Control of the Panama Canal, which was once a key issue of Ronald Reagan’s US presidential campaign and a lively topic for people from film legend John Wayne to an unlikely Canadian-born US parliament member, appeared to be back as a hot topic in Washington. .
President-elect Donald Trump has acquitted himself on the campaign trail and during the transition period with a series of complaints, sometimes inaccurate, about Panama’s management of a key passage that helps ships move between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in the least time-consuming way. than it would have been.
“About 40 percent of the container trade destined for the US goes through the Panama Canal, so it’s in the nation’s commercial interest to have a well-functioning Panama Canal,” Dennis M. Hogan, a professor of history at Harvard University, told CBC’s. In the meantime.
The US controlled access to the canal for decades until president Jimmy Carter signed agreements in the late 1970s that finally turned it over to Panama in 1999.
Trump was asked Tuesday at a press conference if he could guarantee that as commander-in-chief he would not involve the U.S. military in any conflict with Panama over the canal.
“I’m not going to commit to that. You might have to do something,” Trump said, without elaborating.
The escalation of the issue comes as Panamanians on Thursday will once again celebrate Martyrs’ Day, which has sparked riots and gunfire for several days since Jan. 9. 1964, 21 Panamanians and four US soldiers died. On the same day, a state funeral will be held in Washington for Carter, who died on December 29.
According to historians, Spanish explorers of the 16th century advised the European empire of the desirability of a canal through which Panama was established. Another involved traveling an additional 11,000 kilometers around the southern tip of South America.
France, under the founder of the Suez Canal in Egypt, began to build this canal in the 1880s, but was unable to complete it. According to some estimates, 25,000 people may have died during the construction of the canal, due to accidents and tropical diseases.
Panama, declaring independence from Colombia in 1903, allowed the US to finish construction. The declaration at the time gave the US “all the rights, powers and authority within the said territory … if it were the sovereign of the territory where the said lands and waters are located without counting all the uses of the Republic of Panama.” or any such sovereign rights, power or authority.”
Grievances arose from time to time over perceived violations of the treaty, and an incident in 1964 resulted in deaths and millions in damage. The riots are said to have started when the Panamanian flag was not allowed to fly next to the American flag at a high school in the canal area.
The president at the time, Lyndon Johnson, resolved the issue in talks with his Panamanian counterpart, but the tense situation changed during the Carter presidency.
In the meantime11:25Trump is threatening to take over the Panama Canal
The president-elect of the United States, Donald Trump, threatens to regain control of the Panama Canal, but the president of Panama says that it is not for sale. Dennis M. Hogan has studied this critical vein of global trade for years, explaining how it has once again become a center of international tension.
Hot ideas in the ’70s
Reagan repeatedly took up the issue as part of his 1976 and 1980 presidential campaigns, advocating for repeal of the mandate.
“When it comes to this canal, we bought it, we paid for it, it is ours,” he said at one point.
Other grassroots people had similar feelings. For example, a college history professor led the group 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.
Others disagreed with Reagan, including leading intellectual William F. Buckley in a television interview, and Reagan’s old Hollywood friend John Wayne, in a private letter.
“I’ll show you a point [God damned] point to the agreement when you mislead the people,” Wayne wrote to Reagan.
Wayne, whose first wife was a Panamanian, accused Reagan of “not going as far as reviewing this agreement as you say or … Wayne signed with his nickname, ‘Duke.’
I True Grit star and staunch Republican also wrote to Carter on the matter, signing it “Sincere Dissent.”
WATCH l Reagan talks to William F. Buckley leading the Panama Canal:
‘We stole it good and square’
On Capitol Hill, politicians had been offering opinions on the issue for years.
While campaigning for a Senate seat in 1976, Vancouver-born SI Hayakawa, then a director of a US-based college, gained weight.
“I think we should have kept it, stolen it the right way,” he said.
Hayakawa later tried to say that he was only joking, and eventually changed his tune. He was among the senators who helped, with two votes in late 1977 and early 1978, to ensure the passage of the accords signed by Carter and the leader of Panama, Omar Torrijos.
The first agreement, which is permanent, gives the US the right to take action to ensure that the canal remains open and secure. The second one said the US would transfer the canal to Panama on December 31, 1999, and it was terminated on that date. There was no provision for reopening.
A second US invasion of Panama?
Carter said the deals would see Panama change from “a passive and sometimes deeply resentful bystander to an active and interested partner whose interests will be captured by a well-functioning canal.”
That relationship was tested more than a decade later when the US invaded Panama in 1989 to capture the leader and suspected drug trafficker Manuel Noriega, an operation condemned by the United Nations and costing hundreds of lives, mostly Panamanians.
Former canal administrator Jorge Luis Quijano told The Associated Press last month that “there is no clause of any kind” in the Carter-Torrijos accords allowing the US to take back control.
Benjamin Gedan, director of the Latin America Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, speaking to the same center, agreed.
“There is very little room for movement, absent a second US invasion of Panama, to regain control of the Panama Canal in a practical way,” said Gedan.
Trump has voiced many complaints about the management of the canal, accusing Panama of charging “exorbitant prices” to US commercial and military vessels.
“If we can present a few facts, Mr. Trump’s claim that Panama eats Americans is unfounded. Every ship, regardless of its flag, pays the same price according to tons and type,” the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal wrote last month.
The president-elect also accused the Chinese military of operating the canal illegally.
“There are no Chinese soldiers in the canal for God’s love, the world is free to visit this canal,” Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino said late last month in response.
The Panama Canal Authority is responsible for the canal’s overall operation even though it is part of a Hong Kong-based holding company that has long managed two ports at the gateway to the Caribbean and the Pacific, an arrangement Harvard’s Hogan characterized as a “typical commercial contract.”
The US and Panama under its new president earlier this year entered into talks aimed at stemming the flow of migrants from South America or the Caribbean who arrived at the southern US border after passing through Panama’s treacherous Darien Gap.
Now it appears that the people of Panama may have to enter into difficult discussions with the new president of the United States on a topic that they may have thought was settled long ago.
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