Panama fever (51 page)

allace would complain that the delays in sorting out the problems in accommodation were down to “supplies taking for ever to arrive” and the labor “immediately available and who could be secured from the surrounding countries [being] incompetent, shiftless and lazy.” But much of the intake from the United States was also seriously below standard. A request was posted for twenty-five track foremen, and when they arrived there were only two who could drive a railroad spike. In further echoes of Blanchet's experience with his new arrivals in 1881, William Karner complained that recruits employed by the Washington office “were not examined at all.” One young man presented himself to Karner as a rodman. It was quickly realized that he was nothing of the kind, having no training or experience at all. It was then established that he had received his appointment through the efforts of his member of Congress.

In spite of all the worries about corruption or graft, this was the origin of many of the Panama appointments not just in the early years but throughout the American period. The Swinehart family were typical. At the end of 1904 Swinehart Senior, the chair of a local Republican group in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, wrote to his congressman: “I have two sons who wish to go to Panama to work on the Canal… I will consider it a great favor if you will see some member of Canal Com.” Less than a month later, the congressman delivered two plum appointments. “Please place my name on your list of working Republicans and command me at any time,” responded the delighted father.

Along with idealists, professionals, and the beneficiaries of political favors, the Isthmus was also drawing in “railroad men who were blacklisted on the American railroads, drunks, and what we called tropical tramps, American drifters in Latin America.” U.S. diplomat William Franklin Sands sailed for Panama in early October 1904. On his ship, a British Royal Mail Packet Company steamer, he was taken aback to read a notice outside the dining room which ordered: “Americans will put their coats on for meals.” Why pick on Americans? Then he discovered that the captain had frequently had to arrest U.S. mechanics on the way to the Isthmus for drunkenness, gambling, and even leading mutinies against the officers.

As in the days of the gold rush, such new arrivals inevitably caused friction and difficulties with the Panamanians. One British journalist reported that “the people of Panama look upon Americans as noisy, grabbing bullies.” In return, admitted a senior American administrator, “The average American has the utmost contempt for a Panaman and never loses an opportunity, especially when drunk, to show it.” In fact by the autumn of 1904 relations between Americans and Panamanians were strained at every level. This had led to dangerous, potentially violent fractures within the new Panamanian political establishment, as well as dissent between senior U.S. Zone officials. It was to report on the origins of this mess, and to suggest solutions, that diplomatic “troubleshooter” William Sands—only twenty-nine but a veteran of diplomatic posts in the Far East—was sent by Taft to the Isthmus in October 1904. His mission was to ensure that nothing in the Panamanian political firmament got in the way of the building of the canal.

After independence at the beginning of November 1903, the leaders of the plot who were Panamanian nationals, rather than Americans, had formed themselves into a temporary ruling junta. Led by Arango and Amador, the junta contained several token Liberals but was otherwise firmly Conservative. The Panamanians had been given a firm warning by U.S. officials in the Zone: the civilized world had determined to enforce order and peace; “Panama must conduct itself as a civilized nation or it will cease to exist as an independent country.”

This threat did much to keep tension between the Conservative administration and its Liberal enemies in check, and a national assembly was elected which, although Conservative-led, included an almost equal number of Liberals. Nevertheless, the Conservatives set about removing potential enemies. Several senior Liberals were offered plum diplomatic postings to get them out of the country; General Huertas, a Hero of the Republic for his part in the events of November 1903, was now seen, because of his popularity and Liberal sympathies, as a threat and was sent on a lengthy fact-finding mission to the United States and Europe.

But as soon as one potential enemy was removed, another emerged. The undisputed leader of the Liberals was Dr. Belisario Porras, an archenemy of Amador, described by the American consul in Panama as a “revolutionary firebrand” and “notorious hater of foreigners.” Porras, who had worked as a lawyer for the French Company, had opposed the Hay-Herrán Treaty as giving too much control to the United States, and was appalled by the terms of the subsequent Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty. Panama, he said, had been “swallowed up” by the United States; national sovereignty had been sacrificed for the benefit of a few wealthy Conservative Panama merchants. In June 1904, he returned to Panama City from exile abroad to be greeted by a huge crowd in Santa Ana Square. Although he admired, he said, the “greatness and harmony of North American institutions,” he believed that “any Latin American nation who fused her destiny with that of the United States would suffer greatly and rue the day of their alliance.”

In the meantime, the Americans themselves had been providing plenty of fuel for anti-US. sentiment on the Isthmus. In May 1904, the Zone authorities successfully demanded that an American doctor be allowed to inspect all ships arriving at Colón and Panama. The man appointed did not even speak Spanish. The following month it was announced that the domestic tariff laws of the United States would be applied to the Zone. This meant that goods from the United States arrived free of duty, while imports from other countries, including Panama, were forced to pay very high rates. As it was simple to smuggle merchandise from the Zone to the Republic, the measure would slash the Panama government's vital customs revenue at the same time as infuriating the country's merchants. Then ports were opened at La Boca and Cristóbal, both adjacent to the terminal cities but within the Zone. As well as threatening to ruin Panama City and Colón, this seemed to be contrary to the terms of the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty, which had specifically excluded the “terminal cities and the harbours adjacent to said cities” from the U.S. controlled area.

These measures provoked furious clashes between Amador and his Liberal first
designado
, or vice president, Pablo Arosemena, and gave many the impression that the annexation of the terminal cities, and indeed, the entire republic, was imminent. “I look upon the Republic of Panama as doomed,” Mallet wrote to his wife at the end of June. “The Yankees are playing the same tricks here as they did with Colombia in regard to the canal question … The U.S. Government are behaving here like highway robbers; they neither respect treaties or persons.” A month later he reported, “Opinion here amongst the natives is spreading, and they now think the bargain with the Americans has been a bad one for them and their country; they would prefer, I think, to return to Colombia than continue this way.”

At this time the U.S. ambassador to Panama was John Barrett, who was attempting to negotiate a way out of the impasse. Then Governor Davis became involved, which, as he was not an accredited diplomat, the Panamanians saw as a further slight. The negotiations did not go well. For one thing, Davis was intensely unpopular, and Barrett was not much better, variously described as “very loud spoken,” “vulgar,” and “full of self-assurance.” Furthermore, the two Americans both felt that they should be the leading U.S. voice on the matter, and relations between them broke down completely.

In August, the United States published a letter, reportedly written by Bunau-Varilla to Hay back in January, that clarified the “ports question” in his treaty in favor of the Americans. The Frenchman was no longer in the employ of Panama, so he seemed an ideal candidate for taking the blame. But then other correspondence emerged, showing that the provisional government, specifically the archconser-vative Tomás Arias, had authorized Bunau-Varilla's concession. Soon after, an anonymous flyer was distributed in the streets, accusing Arias of having sold the country's interests, and ordering him to resign or be assassinated.

The following month Hero of the Republic General Huertas returned to Panama, having cut short his trip after hearing that Amador planned to replace him. On October 28, Huertas wrote to Amador demanding the removal of Arias, and of another ultraright minister. Arias resigned, but Amador refused to release the second man. Then the president learned that Huertas, with the backing of Belisario Porras, planned to arrest him at a forthcoming military function. A severely rattled Amador appealed directly to Roosevelt for help in avoiding a military coup, and Huertas and other opposition leaders were sent a firm message from the U.S. legation saying that revolutionary changes would not be tolerated. At the same time, a detachment of marines was moved from their barracks to Ancón Hill. The military function went ahead without incident; Amador stayed at home.

Fortified by U.S. support, the president then made his move against Huertas, demanding his resignation. The general held out for a while, but threw in the towel on November 18. After consulting with Barrett, Amador then decided that a standing army, albeit of only 250 men, was not needed by the tiny republic, and the Panamanian Army was disbanded.

The United States was subsequently blamed for the loss of the army and the national prestige that went with it. But while no doubt demonstrating the ruling elite's dependence on U.S. support, the move was orchestrated by Amador and his Conservative allies. They had worried about the power of the army even in the heady days of November 1903. Now, with the assistance of the United States, the only force in the land that could eject them from power was no more.

illiam Sands arrived in the aftermath of the failed coup, and found Panama “festering with intrigue,” the American canal officials and diplomats at loggerheads, and growing anti-Americanism in many quarters. The existence of the Canal Zone, Sands would write, “made for an ambiguous and most delicate diplomatic situation. Canal affairs and interests were constantly overlapping or overshadowing the Republic's affairs.” To many Panamanians, the Americans seemed determined to tell them what to do, and there was deep concern about “whither Theodore Roosevelt and his ‘Yankee imperialism’ might be tending.” Sands likened the position of the U.S. minister in Panama with that of a resident minister from Great Britain in India, where the threat of being “incorporated into the Raj” was ever present. Nevertheless, he was shocked at how much the Americans were disliked on the Isthmus.

One of Sands's first actions was to meet the new secretary for foreign affairs, Santiago de la Guardia, to request that the position of the governor and the U.S. minister to Panama might be combined in one person. In marked contrast to Davis, Sands was careful to adhere to proper formalities, donning full diplomatic garb, top hat included, and hiring the best two-horse carriage he could find for the one-block journey between the legation and the secretary's office. The approach worked, with the Panamanian happy to allow Sands's request, although de la Guardia did confide to Sands his fears about future relations between their two countries. “Don Santiago was aware,” wrote Sands, “that a new North America had come into being since the Spanish War, one that was not very well understood as yet even by the North Americans themselves.”