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Trump’s Talk of the Panama Canal Taps Into Old Myths About U.S. Power

By threatening to reclaim the Panama Canal, Trump is evoking false stories about U.S. beneficence.

In his inaugural address, President Donald Trump reiterated threats he has made about the Panama Canal, claiming, "we're taking it back." He'd previously declared that the rates Panama charges for access to the Panama Canal violated the “magnanimous gesture” the U.S. had made in building and transferring the canal. He repeated that 38,000 Americans had died building it, a far-fetched figure (the real number was likely closer to 350 people), but one that bolstered his claim that the U.S. had made a grand, selfless gift to world civilization in building the canal.

Trump’s words reiterate an age-old American mythology regarding the relationship between the U.S. and Panama, one that hides a history of imperialism and exploitation. Is Trump’s rhetoric an effort to extort more money from Panama? Or, as some have theorized, is it a strategy to pressure Panama to do more to prevent migration heading to the U.S.?

The answer is simple: there is no greater or more idealistic symbol of U.S. power in the world than the Panama Canal. As Trump seeks a way to enhance the country's power in the world, leaning on imagery regarding the Panama Canal provides just the right message.

To understand the origins and power of these tropes, one must go back to the very founding of the Republic of Panama. President Theodore Roosevelt provided strategic military support to the coup that gave Panama its independence from Colombia in 1903, and then swiftly seized control over the heart of the young republic—the territory that would become the Panama Canal Zone.

The treaty that made that possible gave the U.S. complete and permanent control over the Zone “as if it was sovereign.” It resulted from hasty negotiations with the owner of the French company that had continued digging the canal after his government's effort to do so failed in 1888. The terms of the treaty brought the young republic to its knees, not only giving the U.S. the Canal Zone but also the right to seize more land in the republic and intervene in its internal affairs. It was, as the New York Times said at the time, a “national disgrace.” The editors added that if Roosevelt followed by building a canal across the isthmus, it would be “a policy of dishonorable intrigue and aggression.”

But that was exactly what the U.S. did. At first construction moved slowly due to the prevalence of disease and bureaucratic red tape. In these early days of 1904 and 1905, many in the U.S. felt anxious that the canal project would bog the U.S. down in scandal and corruption as it had the French.