Location: Central Panama Map
Length: 48 mi (77 km)
The Panama Canal is an interoceanic waterway between the Caribbean
Sea and the Pacific Ocean that crosses the Isthmus of Panama at its
narrowest point, whose length is 82 km, it works through locks at
each end that raise the boats to Lake Gatún, an artificial lake
created to reduce the amount of work required for the excavation of
the canal, 26 meters above sea level, and then descend to the
Pacific or Atlantic level.
Since its inauguration on August
15, 1914, Panama Canal has managed to reduce maritime communication
in time and distance, boosting commercial and economic exchange by
providing a short and relatively cheap transit route between the two
oceans, decisively influencing the patterns of trade. world,
boosting the economic growth of developed and developing countries,
in addition to providing the basic impetus for the economic
expansion of many remote regions of the world. In 2012, the United
States, China, Chile, Japan and Korea South were the five main users
of Panama Canal, which takes eight to ten hours to cross.
Before its opening, the natural passages used between the Atlantic
and Pacific oceans were the Strait of Magellan and Cape Horn,
located at the southern tip of Chile and Argentina. The Panama Canal
and its construction are considered one of the great works of world
engineering of the twentieth century.
First routes
The Isthmus of Panama was already
used by Native Americans before the arrival of Europeans in the
fifteenth century for the displacement between the Atlantic and
Pacific coasts. The first European explorers knew by the aborigines
the old ways used by the pre-Columbian civilizations to cross the
isthmus.
Spanish stage
The history of the Panama Canal
goes back to the first Spanish explorers arrived in America. Because
of its orography, the Isthmus of Panama is the ideal place to create
a passage for maritime transport between the Pacific and the
Atlantic. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Columbus on his
fourth voyage came to navigate through Central America looking for a
way of passage. It also attracted the attention of Hernán Cortés.
In 1514 the Spaniard Vasco Núñez de Balboa was the first
European explorer to contemplate the Pacific Ocean, and built a
route that would serve to transport his ships from Santa María la
Antigua del Darién (Atlantic coast of Panama) to the bay of San
Miguel in the Pacific, although this route of 50 to 65 km, was
quickly abandoned.
In November 1515, Captain Antonio Tello de
Guzmán discovered a track that crossed the isthmus from the Gulf of
Panama to Panama, near the abandoned city of Nombre de Dios. Having
been used by the natives for centuries, it was improved and paved by
the Spaniards, becoming Camino Real. The road was used to transport
the gold to Portobelo and, from there, to send it to Spain, thus
becoming the first great route of the isthmus.
In 1520
Ferdinand Magellan, Portuguese navigator under the flag of the King
of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor Charles I, found a different passage
between the two oceans: the Strait of Magellan. His odyssey showed
that the road was too dangerous, so the need arose to find an easier
way to reach the South Seas without having to navigate to the
southern tip of the American continent.
In 1524 King Charles
I suggested digging a canal that would shorten trips to Peru and
allow ships to avoid the dangerous Cape Horn, especially for the
transport of gold. A first project was made in 1529 but the
political situation in Europe and the technological level of the
time made it unfeasible. After the problems that arose on the road
from Portobelo to the Pacific, in 1533 the richest and most
influential settler in Panama and later a great businessman in Peru,
Gaspar de Espinosa, suggested to the Council of the Indies the
creation of an alternative way excavating a canal. His plan was to
build a road from the city of Panama, Pacific terminal station on
the Camino Real, and the city of Cruces, on the banks of the Chagres
River, near the line of the canal that Fernando de Lesseps finished
building in the 20th century (30 km from Panama). Once in the
Chagres River, the cargo would be transported by boats to the
Caribbean Sea. Although Espinosa died before making this project
come true, the road was executed and was called the Camino de Cruces
and the Las Cruces path. From Chagres, the cargoes were transported
to the king's warehouse in Portobelo. It is here where for more than
two centuries the famous Fair of Portobello took place, which
consisted of great exchanges between the southern part of the
continent (Viceroyalty of Peru) and the great Spanish crown. This
route was used for several centuries, even in 1840 during the
California gold rush.
The Scottish expedition
The Darién project was
another attempt to establish a route between the oceans. In July
1698, five ships departed from Leith (Scotland) in order to
establish a colony belonging to the Kingdom of Scotland in Darien
and build a route for trade with China and Japan. The settlers
arrived in Darién in November and called it Caledonia. But the
expedition was not prepared to face the adverse conditions they
encountered there, suffering from local diseases and poor
organization. The settlers left New Edinburgh for good, leaving four
hundred graves behind. Unfortunately for them, another aid
expedition had already left Scotland and arrived in the colony in
November 1699. It encountered the same problems, in addition to
being attacked and blocked by the Spaniards. On April 12, 1700,
Caledonia was definitively abandoned.
19th and 20th Centuries
In the nineteenth
century, the dominant project was the construction of a canal at sea
level - technologically, much easier - through Nicaragua. For
political reasons this project was abandoned, although in the 21st
century it has been revived (Canal de Nicaragua). The idea of the
Panamanian canal remained suspended for a time, so as not to
reappear until the beginning of the 19th century, after the trip of
the Prussian naturalist, Baron Alexander von Humboldt, who prepared
a project to excavate the isthmus between the Chagres and Panama.
The engineer Fernando de Lesseps presented, ten years later, his
project to excavate the Panama Canal.
Towards the end of the
19th century, technological advances and commercial pressures were
such that the construction of a canal became a viable proposition. A
first attempt on the part of France failed, but it was possible to
make a first excavation. After this failure, the Herrán-Hay Treaty
was signed, between the Colombian and American governments, for the
purpose of building a transoceanic canal in Panama, which at that
time was part of Colombia. However, the treaty was rejected by the
Colombian Senate, a situation that pushed a group of Panamanians,
led by José Agustín Arango, to establish a separatist movement that
would allow Panamanians to negotiate directly a treaty for the
construction of the canal with the United States. . The separation
of Panama from Colombia, took place on November 3, 1903, with
support from the United States. The aspirations of President
Theodore Roosevelt and the Panamanian elite to build a canal in
Panama, were formalized with the signing of the Hay-Bunau Varilla
Treaty, which allowed to execute the engineering work, inaugurated
and opened to maritime traffic on August 15, 1914
The canal
is in operation in Panamanian hands, through the Torrijos-Carter
Treaties, signed on September 7, 1977, in Washington, by the
President of the United States, Jimmy Carter and Panamanian General
Omar Torrijos, with the support of the Colombian President Alfonso
López Michelsen, since Colombia maintained special rights of passage
through the Canal. The treaty ended with the term "perpetuity" of
the old Hay-Bunau Varilla Treaty and came into force on December 31,
1999, at 12:00 p.m.; date in which he was received by President
Mireya Moscoso from former US President Jimmy Carter.
The railway
In the nineteenth century, it
became clear that the road to Las Cruces was no longer sufficient; a
faster and less expensive road was needed for transportation along
the isthmus. Given the difficulty of building a canal, a railway
seemed to be the ideal solution. The studies began in 1827. Several
projects were proposed and money was sought. In the middle of that
century other factors appeared that encouraged the project: the
annexation of California by the United States in 1848, and the
displacement of settlers to the west coast, increasingly in greater
numbers, increased the demand for a fast route between the oceans .
The California gold rush also further increased settler
displacements to the west.
The Panama Railroad was built
across the isthmus between 1850 and 1855, 75 km long, from Colon on
the Atlantic to Panama on the Pacific. The project represented a
masterpiece of engineering of its time, carried out in very
difficult conditions: it is estimated that more than 12,000 people
died in its construction, most of it cholera and malaria. Until the
opening of the canal, the railway transported the largest volume of
cargo (minerals, materials, etc.) per unit of length of all the
railways in the world. The existence of the railroad was a key
factor in the selection of Panama for the construction of the Panama
canal.
The French project
The idea of building a
canal through Central America was suggested again by a German
scientist, Alexander von Humboldt, giving rise to a renewed interest
at the beginning of the 19th century. In 1819, the Spanish
government authorized the construction of a canal and the creation
of a company to build it.
The Republic of New Granada,
current Colombia, gave in 1839 a concession for the first time to a
French company, to establish a line of communication from the city
of Panama to any point of the Atlantic coast. France conducted field
studies and the results were positive enough for French Prime
Minister Guizot to send an official, Napoleon Garella, to confirm
that optimism. The officer found nothing on the ground that could
confirm such optimism; rather on the contrary, he highlighted the
difficulty of the company, which prompted the French government to
lose interest, and the company holding the concession to renounce
it.
The project was in the air for some time. Between 1850
and 1875 many studies were carried out, which led to the conclusion
that the two most favorable roads were: through Panama (then part of
Colombia) and through Nicaragua. A third option was to build a route
through the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico.
In May of 1879, the
Frenchman Ferdinand de Lesseps, who had completed the excavation of
the Suez Canal, presented his project of an interoceanic canal
without locks at the Geography Society of Paris, which was to
connect the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean on the isthmus.
from Panama. The Lesseps project was accepted, and rights for the
concession were purchased for ten million francs. The cost of the
works was estimated at 600 million francs, and a company was
founded, the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interocéanique de
Panama, which raised the necessary funds to execute the project. On
December 30, 1879 Ferdinand de Lesseps arrived in Panama with his
family and some time later went to New York, where he was received
with courtesy, but the leaders of the United States did not hide
from him that they would oppose, by all means, his company.
The works began in 1881, facing several challenges: the rugged
terrain, malaria epidemics and yellow fever with high mortality
among staff, etc. The work was delayed, and Lesseps appealed to
small investors through businessmen like Baron de Reinach and
Cornelio Herz, who did not hesitate to bribe the press, corrupt
ministers and parliamentarians to obtain public funding. The case
was discovered and led to the "scandal of Panama", while Gustave
Eiffel, consulted on the project, questioned its design, and
concluded that the canal should include locks to adapt to the relief
of the region . This decision was made, above all, because the
Culebra massif was the main obstacle in the canal route.
Ferdinand de Lesseps initially chose the option of a channel at a
level as it did with the Suez channel, however, to make a project of
this type in Panama meant having to go through the Culebra massif
and therefore, being forced to dig a very deep trench in a field
formed by different layers.
Another problem occurred in
September 1882, when an earthquake shook the isthmus, so they had to
interrupt the work and traffic of the railways for some time. This
event led to a decline in the share price of the company on the
Paris stock exchange.
Despite these setbacks, in 1886, during
his inspection, Ferdinand de Lesseps was very satisfied with the
progress of the work. The fact of changing the construction plans to
a canal with locks, allowed the company to save a lot of money.
However, since 1886, the opponents of Lesseps did not leave him in
peace and, during this time, in Paris the intrigues against the
company were increasingly open and came to public opinion, which was
disastrous because the money was finished in 1888. Lesseps was
forced to stop all work and abandon the project, which represented
the end of the «French Channel».
After bankruptcy in February 4, 1889, company of Lesseps was taken over by the chief engineer of the construction work of the canal, Philippe-Jean Bunau-Varilla, who was carrying out new work according to the Eiffel project. Without financial support, Bunau-Varilla addresses the US government. The Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty validated US operation and it was signed on November 18, 1903, almost immediately after the revolution that led to the separation of Panama from Colombia.