Lies of a nature we've heard before
January 5, 2025
Whence it Came, (2020)
Maybe you can own the libs. But not the Panamanians
It is by the passage of time that I’ve forgotten many of the smaller details from my early years as a student/journalist. But I remember a lot.
Former Democratic Congressman Daniel Flood (photo courtesy Wikimedia images)
For example: I remember Daniel Flood, a long-serving Congressman from northeastern Pennsylvania (Wilkes-Barre) not far from where my dad’s family has roots. He was a favorite of many Panama Canal Zonians—or simply “Zonians” as we still call ourselves—the corps of Americans (and their offspring) who administered the Panama Canal Company and operated the canal for most of a century.
In the 1970s Congressman Flood was popular in the Zone because he was an outspoken opponent of an emerging treaty to transfer control of the canal to Panama. Opposition to the treaty came primarily from Republicans, most notably Ronald Reagan. Flood, a Democrat, gave the movement a valuable bipartisan bent. He was by far the most outspoken opponent in Congress, a veritable geyser of fear-mongering about how ceding the canal to Panama would endanger American security and hasten the end of civilization as we know it.
For those of us who were beginning to suspect we were on the wrong side of history the only thing unsettling about Flood was his appearance. With shifty eyes and a comically-coiffed mustache, he looked like a cartoon villain from an old Charlie Chaplin movie. It turns out he was an actual villain. He pled guilty to bribery and resigned his Congressional seat in 1980.
I hadn’t considered a line of succession from Daniel Flood to Donald Trump until Trump celebrated the solstice a couple weeks ago by dredging up Flood’s smears against Panama and spewing them in public appearances and on his “Truth Social” platform for on-line prevarications. You know, just to help red-blooded Americans enjoy a tantrum of grievance and enmity as we rushed to finish our Christmas shopping.
It’s a Trump thing: the constant troll to own the libs while larding the buffet trays with nonsense for the MAGA faithful. And this was a package deal. Trump’s whacks at Panama—suggesting he would reclaim the canal and the Canal Zone if Panama didn’t reduce shipping tolls—shared a news cycle with his musings to buy Greenland (it’s not for sale) and a proposal to annex Canada as the 51st U.S. state. So let’s look at this.
Panamanian students at the Canal Zone border during the deadly and fateful 1964 protests for national sovereignty. (photo courtesy Wikimedia images)
“With what face we can muster….”
The modern history of Panama dates to a colossal 19th century debacle. With the U.S. and France vying to become the builders of a canal across the narrow land bridge connecting the two Americas, the French got the head start. Panama was then a remote province of Colombia and, in 1875, the French Societe Civil syndicate made a pact with the Colombian government giving France the exclusive rights—for 99 years—to carve a canal across the isthmus at Panama. The construction would be funded via the sale of revenue bonds (involving an aggressive, patriotic marketing campaign to the people of France) that would ultimately be redeemed by shipping tolls.
It was an abject disaster. The French (and its “Great Engineer” Ferdinand de Lesseps) had built the Suez Canal in the 1860s and it was this glorious achievement that emboldened them. The Suez—at 120 miles—was more than twice the length of the planned canal route at Panama. But it was through sand. The canal at Panama would have to be hacked through thick jungle amid swarms of mosquitos. The major obstacle was a spine of highly unstable, fractured rock and clay reaching nearly a quarter mile above sea level. This excavation through the cordillera is called Culebra cut. Culebra is the Spanish word for snake. Under the often torrential tropical rain, it was a big trench that constantly filled in on itself, even after the canal was ostensibly completed in 1914. (My grandfather Charlie’s job at Panama—he retired in 1968—was to captain a drill boat in the battles with the unrelenting debris flows intruding into the shipping channel.)
Beset by nearly impassable terrain, hubris, and lethal mosquito-borne diseases, the French abandoned the canal effort in 1889. Obviously, we Americans picked it up, but how we did it doesn’t fit comfortably in a curriculum that polishes the achievement (unquestionably a remarkable integration of medicine, technology, and creative engineering) but glosses over the crass colonialism and coercion.
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Theodore Roosevelt—who ascended to the presidency after the assassination of William McKinley in 1901—was committed to finishing the canal after the French retreated. He would famously brag that he “took the isthmus” [of Panama] while others dithered.
Roosevelt manning a steam shovel for a 1906 publicity photo from Culebra Cut
Roosevelt did so with the essential help of Phillipe Bunau-Varilla, the agent for what remained of the French canal consortium. In short, the sticking issue with the Colombians was the duration and extent of control the U.S. would have over the canal, the Panama railroad and surrounding territory. At an impasse with the Colombian government, Bunau-Varilla stepped forward with the tacit support of Roosevelt and his Secretary of State, John Hay, to ignite Panama’s secession. This was done with clandestine financial support and the clear expectation that the new nation of Panama would be more amenable to U.S. demands.
When the Panamanian rebellion was launched on Nov. 3, 1903 two American gunboats were on hand to help entrap a large contingent of Colombian soldiers at the Atlantic port city of Colon. The gunboats enabled a quick and nearly bloodless capitulation by the Colombians.
From the leader of the Panamanian revolt—Dr. Manuel Amador—Bunau-Varilla had extracted (under duress) a promise that he would be authorized to negotiate with the Americans on behalf of the nascent Panamanian junta. It is still unclear how much of a personal financial stake Bunau-Varilla had in the Panama affair, but part of the deal was to convey $40 million to investors (including Bunau-Varilla and his brother) in the failed French endeavor.
In short order, Bunau-Varilla was in Washington D.C. negotiating with Secretary Hay, ostensibly on behalf of the new Panamanian government. The terms Bunau-Varilla conceded were far more beneficial to the U.S. than those Hay sought in his negotiations with the Colombians years earlier. Bunau-Varilla actually dictated changes to Hay’s draft to enhance the U.S. advantages so as to improve the odds that the U.S. Senate would ratify the treaty.
I could summarize how lopsided the Hay-Bunau-Varilla treaty was but it’s better to read directly from Hay, from a private letter that historian David McCullough excerpts in his authoritative 1977 book, The Path Between the Seas. The new treaty, Hay wrote, is “very satisfactory, vastly advantageous to the United States, and we must confess, with what face we can muster, not so advantageous to Panama…You and I know too well how many points there are in this treaty to which a Panamanian patriot could object.”
Panamanian patriots would have objected, had they been allowed a seat at the table. In what reads like a plot twist from a political thriller, Amador and two other leaders of the new Panamanian government were steaming toward New York to participate in the negotiations. Hay and Bunau-Varilla were both aware of that, and took care to sign the treaty just a few hours before the Panama delegation arrived in the nation’s capitol. When Bunau-Varilla told the contingent it was too late to edit the treaty, one of Amador’s companions reportedly smacked the French agent across the face. What became known as the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty gave the U.S. rights “in perpetuity” to control the Canal Zone as if “it were the sovereign” and “to the entire exclusion of the exercise by the Republic Panama of any such sovereign rights, power or authority.”
The U.S.S. Nashville, one of a pair of American gunboats that arrived just in time to ensure the success of Panama’s separation from Colombia in late 1903.
Americans, and especially the vast majority of us “Zonians,” were either oblivious to the egregious power play or just fine with it. Not so the Panamanians who, understandably, were quite familiar with the manipulations that forfeited Panamanian sovereignty “in perpetuity.” (Of course, the Colombians were equally aggrieved by the use of the U.S. military to sever Panama from Colombia.)
The flag pole and the riots
Panamanian resentment eventually spilled over in January 1964, provoked by American students at Balboa High School (my alma mater, class of ’75) who, let’s just say, reacted poorly to a half-baked plan by U.S. officials to ease tension over the long-standing sovereignty issue. In a scrum involving both U.S. and Panamanian students, a venerable Panamanian flag carried by the protestors was damaged, touching off several days of riots. Before it was over, 20 Panamanians and four U.S. soldiers had been killed. The Panamanians who perished are memorialized with a Martyr’s Day national holiday (January 9th).
The violence forced Americans to choose between two narratives. One was framed by the John Birch Society and other right wing alarmists who cast the conflict as a communist-inspired uprising aimed a seizing control of the canal. The other acknowledged the legitimacy of the Panamanian quest for justice and sovereignty and how important it was not just to relations with Panama but Latin America as a whole. The red scare was nonsense. The underlying contradiction was inescapable. I have no doubt that many of the American students who rallied around the Stars & Stripes at Balboa were earnest in their patriotic fervor. I also have no doubt that most were motivated by self-interest, to preserve our families’ stakes in what amounted to a colonial occupation—the very sort of occupation that provoked the American revolution.
My little brother Tommy releasing his fastball circa 1972. The large building behind the scoreboard is Balboa High School. (Donald Connor photograph)
I learned this the hard way. One of my first paying jobs was to locate Panamanians who’d entered the zone to play tennis and evict them from the canal company’s tennis courts. It was not enjoyable work. But one evening it led to a priceless schooling from a young Panamanian lawyer while we were waiting for the military police and their dogs to resolve the argument of whether I had the authority to bounce him. On another day, notebook in hand, I went to the high school to cover an anti-treaty rally. In a hallway outside the rally I happened upon my former history teacher, Mrs. Mahler. She was deeply upset; on the verge of tears at what was unfolding.
“Might does not make right,” Mrs. Mahler said.
The tragedy of the 1964 violence forced Americans to choose between two narratives. One was framed by the John Birch Society and other right-wing alarmists who cast the conflict as a communist-inspired uprising to seize control of the canal. The other acknowledged the legitimacy of the Panamanian quest for sovereignty and how important it was not just to relations with Panama but Latin America as a whole. The underlying contradiction was inescapable. Opposition to a new treaty was driven by the benefits of what amounted to a colonial occupation—the very sort of occupation that provoked the American revolution.
Shortly after I got to Washington State University in 1977 I went with my roommate (a fellow football player from the Canal Zone) to check out an off-campus rally to protest the then-new Panama Canal Treaty that would transfer the canal and Canal Zone to Panama at noon on December 31, 1999. The red, white and blue event was utterly bizarre, my first experience at an extreme, right-wing gathering. It started with the introduction of a young woman dressed like Lady Liberty, who sang patriotic songs. The keynote speaker was an elderly California rancher who said giving the canal to Panama wouldn’t work because his Mexican ranch hands were lazy and incompetent.
My roommate and I were so startled by the open racism we couldn’t even look at each other, let alone speak as he drove us back to campus. As a practical matter—one even Henry Kissinger emphasized that same year--the failure of the U.S. to rectify history in response to the legitimate Panamanian grievances would seriously undermine American diplomacy, not just in Latin America but worldwide.
In the days following his Christmas tirade, President-elect Trump was fact-checked by several journals. I could go down the list but there’s an indignity to this, like having to constantly clean up after a screwball neighbor who perniciously enjoys letting his dogs crap on your lawn. Panama’s president, Jose Raul Mulino, swiftly rebutted Trump’s claims including his assertion that the U.S. would have recourse to reclaim the canal. To which Trump fired back: “We’ll see about that!”
To my eye, there was one Trump claim in particular that reaffirms his moral emptiness. In an interview with Tucker Carlson Trump’s voice buckled with indignation as he asserted that 35,000 Americans lost their lives during the canal construction. In a Christmas Day post on his “Truth Social” platform, he upped the number to 38,000. That is—by orders of magnitude—wildly untrue. There is no basis for it whatseover. And it was plainly ginned up to claim—baselessly—that Panama is morally indebted to the U.S.
While perhaps 25,000 people did succumb during the canal’s construction, the vast majority were French, Spaniards, and West Indian laborers who lost their lives during the failed French effort. An educated guess by acclaimed author Matthew Parker is that approximately 300 Americans died during the U.S. construction era, the death toll considerably reduced in the early 20th century due to advances in battling mosquito-borne diseases.
But this is the nature of the Trump schtick, the verbal artillery of fear, grievance and alleged victimization that spreads like wildfire and disinforms the faithful.
The work for justice and reconciliation is not nearly so viral, visceral or cinematic. It exists but it doesn’t lead the news. Here I need to give credit to many of my Balboa High School classmates who’ve given countless hours of joyful work to fostering American-Panamanian reconciliation.
I’ll leave you with a couple postcards.
My sister Betsy (I have four sisters) returned to Panama in the late 1990s and, for a while, worked as an eco-tourism guide for the Panamanian government. Her new residence was not far from the tree-lined route the Panamanian students took when they walked to Balboa High School for the 1964 protest. She was there on the last day of 1999 when, this time, a new parade of Panamanians entered the Zone, this time for good. They were laughing and celebrating, tears of joy mixing with the tropical rain on their faces. And my sister’s face too.
Betsy described it beautifully in an email she sent. As I read her message at my desk in Spokane, I shed tears as well, not just for the joy of the Panamanians, but for our happiness as well—the kind of happiness you can feel when your country keeps its word and (finally) does a hard thing for the right reasons.
Finally, thanks to my sister Jean, I learned about a highlight from this year’s Rose Parade in Pasadena. It was the colorful, exuberant and vibrantly inspiring Panamanian dance troupe BAHERLO. Ultimately, and God-willing, this is where we’re headed. This is what it’s all about.
—tjc
