Control of the Panama Canal, once a central issue of the US presidential campaign for Ronald Reagan and an animated theme for people from film legend John Wayne to an invisible US-born Canadian senator, appears to have returned as a hot button topic in Washington. .
President-elect Donald Trump has let loose on the campaign trail and during the transition with a series of complaints, sometimes inaccurate, about Panama's management of the main corridor that helps ships navigate between oceans the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean in much less time. than otherwise.
“Approximately 40 percent of U.S.-bound vessel trade goes through the Panama Canal, so it is in the nation's commercial interest to have the Panama Canal operating smoothly,” said Dennis M. Hogan, lecturer history at Harvard University, to CBC. The Stream.
The US controlled access to the canal for decades until then President Jimmy Carter signed treaties in the late 1970s that turned it over to Panama in 1999.
Trump was asked Tuesday at a news conference if he could promise as commander-in-chief that he would not involve the US military in any dispute with Panama over the canal.
“I'm not going to promise him that. You might have to do something,” Trump said, without elaborating.
The ruling comes as Panamanians on Thursday once again celebrate Martyrs' Day, which followed riots and exchanges of gunfire for several days starting on January 9, 1964, which killed 21 Panamanians and four soldiers of the SA. On the same day, a state funeral will be held in Washington for Carter, who died on December 29.
According to historiansSpanish explorers from the 16th century advised that the European country's monarchy wanted a canal where Panama is now based. The alternative involved traveling an additional 11,000 kilometers around southern South America.
France, under wing developer of Egypt's Suez Canalhe began building the canal in the 1880s, but was unable to complete it. According to some estimatesperhaps 25,000 people died in the stop-and-start construction process of the canal, from accidents and tropical diseases.
Panama, declaring independence from Colombia in 1903, allowed the US to finish construction. Call from that time the US gave “all the rights, power and authority within the zone referred to … if it were the sovereign of the territory in which the lands and the those waters are located until the exercise is carried out by the Republic of Panama as a whole. sovereign rights, power or authority.”
Protests arose from time to time over perceived treaty violations, and the 1964 incident caused a human toll and millions in damage. It was said that the riots arose when the Panamanian flag was not allowed to fly next to the American flag at a high school in the canal zone.
The president of the day, Lyndon Johnson, stopped the issue in talks with his Panamanian counterpart, but the difficult situation only changed during the Carter presidency.
The Stream11:25Trump threatens to take back the Panama Canal
US president Donald Trump is threatening to regain control of the Panama Canal, but Panama's president says it is not for sale. Dennis M. Hogan has studied this vital artery of global trade for years, he describes how it has once again become a center of geopolitical tension.
Hot ideas in the 70s
Reagan took up the issue regularly as part of his presidential campaigns in 1976 and 1980, advising against abdication of authority.
“When it comes to the canal, we bought it, we paid for it, it's ours,” he said at one point.
Some of the world's conservatives had similar feelings. For example, a college history professor led the group Georgians Against the Panama Canal Treaty. That professor – Newt Gingrich – won a seat in the US Congress in 1978 and later became Speaker of the House.
Others disagreed with Reagan, including leading conservative thinker William F. Buckley in a televised debate, and Reagan's old Hollywood acquaintance, John Wayne, in a private letter.
“I will show you a point with (damned by God) in the treaty where you misinform people,” Wayne wrote to Reagan.
Wayne, whose first wife was Panamanian, accused Reagan of not being “as thorough in your review of this deal as you say … Wayne signed with his nickname, “Duke. “
The True Grit star and staunch Republican also write to Carter on the case, signing “Faithful Providence.”
WATCH l Reagan debates curator William F. Buckley on the Panama Canal:
'We stole it fair and square'
On Capitol Hill, politicians had been commenting on the issue for several years.
During his campaign for a Senate seat in 1976, Vancouver-born SI Hayakawa, then a US-based college administrator, weighed in.
“I think we should keep it, we stole it fair and square,” he said.
Hayakawa later tried to say it was just a joke, and eventually changed his tune. He was among the senators who, in a pair of votes in late 1977 and early 1978, helped ensure that the contracts signed with Carter and Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos.
The first treaty, which continues in perpetuity, gives the US the right to act to ensure that the canal remains open and secure. The second stated that the US would turn the canal over to Panama on December 31, 1999, and it was terminated on that date. There was no provision for reopening.
Second US invasion of Panama?
Carter said the deals would see Panama move from a “passive and sometimes deeply disappointed bystander to an active participant interested in having their vital interests served by a well-run canal.”
That relationship was confirmed more than a decade later when the US invaded Panama in 1989 to seize leader and drug trafficker Manuel Noriegaan operation that was condemned by the United Nations and cost hundreds of lives, mostly Panamanian.
Former channel administrator Jorge Luis Quijano to the Associated Press last month that the Carter-Torrijos Treaties contain “no clause of any kind” allowing the US to take back control.
Benjamin Gedan, director of the Latin American Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, agreed, speaking to the same revolution.
“There is very little room, without a second US invasion of Panama, to regain control of the Panama Canal in practical terms,” Gedan said.
Trump has raised several complaints about the administration of the canal, accusing Panama of imposing “exorbitant prices” on US commercial and military vessels.
“If we can bring in some facts, Mr. Trump's claim that Panama is gouging Americans is baseless. All vessels, regardless of flag, pay the same rate as by tonnage and type,” said the Wall Street Journal editorial board. wrote last month.
The president-elect has also accused Chinese troops 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,” said the President of Panama, Jose Raul Mulino, at the end of last month in response.
The Panama Canal Authority is responsible for the canal as a whole through a subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based holding company that has long managed two ports on the entrances to the Caribbean and the Pacific, the Hogan arrangement Harvard characterized it as a “fairly commercial deal.”
The US and Panama under their new president earlier this year engaged in discussions which was partly aimed at stopping the flow of migrants from South America or the Caribbean who reached the South American border after crossing the dangerous Darien Gap in Panama.
Now it seems that the Panamanians may have to have difficult discussions with the new US president on a topic that they thought had been settled a long time ago.
