Panama fever (47 page)

On the same day that Hay composed this draft, the commission of Amador and Boyd set sail from Panama. They were due to arrive in New York seven days later. With them they carried orders for Bunau-Varilla that he should “adjust” a treaty, but that “all clauses of this Treaty will be discussed previously with the delegates of the Junta, M. Amador and Boyd.” That Bunau-Varilla had not been explicitly told this by cable shows how, overestimating his importance, the junta feared antagonizing its “friend” in Washington; and also that they never suspected that he would move with, as he put it, such “lightning rapidity of action.”

On Friday, November 13, in a hastily assembled uniform of the official representative of Panama, Bunau-Varilla was presented to Roosevelt. To witness the history in the making, and the de jure recognition of the new republic, the Frenchman's son went along too. After formal statements, Roosevelt took Bunau-Varilla's arm and asked him, “What do you think, Mr. Minister, of those people who print that we have made the Revolution of Panama together?” Bunau-Varilla replied with a rush of satisfactory rhetoric about “calumny” and “the mist of mendacity.”

As he left the reception, Bunau-Varilla, aware that Amador was now only four days away, gave Hay another nudge. “For two years you have had difficulties in negotiating with the Colombians,” he said. “Remember that ten days ago the Panamanians were still Colombians … You have now before you a Frenchman. If you wish to take advantage of a period of clearness in Panaman diplomacy, do it now! When I leave the spirit of Bogota will return.”

In fact, Hay was operating at breakneck speed. A week later he would write to his daughter, “As for your poor old dad, they are working him nights and Sundays. I have never, I think, been so constantly and actively employed as during the last fortnight.” He rushed his treaty round the departments and had a revised draft with Bunau-Varilla by late on November 15.

Bunau-Varilla was at one with Hay on the need to placate the Morgan party in the Senate—he even vainly tried to “convert” the Alabama senator—but he had to object to the inclusion of the terminal cities in the proposed U.S. zone. Panama City was, after all, the seat of government of the new republic. But he offered instead the right to expropriate property in Panama City or Colón on public health grounds and to enforce sanitary arrangements therein. And to see off any possible objection about the lack of U.S. control, he went even further than Hay had dared, adding this amendment: “The Republic of Panama grants to the United States all the rights, power and authority within the zone mentioned … which the United States would possess and exercise if it were the sovereign of the territory … to the entire exclusion of the exercise by the Republic of Panama of any such sovereign rights, power or authority.” The “inflammatory, unnecessary and offensive” clause goes to show how little Bunau-Varilla weighed Panamanian dignity against pleasing the U.S. Senate.

Within twenty-fours hours, helped by his hired lawyer Frank Pavey, Bunau-Varilla had completed his new draft and was on his way round to Hay's house. But finding it in darkness he returned early the next morning and delivered the treaty. That same morning, November 17, he learned that Amador and Boyd had landed at New York.

Then, yet another happy accident: Boyd and Amador were met off the boat by Cromwell's agent Roger Farnham. Cromwell himself was due back from Paris later that day. Could they wait, as he wanted to speak to them? Aware of the lawyer's power and influence, the Panamanians delayed going straight to Washington, and met Cromwell later that day, and were persuaded to appoint him Panama's financial agent.

By coincidence or not, it gave Bunau-Varilla a precious further twenty-four hours to close the deal. But there was no word from Hay as the Frenchman waited nervously in his hotel suite for the entire day. At last, at 10:00 p.m., Bunau-Varilla sent a note to the secretary of state's house. He would tell the Panamanians to stay in New York, he wrote, but had to sign the treaty the next day. Hay replied immediately, inviting Bunau-Varilla to come that night.

When they met, Bunau-Varilla again urged speed. Hay was happy with Bunau-Varilla's draft, but knew that what looked like a great deal for his country might not look so good to an actual Panamanian. As he would write to Senator Spooner, the new treaty was “very satisfactory, vastly advantageous to the United States, and, we must confess, with what face we can muster, not so advantageous to Panama… You and I know too well how many points there are in this treaty to which a Panamanian patriot could object.” If the Hay-Herrán deal had been unfair on Colombia, the new treaty was many times worse for Panama, as Hay later admitted.

At lunchtime the next day, Hay consulted with the attorney general and the secretary of war, Elihu Root, and in a frantic afternoon the final drafts were drawn up in the State Department. At 4:30, the two Panamanians, blissfully unaware of what was going on, boarded a train for Washington, but at six o'clock Bunau-Varilla arrived at Hay's office to sign the treaty. To the Frenchman's delight, waiting reporters addressed him as “Your Excellency.” At 6:40 p.m., the treaty was signed, with a pen owned by Cromwell and ink from Abraham Lincoln's inkwell. “We separated not without emotion,” Bunau-Varilla later wrote, “having fixed the destiny, so long in the balance, of the great French conception.”

At 11:00 p.m., Bunau-Varilla was at Union Station in Washington to meet Amador and Boyd. As he later recounted, “I greeted the travellers with the happy news! ‘The Republic of Panama is henceforth under the protection of the United States. I have just signed the Canal Treaty.’”

The Panamanians were stunned. According to Bunau-Varilla, “Amador was positively overcome by the ordeal” and nearly fainted. Neither did Boyd respond as he should have done to “a happy event which ought to have filled their hearts with joy.” In fact, having been at first disbelieving, the Panamanians were soon furious, all the more so when they learned the terms of the treaty. Reportedly Bunau-Varilla was spat at by Boyd. They realized they had been betrayed. “Cherish no illusion, Mr. Boyd,” Bunau-Varilla said when the Panamanian suggested that fresh talks could be had on various points. “The negotiations are closed.”

Amador and Boyd did try to reopen talks two days later, but without success. In the meantime, Bunau-Varilla attempted to bully them into ratifying the treaty there and then, without further recourse to Panama, at one point pressing a pen into the hand of Amador, who reacted by angrily hurling it across the room. Bunau-Varilla then cabled Panama offering immediate credits of up to $100,000 from the bank of the House of JP Morgan if they ordered Amador and Boyd to ratify. Everyone knew that General Rafael Reyes would soon be in Washington and would offer pretty much anything to get Panama and the canal back for Colombia. Although Reyes's mission would prove fruitless, in spite of the high-profile support of ex-president Cleveland, it provided Bunau-Varilla the leverage to force super-quick ratification of his treaty by Panama. In fact, the junta agreed to sign on November 26, before they had even seen the treaty, which was on its way by boat, wrapped in a Panama flag and sealed with the family crest of John Bigelow.

At 11:30 on the morning of December 2, less than twenty-four hours after being brought to Panama City, the treaty was ratified. There cannot have been time to make a Spanish translation of the English text or to make copies for distribution to the nine men due to confirm the agreement. The likelihood is that the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty was not even read by the signatories of the ratification decree, though the treaty would reduce their new country to little more than vassalage.

At first, the signing was welcomed in Panama. Then, as the rush and adrenaline of the last month subsided, a new view emerged. “What do you think of the canal treaty?” Mallet wrote to his wife soon afterward. “Here the people are disgusted, and one of the prime movers in the independence movement, was heard to say
‘nos han vendido’
[We've been sold out’]. Well, the Yankees have got them at last, and they have been foolish enough here to think those hardened and practical people were governed more by sentiment than by their interests.” Soon a view solidified that national rights had been signed away by a foreigner, and that perhaps Panamanians had merely changed an impotent overlord for a powerful and determined one. The brief honeymoon period was over, even before the first spade load of the American canal had been dug.

n spite of all the efforts made to contrive a treaty to the liking of the U.S. Senate, the debate and division there were fierce, ironically in part as an embarrassed reaction to the meanness of the deal. The treaty, one senator pointed out, gave the “United States more than anybody in this Chamber ever dreamed of having… we have never had a concession so extraordinary in character as this. In fact, it sounds very much like we wrote it ourselves.” Most of the opposition, however, was directed at the way Roosevelt had behaved toward Colombia. Some argued that the president had effectively declared war, something only Congress was authorized to do. Democratic senator Thomas Patterson of Colorado declared that the Canal Zone was “stolen in the most bare-faced manner from Colombia.” “The president has denied with some heat that he had any complicity in this business,” said Senator Edward Carmack. “He does not conceal the fact that he desired this insurrection. He does not conceal the fact that he intended to aid it if it occurred, and he can not conceal the fact that he did aid it.” There had been a lot of talk, Carmack continued, about the people of the Isthmus “rising as one man,” “but the one man was in the White House.”

On the Senate floor Carmack went on to warn that the action against Colombia was “but the beginning of systematic policy of aggression toward the Central and South American states.” “I fear,” declared another senator, “that we have got too large to be just.” An amendment ordering a payment of compensation to Colombia was narrowly defeated.

The Democrats were undecided how to vote on the treaty. They had 33 of the 90 Senate seats, and if united, could have blocked the measure and given Roosevelt a severe setback less than twelve months before the presidential elections. But many were in favor of a canal, which was also popular in the country. One Texas senator explained the dilemma by telling the story of a dog catching a rabbit in violation of its previous teaching: “You might whip the dog, but would you throw away the rabbit?”

In the event, less than half the Democrats voted against the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty, which passed by 66 votes to 14 on February 23. Two days later the treaties were officially exchanged.

It was one of the most important deals in the history of American foreign relations, as it gave the United States absolute control over the future Panama Canal, and thus over the strategic and economic crossroads of the Americas. A contemporary historian, Wolf von Schierbrand, stated that the treaty's importance “to our future political, commercial, and naval expansion, in the Pacific as well as the Caribbean Sea, can scarcely be overestimated. It will be the main pillar of our future strength in those all-important regions.” “From the point of view of world politics,” said another distinguished commentator, “the construction and operation of the canal as a government undertaking means the extension of the political control of the United States over the Spanish-American nations.”

On May 2, 1904, the assets of the Compagnie Nouvelle were signed over to the United States for $40 million. The sale was handled by JP Morgan (thanks to an intervention by Cromwell). Together with the $10 million paid to Panama, the sum dwarfed the purchases of Louisiana ($15 million), Alaska ($7.2 million), and the Philippines ($20 million). The actual physical handover on the Isthmus occurred early on May 4, when a U.S. Army engineer, Second Lieutenant Mark Brooke, met with a representative of the New Company at the old Grand Hotel. After a few perfunctory words, the Stars and Stripes was hoisted. After all the ceremony of the French years, the amazing razzle-dazzle of Ferdinand de Lesseps, the presentation of the momentous occasion was something of a disappointment to the Panamanians.