PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 17, 1978—Page 6

through the Mirafiores Locks.

Prensa Launa

The canal story —
betrayal and plunder

This background material was excerpted from a section In the magazine, Latin America
and Empire Report, of the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), September

1974.

Atter the wars of liberation in Latin
America which overthrew Spanish and
Portuguese colonialism in the mid 1800's,
Panama was dominated by Colombia as
part of the country known as New Granada.
Throughout the last half of the nineteenth
century, as Colombia tightened its control
over the isthmus, Panama struggled to be-
come an independent nation. Colombia,
having recognized the importance of the
isthmus for world trade, intervened re-
peatedly to put down rebellions, often with .
the assistance of U.S. troops. _

In 1881, Colombia negotiated with the
French Canal Co. of Ferdinand de Lesseps,
the engineer who built the Suez Canal, to
construct a canal across the heart of
Panama. Due to errors in judgment, mis-
management, corruption and disease,

20,000 workers died in the attemptvand the »

company went bankrupt. =

The United States had long been in-
terested in the possibilities of building a
canal, investigating sites in several Central
American countries. Demand for a canal
increased during the Spanish-American
War of 1898, when it took U.S. ships two
months to sail 13,000 miles around South
America to reach Cuba, instead of only
4,600 miles, had there been an interoceanic
waterway. Preliminary studies by the U.S.
Congress indicated that Nicaragua posses-
sed the most advantageous site for con-
structing a canal. Thus began a complex
and questionable series of maneuvers or-
chestrated in part by William Nelson
Cromwell, of the prestigious Sullivan and
Cromwell law firm, to convince the U.S.
Congress that the canal should be built in
Panama. Cromwell represented the
French Canal Co., owned much of its stock
and was the virtual head of the Panama
Railroad and other U.S. interests in
Panama. He was first able to pressure the
French Co. to sell out for the low price of $40
million, and then pressured the U.S. Con-
gress to buy it.

Cromwell was aided in these efforts by
Philippe Bunau-Varilla, a Frenchman who
wanted to go down in history as the father of
the Panama Canal and who also had in-
vested a lot of money in the French Canal

When the U.S. Congress was finally per-
suaded to approve Panama as the cal
site, the government began negotiating

with Colombia to take over the concession
from the French. Secretary of State John
Hay sent a treaty to Colombia (written at
least in part by Cromwell), though many
influential politicians in the United States
knew that the terms were too unfavorable
to be acceptable to the Colombian govern-
ment. When the Colombian Congress re-
jected the treaty, this became the pretext
for the United States to support the inde-
pendence movement in Panama. Bunau-
Varilla assured the Panamanian leaders,
apparently with the go-ahead from Presi-

dent Roosevelt, that U.S. warships would .

be off the coast and would prevent Colom-
bia from sending an invading army to put
down the revolution. During the event, only
one person was killed; the Colombian sol-
diers stationed in Panama were paid off
with money supplied by Bunau-Varilla, and
U.S. warships did indeed appear off the
coast to thwart Colombia’s attack.
Bunau-Varilla was in Washington, hav-
ing demanded that he be appointed Pana-
ma’s first ambassador to the United States
in exchange for his assistance, and there
negotiated the betrayal of the Panamanian

revolution. The treaty he signed with Hay |

was even more disadvantageous than the
one proposed to Colombia just a few months
earlier. The United States was given the
rights to any future canal in perpetuity —
and the right to act as though it were
sovereign in the land surrounding the can-
al. The new Panamanian government was
sending its own diplomatic delegation and
had not authorized Bunau-Varilla to
negotiate a new treaty, but they arrived
only hours after the sell-out had been
signed. The Panamanian Congress was
forced to ratify this violation of their na-
tional sovereignty only under severe pres-
sure and blackmail. The United States
threatened to remove its ships and not in-
tervene if Colombia moved to put down the
new nation.

The liberation movement in Panama
was subverted and manipulated to give the
United States complete control over the
construction, administration and defense
of the canal. The U.S. government created
the legal sanction to establish a virtual col-
ony in Panama and took this opportunity to
build up a military apparatus that now’ex-
tends from Panama throughout Latin
America.

Carios Ortiz

Carlos Ortiz, a representative of the -

Communist youth of the Panamanian
People’s Party, attended the 4th National
Convention of the Young Workers Libera-
tion League, a Marxist-Leninist youth or-
ganization, October 7-11. While in New
York, he was interviewed by Claudia Gon-
zalez and Nelson Ortega of Voz del
Pueblo. and Cindy Hawes of World
Magazine.

Q: Can you describe the present situation
in Panama, especially in regards, to the
Canal Treaty?

A: The ratification process will culmi-
nate on October 23 with a national plebiscite
in which all the Panamanian people will vote
on the Treaty. Generally, treaties are ap-
proved in the Senate, or Parliament, or Gen-
eral Assembly, but the Panamanian gov-
ernment, consistent with its progressive na-
ture, has decided to put it to a national vote,
so that there will be no question as to whether
the Panamanian people want or don’t want
this Treaty.

Q: Can you compare the political climate
of today to that of 1903 when the original
Canal Treaty was signed?

A: The 1977 Treaty occurs at quite a dif-
ferent time. In 1903, imperialism was the

primary. force in the world, today the
socialist countries, together with the na-

tional liberation movements and the work- -

ingclass revolutionary movements in the in-
dustrialized countries, have formed a block
which puts imperialism on the defensive.
Imperialism is no longer the primary force
in the world. We must see the Treaty in this
historic context.

Q: How has the political situation
changed in Panama?

A: In 1968, the military forces, made up
primarily of the middle and mass sectors,
overthrew the bourgeois commercial and
landholding oligarchy which had ruled
Panama since 1903. Since the overthrow, a
very paradoxical situation has developed —
while the commereial and landholding
bourgeoisie continues to have great

economic power in Panama, their political .

power has been reduced substantially. How-
ever, their economic power has enabled
them to influence and pressure the petty-
bourgeoisie of the present government to
make concessions to them — for example,
anti-worker, anti-labor, anti-peasant, anti-
Communist laws. But in spite of this, there

have been a lot of c es.
In December of 1969 (which is when an

attempted counter-coup, instigated by the
CIA, failed), anew process begah. The prog-
ressive forces in the military have become
the most influential and they have motivated
a series of changes, oriented toward and
supported by the working class, the peas-
ants, the middle class, progressive intellec-

tuals, and the Panamanian People’s Party.

Q: Whatecosomic reforms is the present
government trying to accomplish?

A: Various modes of production exist in
Panama simultaneously, the dominant one
being capitalism, which is totally dependent
or North American imperialism. The
capitalist economy in Panama is centered on
services and trade, and very little industry
has been developed. Our country’s geog-
raphy has been a primary factor in this.

One very important reform in the
economic ‘sector is the great quantity of
state-owned businesses, which now compete
with private business. Today the state-
owned sector is almost at the same level as
the bourgeois commercial and landholding
sector.

I mentioned that there is great variety of
the means and relations of production. For

example, the indigenous population still”

lives in a state of primitive communism, 2
society which is not divided into classes,
where all property is owned collectively.
Then there is the feudalist structure, in
which families who made up part of the
oligarchy control entire provinces. Peasants
pay rent to work these huge estates. To some
extent this still exists, with peasants paying
to work land which is being held illegally by
the latifundistas.

Alongside these backward modes of pro-
duction, there is capitalist production, which
as I said, is specialized around services and
commerce.

The government has begun a new type of

ownership — collectively owned property.

Today there are some 20, 30, or 40 farms in
- which the peasants own the means of produc-

tion. They have united to work together, pro
duce together and, despite the-fact that the

land is owned by the state, they own all they
produce.

U.S. instructors of the counter insurgency