Even though our apartment is in an area under gentrification in Panama City’s old town it is on the edge of the nice part of the tourist center.
In a matter of three blocks we walk from the run down section…
…to the rather more fancy part of old town, restored painted and paved.
It’s quite safe, most of it, as there are cops everywhere and I’d like to think they will actually protect and serve should the need arise even in the grubbier areas which are unsightly.
Around here there is no doubt about safety as tourists are the desired currency in the nice part of town.
Foreigners are all over Casco Viejo, and not just Americans. These two Germans were pondering their options on the edge of Independence Square:
The metropolitan cathedral basilica built in 1796:
The more modern sport of souvenir photography by phone.
From the ground the decorations look like abalone shells.
I was here to visit the Canal Museum. As we currently have no air conditioned van in which to park Rusty we took it in turns to visit. Layne came Friday and I came Saturday while the other of us house sat the chief security officer.
The guard frisked me at the door somewhat brusquely and unceremoniously. I made cheerful conversation thanking him for welcoming me to the museum.
In my head there was an irony in visiting this museum as the canal itself is suffering from an imbalance of water and shipping is getting stalled and backed up. Angry Panamanians flew this flag at US Canal Zone schools in a 1964 protest demanding sovereignty. I find “total sovereignty” an empty slogan when the country was recently shut down by a six week general strike protesting corruption.
Sanitary Officer William Gorgas to me is one of the great heroes of the canal saga. He was given the task of figuring out how to deal with yellow fever which killed so many workers in Panama some people thought the much desired canal could never be built. Gorgas traveled all over seeking a solution and eventually met Dr Carlos Findlay in Cuba who had figured out mosquitoes transmitted the disease.
His vigorous program of vector control -ie cleaning up mosquito breeding grounds- saved lives and saved the canal construction project. 25,000 workers had died during the French decades and the early Smerican years before Gorgas stopped the slaughter. People nowadays forget yellow fever was constantly killing people in Key West and even today Layne and I are vaccinated among other things against yellow fever for this journey.
The story of the canal construction is a mish mash of corruption incompetence unsupported enthusiasm and hard work.
The French got to grips with what had been a centuries old dream of connecting the two oceans. They had trouble deciding if they wanted to repeat the Suez Canal experience or if they wanted to build a canal with locks to raise and lower the water levels. The competition was intense and political bribery was also used to influence an expensive outcome.
The problem was the mountainous rocky terrain which eventually convinced the engineers the canal would need locks to raise ships 75 feet to cross the center of the isthmus.
At the time Panama was a province of Colombia. Ironically Panama had petitioned Colombia to admit Panama as a province to protect Panamanians from the greed of Central Americans struggling to form new states following independence from Spain.
The trouble was Colombia lost interest in its distant province and when foreigners came asking to build a canal Colombia said no. So the US plotted to get what it wanted which was control of the western Caribbean after the Spanish American War of 1898 gave it control of the eastern Caribbean.
Allied with some wealthy Panamanian families in 1903 the US got what it wanted. Two weeks after declaring independence from Colombia the Republic of Panana ceded in perpetuity sovereignty of a strip of land across its middle and the US planned to build a canal there.
The US paid 40 million dollars to buy the French canal interests and gave Panama just ten million for the sovereignty of the zone. In 1912 President Taft ordered 40,000 Panamanians deported from the Zone, 14 % of Panama’s population, as they weren’t wanted on US soil.
Thousands of workers were imported to build the canal from all over the world. They were segregated by race and skin color and nationality and wages were decidedly unequal. You were a gold employee (educated and white and most likely American) or you were a silver employee on a sliding scale of wages depending on your race. It was not pretty to modern eyes.
One thing that struck me about the really very comprehensive displays was the life they showed really does resemble what you will see if you check out old photos of construction of the Oversea Railroad. Workers housing, steam dredges and so forth were all deployed in Florida in ways similar to those seen earlier in Panama.
The museum is very comprehensive and shows in detail the construction of the cabal as well as life in the zone and the politics surrounding it before during and after the handover in 1999.
The fundamental flaw in the creation of the canal zone was the fact, perhaps unavoidable, that it split the country in two. Not surprisingly that loss of essential sovereignty could never be overlooked by Panamanians.
White Americans lived in luxury their every need taken care of inside the zone which Panamanians were not allowed to visit. There were opening hours in the border fence to allow Panamanians to cross the canal on roads built across the top of the locks but generally they were kept out of what they considered their own land and it rankled.
The canal brought huge wealth to Panama and in the run up to the hand over Panamanians at last got access to well paying jobs. China now controls the container ports at each end of the canal and American control is a bitter colonial memory.
US military bases are gone as is also the careful engineering of water powered locks. In building new extra large locks to handle extra large ships Panana has upset the balance of water storage and water use. It’s convenient to blame climate change for water shortages to operate the locks designed 120 years ago but despite retention ponds the new lock stem still uses more water than was ever planned.
I can see the injustice of the zone as the leaders who founded Panana in the US led coup really had no choice when the US made its demands.
It might have been better geopolitically to build the ruminated Nicaragua canal as an extra territorial zone there wouldn’t have split a country in two.
History has moved on and those sorts of ruminations don’t do much good but a part of me is sorry to see the zone dismantled and the canal starting to fail.
There is of course a lot of politics in the museum and patriotism too now that there is total sovereignty. The hand over was the right thing to do no doubt.
And walking the halls made me think quite a bit. I miss the sense of the possible that burgeoned in that era in the US, the sense of being capable, of making dreams happen. I hope we find our way back to enthusiasm, self confidence and know how such as was demonstrated by the construction of an impossible canal.
There was an indigenous dance underway by Kuna Indians in Independence Square when I walked out. I stopped and watched for a while.
We met at a pet friendly Chinese eatery, suitable I suppose to celebrate their New Year. Rusty was excited to see me and my wife was ready to order.
Pink steamed buns were a first.
And then home. Our neighbor has a door mat asking “What hour do you think this is to come home?”
Sunday night we plan to fly to Cartagena de las Indias. GANNET2 supposedly arrives next Friday. South America beckons at last, and I can’t wait.
A last look at our neighborhood on Rusty’s Sunday morning walkabout.
