Since the era of Latin American independence, the governments and peoples of Panama and the United States have had fairly constant dealings with one another. These relations have not been as tempestuous as those between the United States and Mexico, Cuba, or Nicaragua, for example, but they have been troubled, at best, and unsatisfactory to large numbers of people in both countries. This book surveys Panamanian-U.S. relations over nearly two centuries in an attempt to lay out the story succinctly and to offer interpretations of its most important episodes. It is cast as an authoritative reference work to be available...

In April 1819 the Scottish soldier-of-fortune Gregor MacGregor and a ragged band of adventurers captured Portobelo, Panamaʹs northern port for trade crossing to the Pacific Ocean. Acting loosely on behalf of independence forces in the Caribbean, he also enjoyed the backing of merchants in Jamaica, who desired freer access to the markets of Panama and the Pacific ports beyond the isthmus. MacGregor and his sponsors had a secret plan to build a canal if they succeeded in wresting Panama from Spanish control. The governor of Panama soon recaptured Portobelo and imprisoned MacGregorʹs men, so the scheme failed utterly.¹ This attack,...

Shots rang out across the Panama City waterfront and the smell of gunpowder hung in the sultry air. Dozens of Americans holed up in the Panama Railroad station imagined that they would not live to see another day. An argument over a slice of watermelon earlier in the day had provoked a riot in which dark-skinned Panamanians had attacked American travelers waiting to board a steamer for California. The incident, the so-called Watermelon War of 15 April 1856, showed that the prosperity everyone had expected in Panama after the completion of the Panama Railroad the year before had not trickled...

On 18 August 1885 local authorities in Colón hanged a light-skinned mulatto named Pedro Prestán, ending one of Panamaʹs bloodiest revolts of the nineteenth century. Months earlier, Prestán and another Liberal politician, Rafael Aizpuru, assumed control of Colón and Panama City to protest the election of Conservative Rafael Núñez in Bogotá. U.S. troops had landed and helped the Colombian forces to subdue the population, their largest foreign military undertaking between the Civil War and the Spanish-American War. The invasion reinforced U.S. determination to keep the peace in Panama, despite the ongoing French canal project. It also left bitter feelings among...

On the evening of 18 November 1903, in Washington D.C., two figures bent over a desk to examine a document. At about 7 p.m. John Hay, U.S. secretary of state, had invited Philippe Bunau-Varilla, a Frenchman representing the newly independent Republic of Panama, to sign a treaty they had both drafted. They read it, discussed some clauses, penned a few changes, and then signed it. Thus began the formal U.S.-Panamanian alliance. For the next three-quarters of a century that document would evoke criticism, anger, and sometimes violence from Panamanians; Americans stood by its terms, for the most part, insisting that...

Jackhammers rattled through the night. Huge cranes swung tons of gravel effortlessly through the air. Money flowed freely in Panamaʹs boom economy, and thousands of Jamaicans and other immigrants arrived. Uncle Sam was at it again, remodeling the Panama Canal so that it could transit the huge battleships and carriers the U.S. Navy was now building. The third locks project, begun in 1939, promised to restore the canal to its premier status as a strategic military bridge between the oceans. In 1942, however, the work was canceled and the boom subsided. From that point on, the canal began to recede...

Toward the end of the war, the head of the Caribbean Command, in charge of all military bases in the Canal Zone, put to paper some thoughts on the growing nationalism of Panamanians and their demands to share in the profits from the canal and transit business. He cited as evidence the formation of the Panamanian Merchantsʹ and Industrialistsʹ Association in 1943 for the purpose of reserving business for natives, the 1944 immigration exclusion of Africans and Asians, the foreign ministerʹs demand that Panama control commercial aviation on the isthmus and that the zone end commissary sales to nonemployees, newspaper...

On 9 January 1964, less than two months after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Panamanian students launched the largest assault on the Canal Zone in history. Ostensibly to force the display of Panamaʹs flag, the action really expressed younger Panamaniansʹ anger and frustration with their powerlessness in dealing with the colossus of the north. About two dozen Panamanians died and scores suffered gunshot wounds. For the first time in the U.S.-Panamanian alliance, the weak partner suspended diplomatic relations to dramatize the iniquity of the 1903 treaty, maintained in force by American soldiers.

The decade of the 1960s proved...

A light plane cut through the tropical rain in August 1981, carrying Panamanian strongman Omar Torrijos and a few companions over dense jungles in the central part of the country. Suddenly it plunged into the trees and exploded, killing all those aboard. Searchers took several days to find the wreckage, and mystery yet surrounds the cause of the crash. Panamanians mourned the loss of Torrijos, who for better or worse had ruled for a dozen years and had signed new canal treaties with the United States. Others would have to oversee their implementation.

Most persons who supported the new canal...

The discovery of Hugo Spadaforaʹs decapitated, mutilated body in September 1985 horrified observers and set into motion events that led four years later to the most dangerous crisis in the history of U.S.-Panamanian relations. For many Panamanians, the brutal murder was the first indisputable evidence that Noriega was a psychopath and murderer. For Americans, it raised the specter of a monster created by naive U.S. policies designed to safeguard the Panama Canal. From that date, efforts by Panamanians and Americans to curb Noriegaʹs power and force his removal merely fortified his resolve to stay in office and exercise dictatorial power....

U.S. Ambassador to Panama Simon Ferro leaned across the banquet table to speak with Attorney General Janet Reno. She smiled graciously as several well-wishers took their pictures with her. It had been a long, tiring day and Ms. Reno did her best to be friendly and positive regarding Panama-U.S. relations. She said that President Clinton regretted that his schedule would not allow him to be present but assured everyone that he had the warmest expectations for the final implementation of the Panama Canal treaties of 1977. At that moment the band struck up a loud salsa piece, and the lead...

In the years following the U.S. turnover of the canal to Panama on December 31, 1999, the republic defied predictions that it would mismanage the canal and be lost without the tutelage of the United States. In fact, Panamaʹs economy has grown prodigiously and become less dependent upon the canal, and the Canal Authority (ACP) has operated in a more efficient and entrepreneurial fashion than U.S. administrators ever did. The political stability attained in the previous decade continued, as three presidents representing three different parties took the helm of government. Problems remained, to be sure, but the country certainly showed...