Interesting background for Tromp’s imperialist chest thumping about the Panama Canal. I didn’t know, for instance, that the US created the country of Panama by carving it out of Columbia.
Following World War Two, Panamanians began to actively oppose US control of the canal and the Canal Zone. Protests, often led by students calling for Panamanian control of the Zone and canal, erupted. By the 1970s, many in the US government agreed with the idea of giving the Panamanians control of these lands. In 1977, Jimmy Carter signed the Torrijos-Carter Treaty, which took effect in October 1979 and return the Canal and the Zone to Panama over the course of twenty years. Despite virulent opposition from the US right, the treaty was confirmed by a two-thirds vote in the Senate. Over the next twenty years, the rightwing would bring up the treaty as proof of the Democrats “treachery.” Ronald Reagan made it an issue during his 1980 and 1984 presidential campaigns. George HW Bush invaded Panama in 1989, using the lie that the Panamanian president (and CIA asset) Manuel Noriega was a cocaine trafficker. (Bush himself was at least tangentially involved in cocaine smuggling himself in the Iran-Contra affair). In a comedic sidenote to the invasion, the US mainstream media sent photographs of what Washington claimed was a pile of cocaine around the world. It turned out that the powder was cornmeal. Noriega was kidnapped and held in US prisons for years. This episode is useful when examining the current narcotics trafficking charges brought by Washington against Venezuelan President Maduro.
