Panama fever (82 page)

The Americans, as has been seen, repeated many of the mistakes of the French, but they also had key advantages in addition to their much more reliable financial backing. Crucial to the morale of the white American workforce was the defeat of yellow fever and taming of malaria, made possible by discoveries that largely postdated the de Lesseps effort. The presence of the U.S. military and their firm grip on Panamanian politics meant that the Americans suffered none of the political instability, revolution, and violence that the French had to work around, in spite of the long-established local antipathy toward the “Yankees.” Advances in precision manufacturing, assembly-line production, and steel technology, driven in part by the naval armaments and motor industries, meant that the U.S. machinery was far superior to that of the French. The Bucyrus shovels were capable of excavating at a rate three or four times greater than that of the best French machines. The Americans also had better drills and explosives and superior expertise in railroad transportation. And in Stevens and Goethals they found determined and accomplished leadership.

For all Theodore Roosevelt's bellicosity, the war against the Panama jungle and mountains would be the only battle he would fight as president. On several occasions—the choice of the Panama route, the creation of the Republic of Panama, the backing of Gorgas, and the choice of the lock and lake plan—his intervention was decisive. Certainly, Roosevelt was in no doubt where the credit should go. In 1908, as he was preparing to leave office, he wrote of the canal project to a newspaper editor in London: “This I can say absolutely was my own work, and could not have been accomplished save by me or by some man of my temperament.” Out of office, he was even more boastful, saying to an audience at the University of California at Berkeley in 1911, “I am interested in the Panama Canal because I started it. If I had followed traditional, conservative methods I would have submitted a dignified State paper of probably 200 pages to Congress and the debates on it would have been going on yet; but I took the Isthmus, started the canal and then left Congress not to debate the canal, but to debate me and in portions of the public press the debate still goes on as to whether or not I acted properly in getting the canal but while the debate goes on the canal does too.” What was key, Roosevelt pronounced in his autobiography, was that “somebody [namely, himself] was prepared to act with decision.”

The speech in California, quoted and misquoted in newspapers across the United States, caused a sensation, and reignited the controversy of America's role in the “Panama Revolution.” The whole affair, argued a contributor to the
North American Review
in 1912, had been a “Chapter of National Dishonor.” A prominent U.S. historian described it as “an affront to international decency.” Alfred Mahan himself replied to these attacks, writing, “The summary ejectment of Colombia from property which she could not improve herself, and against the improvement of which by another she raised frivolous obstacles, is precisely in line with transactions going on all over the world… India, Egypt, Persia, Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, Morocco, all stand on the same general basis as Panama.” Their occupation, he went on, was part of the “advance of the world.”

Many Americans agreed that the ends justified the means, but most were uneasy about this sort of high-flown imperialism, especially after difficulties from “insurgents” persisted in the Philippines and Cuba. In fact, Democratic Party policy was now that Colombia had a legitimate grievance for the loss of Panama, and after the 1910 midterm elections they had a majority in the House of Representatives. So when Roosevelt made his “I took the Isthmus” speech, a resolution was introduced and approved calling for a fresh congressional investigation into the whole affair. There were also renewed protests and demands for international arbitration from Colombia, and this time, with Roosevelt off the scene, they were heard sympathetically. In 1911 the Taft administration sent James du Bois to Bogotá to secure an agreement.

The envoy was shocked at the strength of feeling in Colombia. “Confidence and trust in the justice and fairness of the United States, so long manifested, has vanished completely,” he reported back to Washington the following year. He also found the country's leadership to be nothing like Roosevelt's famous description: “instead of ‘blackmailers’ and ‘bandits’ the public men of Colombia compare well with the public men of other countries in intelligence and respectability,” he wrote. “I deplore Colonel Roosevelt's bitter and misleading attack.”

In 1914 the Wilson government offered Colombia a “sincere apology” and an indemnity of $25 million, but such was the vehemence of Roosevelt's attack on this measure that Congress backed off ratifying the new treaty. Then, in January 1919, Roosevelt died, and a major impediment to the deal was removed. There was also a new and powerful incentive to repair relations with Bogotá—what was thought at the time to be the world's largest reserve of oil had been found under the soil of Colombia, and the Anglo-Dutch company Shell looked set to control the supply. So with Colombia's permission to remove the clause stating “sincere regret,” the treaty was ratified in early 1921 under Harding's Republican administration, and the $25 million, dubbed “canalimony” by one wit, was paid over.

Doubtless the agreement had as much to do with oil reserves and other business opportunities in Latin America as it did with righting a past wrong. U.S. investment in Colombia increased tenfold in the eight years after the deal. But for the
New York World
the paying of the indemnity was a vindication of the newspaper's investigation into “a most sordid and shameless conspiracy into which Theodore Roosevelt had dragged the United States Government in order to satisfy his personal ambition.” “The most flagrant act of Prussianism in the history of the United States,” the paper concluded, “is now definitely repudiated by the political party that ardently defended it for nearly eighteen years.”

n August 24, 1914, the
Pleiades
steamed into New York to be met by a cacophony of whistles from all the ships in the harbor. The vessel and its cargo, 5,000 tons of lumber and general merchandise, was unremarkable enough. What had caused the outbreak of celebrations was that the
Pleiades
was the first ship to trade between San Francisco and New York via the new canal. In her fourteen years plying the trade routes of the world, it was her most profitable trip yet. The canal had shaved nearly eight thousand miles off the journey between the two cities, almost halving the time at sea. Now two voyages could be made in the time of one. The benefits of the canal for U.S. trade and shipping were there for all to see.

The first years of the canal, however, saw continuing challenges. Two months after the transit of the
Pleiades
, a huge slide at east Culebra completely blocked the channel in half an hour. As before, Goethals, still in charge, ordered his dredges and shovels to dig it all out once more, but the following year saw more slides and the waterway blocked again for all but the smallest vessels, this time for seven months, and President Wilson was forced to return to a two-ocean navy, exactly what the canal had been built to avoid.

In fact, the problem of slides was never solved. All the canal maintenance teams could do was to remove the spoil and keep their fingers crossed. As recently as 1974, 250,000 cubic yards slid into the Cut, reducing it to one-way traffic and costing more than $2 million to remove.

The canal was also sporadically closed when, during the dry season, the level of Lake Gatún fell below that needed to operate the locks. So early 1935 saw the completion of a new structure at Alhajuela, the Madden Dam, which held a higher, secondary reserve of water to hold back extreme floods and to feed the larger, lower lake when necessary.

When it was found that the new aircraft carriers were too wide for the locks, the United States army engineers started work on two giant new lock basins at either end of the canal. But with America's entry into World War II, the project was shelved. By the end of the war, the United States fleet was so vast that the canal's original purpose— avoiding having to support a two-ocean navy—had been outgrown, although much use was made of the canal for ferrying men and materials for the Korean and Vietnam wars. Just as useful strategically were the army and air force bases in the Zone, from which U.S. power could be (and was) projected throughout Central America and northern South America.

The canal is now Panama's after two generations of struggle against the United States to regain control of their country. The bases are gone, and the canal has returned to the peaceful purpose always intended by idealists like Humboldt and de Lesseps. The checkpoints that prevented Panamanians from driving into the Zone are still there but abandoned and dilapidated, and the neat rows of identical houses for the U.S. administrators and military are now home to Panamanians, who, with their “dislike of uniformity,” have been busy personalizing them, adding scruffy lean-tos or extending verandas in a higgledy-piggledy fashion.

Opponents of the 1999 handover argued that the Panamanians would be unable to run the canal efficiently, but they have been proved wrong. Canal improvements have continued steadily and threats to the water supply, so vital for the huge locks, have been addressed. Now the ACP, the Autoridad del Canal de Panamá, has proposed an ambitious plan to build two giant new lock systems at either end of the canal to cope with the increasing number of post-Panamax container ships and the currently vast traffic from manufacturing centers in East Asia to the United States’ East Coast. Work began in 2007.

While wishing the project well, it is impossible to avoid hearing echoes of the canal's long history. There is a Technical Commission of international worthies (who even considered a sea-level scheme); the work will be done, it is planned, by machines rather than men; by 2025 the enlarged capacity will be contributing eight times the canal's current $500 million annual payment to the Panama treasury, or, as William Paterson said three hundred years ago, “trade will increase trade, and money will beget money.”

etween 1904 and 1914 the U.S. government paid out about $400 million for its canal. It was not until the 1950s, however, that the venture started showing a profit, far longer than private capital would have required. There were, of course, other costs as well. According to the official figures, just over six thousand employees died in ICC hospitals during the American construction period, of whom about three hundred were from the United States. As we have seen, this overall figure is likely to be an underestimate. Those who suffered most were the humble “silvermen.”