Assistance to Panama aims to ensure that Panama remains a safe, prosperous and democratic country that continues to collaborate closely with the United States. The United States and Panama work together to promote common interests, including improving citizen security and strengthening the rule of law. Our countries cooperate in many ways, including the fight against illegal drug trafficking and other criminal activities, as well as the promotion of economic, democratic and social development. In 1906, Roosevelt resolved the issue by siding with chief engineer John Frank Stevens, who advocated a sluice channel. The plan finally approved by Congress was similar in all essential respects to that proposed by Lépinay but rejected by Lesseps.
The proposal included a huge earthen dam across the Chagres River in Gatún. The dam created what was then the largest artificial lake in the world (Lake Gatún) and, at the same time, it controlled a considerable part of the Chagres River. The lake was so large that it could hold most of the river even in the phase of flood. Perhaps most importantly, the artificial lake formed more than 20 miles (32 km) of the canal route.
When tropical fevers, yellow fever and malaria, in particular, had decimated the ranks of French workers, with an estimated loss of more than 20,000 lives, those responsible for American initiatives were determined to prevent the same thing from happening again. American medical personnel knew how diseases were transmitted and how they could be controlled, and by 1906 the Canal Zone was already safer, allowing serious work to resume. Even taking those precautions, accidents and illnesses claimed the lives of 5,609 workers during the U.S. effort.
At times, more than 40,000 people worked on the project, mostly workers from the West Indian Islands of Barbados, Martinique and Guadeloupe, although many qualified engineers, administrators and tradesmen came from the United States. Despite all these challenges, the canal opened to traffic on August 15, 1914, more than three decades after the start of the first attempt to build the canal. It remains the greatest engineering feat that has been attempted so far. The channel's international status is also affected by two previous treaties. In the 1901 Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, the United Kingdom renounced its interest in an Isthmic Canal.
And, while the United States was free to take any action to protect a canal, they agreed that there would be “total equality in the treatment of ships of all nations with respect to “traffic conditions and rates”. In the Thomson-Urrutia Treaty of 1914, Colombian state-owned ships were exempted from paying tolls in exchange for Colombia's recognition of Panama's autonomy. The Americans continued to manage it and the military bases were still here, so security was still in the hands of the Americans, but now it was Panamanian territory. The governor was ex officio director and president of the Panama Canal Company, a U.S.
corporate entity whose directors were responsible for operating and maintaining the canal in a business manner. There were many conflicts that led to massacres. Soldiers killed students while trying to raise a Panamanian flag on the Canal. In 1936, President Franklin Roosevelt relinquished his rights as a protectorate to intervene in Panama's internal affairs, but he retained leasing rights and control of the canal.
So Panamanians began with the great hope that this would place Panama at the center of world trade, but also with the resentment of having achieved this victory at the cost of ceding sovereignty over the Canal itself. Under the Neutrality Treaty, the United States and Panama guarantee the canal's permanent neutrality, with tolls and non-discriminatory access for all nations; U. In it, the United States guaranteed Panama's independence against Colombian military action, obtaining negotiating conditions and a 10-mile-wide canal zone through its new protectorate. The treaty recognized Panama as territorial sovereignty in the former Canal Zone, but granted the United States the right to continue to administer, operate and maintain the canal and to use the lands and waters necessary for those purposes during a 20-year transition period covered by the agreement.
More information about Panama is available on the Panama page and in other State Department publications and other sources listed at the end of this fact sheet. The Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty irritated the sensibilities of Panamanians from the moment it was signed, in 1903. The United States established diplomatic relations with Panama in 1903, after its separation from Colombia. The Panama Canal was an integral part of the expansion of U.S. global power at the dawn of the 20th century. It ended all previous treaties between the United States and Panama relating to the canal and abolished the Canal Zone.
In December 1989, after a failed internal coup attempt, the United States intervened militarily in Panama to arrest its president, General Manuel Noriega, who was involved in drug cartel activities. The Congress, which authorized the purchase of the assets of the French company and the construction of a canal, provided that a satisfactory treaty could be negotiated with Colombia (of which Panama was then an integral part). The neutrality clause of the Torrijos-Carter treaty states that the United States has the right to intervene in Panama's internal affairs if the security of the canal is threatened.
