish explorers advised the European country’s monarchy about the desirability of the canal that now houses Panama. The alternative involved traveling an additional 11,000 kilometers around the southern tip of South America.
France, under the patronage builder of the Egyptian Suez Canalhe began building the canal in the 1880s but was unable to complete it. According to some estimates25,000 people may have died in the stop-and-go construction process of the canal, from accidents and tropical diseases.
Panama, declaring independence from Colombia in 1903, allowed the US to finish construction. Proclamation from that time he granted to the United States “all rights, power and authority within the said zone … if it were sovereign of the territory within which the said lands and waters are situated to the complete exclusion of the exercise of any such right by the Republic of Panama sovereign rights, power or power.”
Complaints arose from time to time over perceived contract violations, and an incident in 1964 led to human casualties and millions in damages. Riots were said to have broken out when the Panamanian flag was not allowed to fly next to the American flag at a high school in the Canal Zone.
The president at the time, Lyndon Johnson, softened the issue in negotiations with his Panamanian counterpart, but the tenuous state of affairs did not change until the Carter presidency.
Current11:25Trump threatens the return of the Panama Canal
US President-elect Donald Trump is threatening to take back control of the Panama Canal, but Panama’s president says it’s not for sale. Dennis M. Hogan has studied this critical artery of global trade for years and explains how it has once again become the center of geopolitical tensions.
Hot opinions of the 70s
Reagan addressed the issue regularly during his presidential campaigns in 1976 and 1980, advising against abdicating power.
“When it comes to the channel, we bought it, we paid for it, it’s ours,” he said at one point.
Some mainstream conservatives had similar sentiments. For example, a university history professor led a group called Georgians Against the Panama Canal Treaty. That professor – Newt Gingrich – would win a seat in the US Congress in 1978 and later serve as Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Others disagreed with Reagan, including leading conservative thinker William F. Buckley in the televised debate and Reagan’s old Hollywood acquaintance John Wayne, in a private letter.
“I’ll show you the point next to it [God damned] point in the agreement where you mislead the people,” Wayne wrote to Reagan.
Wayne, whose first wife was Panamanian, accused Reagan of being “not as thorough in his review of this treaty as you say or … damn dull when it comes to reading the English language.” Wayne signed off with his nickname, “The Duke.”
The Real courage star and staunch Republican also wrote to Carter on that issue, signing it “Loyal opposition”.
WATCH l Reagan discusses the Panama Canal with leading conservative William F. Buckley:
‘We stole fairly’
On Capitol Hill, politicians have been voicing their opinions on the issue for years.
During his campaign for a Senate seat in 1976, Vancouver-born SI Hayakawa, then a US college superintendent, made the case.
“I think we should keep it, we stole it fair and square,” he said.
Hayakawa later tried to claim he was only joking, and eventually changed his tune. He was among the senators who helped secure passage in two votes in late 1977 and early 1978. signed contracts Carter and Panamanian leader Omar Torrios.
The first treaty, which lasts in perpetuity, gives the US the right to act to ensure the canal remains open and secure. The second stated that the US would hand over the canal to Panama on December 31, 1999, and was terminated on that date. There was no provision for reopening.
Second US invasion of Panama?
Carter said the deals would allow Panama to move from “a passive and sometimes deeply resentful bystander to an active and interested partner whose vital interests would be served by a well-managed canal.”
That relationship was tested more than a decade later when the US invaded Panama in 1989 to take over leader and alleged drug trafficker Manuel Noriegaan operation condemned by the United Nations that cost hundreds of lives, mostly Panamanians.
Former channel manager Jorge Luis Quijano he told The Associated Press last month that there was “no clause of any kind” in the Carter-Torrijos treaties allowing the US to retake control.
Speaking to the same paper, Benjamin Gedan, director of the Latin America program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, agreed.
“There is very little wiggle room, short of another US invasion of Panama, to regain control of the Panama Canal in a practical sense,” Gedan said.
Trump has made a series of complaints about the management of the canal, accusing Panama of charging “exorbitantly high prices” to US commercial and military ships.
“If we can introduce a few facts, Mr. Trump’s claim that Panama is gobbling up Americans is baseless. Every ship, regardless of flag, pays the same rate according to tonnage and type,” Wall Street Journal editorial wrote last month.
The president-elect also accused Chinese soldiers of illegally operating the canal.
“There are no Chinese soldiers in the canal, for the love of God, the world is free to visit the canal,” Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino said late last month in response.
The Panama Canal Authority is responsible for the entire canal even though it is a subsidiary of the Hong Kong-based holding company that has long operated the two ports at the canal’s entrance to the Caribbean and the Pacific, which Harvard’s Hogan described as “a fairly standard commercial arrangement.”
USA and Panama under a new president earlier this year entered into negotiations which was partly aimed at stemming the flow of migrants from South America or the Caribbean who reached the southern US border after crossing the dangerous Darien Gap in Panama.
Now it appears that Panamanians may have to enter into difficult conversations with the new US president on a topic they thought was settled long ago.
