This article explores the history of the Panama Canal, from its construction by the US to its eventual handover to Panama. It delves into the unique lifestyle of the 'Zonians,' American workers who resided in the canal zone, and examines the recent resurgence of US interest in the waterway under President Trump's administration. Concerns about China's influence and the possibility of the US reclaiming control are discussed.
They called themselves the Zonians. For the best part of a century they carved out their own little piece of paradise in Central America, arriving from the United States to manage and operate and defend the Panama Canal . They lived in a narrow strip of land called the Zone, bordering both sides of the strategically valuable waterway.
Leaders had been eyeing the Isthmus of Panama since the 1500s, when Spanish ruler Charles V ordered a survey of a potential waterway that might offer a military edge over the Portuguese. Centuries later, it was navigable only by mule and canoe until, in the mid-1800s, the US built a railway. In 1869, French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps, who had delivered the Suez Canal through Egypt, agreed to replicate the feat in 1881 in Panama .
‘By the mid-1960s, there began to be a consensus among American elites that the Canal Zone had to end.’After World War II, Panamanian resentment grew over what they viewed as US colonialism on their soil. There were riots in 1959 and more that turned deadly in 1964, when 22 Panamanians and four US soldiers were killed. “By the mid-1960s, there began to be a consensus among American elites that the Canal Zone had to end,” says Greene. Theroux described a half-hearted “Save Our Canal Day” protest.
China’s President Xi Jinping with his wife, Peng Liyuan, and Panama’s then president, Juan Carlos Varela, and his wife, Lorena Castillo, at the Cocoli Locks in the Panama Canal in 2018.“It’s a very large, publicly listed company, so it is likely to have a lot more independence from the Chinese government than other smaller ones,” says Carla Martinez Machain, a professor of political science at the University at Buffalo, who conducted research in Panama in 2018.
China is Peru’s largest trading partner. “I know that Chinese feel comfortable in Peru,” says Creutzfeldt, who heads China’s Confucius Institute in Leipzig. “Partly because Peru has had migration from China since the 1820s.”
Geopolitics PANAMA CANAL ZONIANS US INTERESTS CHINA DONALD TRUMP
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