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Panama Canal in Transformation After Handover
When Panama claimed the Panama Canal from the United States a year ago, it seemed nobody could predict what would happen next -- nobody but the Panamanians themselves.
Today, Panama has relieved the world's fears with unaltered operations of the canal and an ambitious plan to improve the strategic waterway and the surrounding Canal Zone, a 93,000-hectare area also formerly controlled by the United States.
Soon, tourists would be able to enjoy five-star hotel services in former classrooms where Latin American generals once studied military strategy. Former U.S. military bases are being converted into tourist resorts as part of the government development plan.
Also, cruise ship ports, maritime service centers, museums, golf courses, shopping centers, academic research communities and industrial complexes will be built.
In addition to these canal projects, a second bridge will be built across the canal to ease traffic pressure on the Bridge of the Americas, which is used, on average, by 200,000 people every day. The new bridge that will span the canal's widest section will be 13 kilometers long and 90 meters high -- nearly four times the height of the Bridge of the Americas.
The Panamanian government hopes that the Canal Zone will become an international center for trade, manufacturing and tourism.
Expansion of Canal also Proposed Each year, about 17,000 vessels pass through the 81.3-kilometer long canal that links the Atlantic with the Pacific, bringing in 600 million US dollars in toll fees.
The canal now accounts for 4.3 percent of the global freight volume. This number will probably decrease to 1.3 percent by 2010,when 80 percent of the world's vessels would possibly be rejected for carrying cargo weighing more than 60,000 tons. The existing two canal locks, a marvel of engineering 86 years ago, are too narrow to receive vessels of that size.
Construction of new locks to allow passage of larger ships was proposed in August by the Panama Canal Authority (ACP), the autonomous government agency that operates the waterway. The project is expected to cost 4 billion dollars.
President Mireya Moscoso has voiced support for the plan, saying that canal expansion "is the most important work that Panamanians could undertake."
However, a referendum will decide the fate of the project, which requires the construction of three new lakes across 40,000 hectares of land and three provinces, devouring vast areas of fertile farmland.
Eagerness to Continue Success of the Canal Panamanians, after living a long time under the US shadow, want to prove to the world they can do as well as the Americans in operating the canal, if not better.
Recent official statistics show that between October 1999 and September 2000, canal tolls rose to 574.2 million dollars from 568.9 million dollars in the last fiscal year even though passage of US grain ships to Asia dropped 10.7 percent during the period, due to competition from Chinese corn.
During its first nine months under Panamanian administration, "the Panama Canal has operated at high levels of capacity and its transit services continue to be in high demand," an ACP communique announced.
The Panamanians have been preparing to run the canal for a long time. Authorities began to train Panamanian workers shortly after
the signing of the canal transfer treaties in 1977. As a result, Panamanian pilots, maintenance workers and administrators comprise 98 percent of the canal work force even before the handover, compared with 67 percent 20 years before, when only three among the canal's 265 pilots were Panamanians.
President Moscoso has said that the canal will continue to operate successfully under the control of Panama. "We are demonstrating to the world that Panama is capable of effectively administering the canal."
And the Panamanians are doing much more with projects to develop the Canal Zone -- a 16-kilometer wide strip of former US military and civilian installations flanking the canal -- into a profit-making region. They are acting very quickly, as though to make up for time lost during their absence on that territory.
Seven Decades of US Control
A scene often regarded as a remnant of colonialism, the Canal Zone cut across Panama and divided it into two separate territories.
It "gave the United States a level of sovereignty reminiscent of a colonial era, more appropriate to the 19th century than to the 20th," said Louis Caldera, US Army Secretary and head of the US delegation in the Canal Zone, at the handover ceremony.
Panamanians have not been able to benefit from the Panama Canal or the surrounding Canal Zone under treaties signed in 1903 with the United States, who encouraged the separation of Panama from Great Colombia that year.
The treaties allowed Americans to cut a canal and operate it permanently in the Panama Isthmus.
French and American engineers began to build the canal in 1904.It took about 339,000 workers ten years to complete the project, which cost 380 million dollars, and 25,000 human lives as well.
The canal brought the US giant economic benefits. Each year, 40 percent of US exports and imports were shipped via the canal,and US cargo passing through it comprised about one third of its total freight volume.
From 1981 to 1990, the canal generated a total income of 3.18
billion dollars for the US.
At the same time, the US had a substantial military presence in the Canal Zone, from which it carried out military interventions in Latin America, including the 1989 invasion of Panama and the arrest of then president Manuel Antonio Noriega.
The era of US military presence has left behind 20,328 hectares of land contaminated by unexploded ordnance and toxic chemical waste. Panama has cited the results of US Defense Department's studies that "there are at least 105,000 undetonated devices" in three major impact sites -- Emperador, Pina and Balboa Oeste -- which are "closest to densely populated centers."
It has complained that the US has cleaned only five percent of the contaminated land, falling far short of its treaty obligations.
The Fight for Sovereignty Bitter memories of Panamanians' struggles for full control of the canal had lived almost as long as the canal's life.
Particularly, following the end of World War II, Panamanians staged frequent demonstrations demanding the abolishment of the 1903 treaties and an end to US military presence in the Canal Zone.
Demonstrations reached a climax in January 1964 when Panamanian students tried to enter the Canal Zone and raise the Panamanian flag over the US Defense Department's Balboa High School. US troops opened fire on the marchers, killing 23 people and injuring
more than 400 others.
Panama temporarily broke relations with the US after the incident.
The international community pressured the US in support of the Panamanians' efforts. In March 1973, the United Nations convened a special session on Panama, despite US objections.
In February 1974, the US issued a joint communique with Panama on dissolving the 1903 treaties, committing itself to a future withdrawal from the canal.
Finally in September 1977, former Panamanian president Omar Torrijos and U.S. president Jimmy Carter signed agreements that would require the pullout of U.S. armed forces from the Canal Zone by the end of 1999 and the transfer of both the Canal and the Canal Zone to Panamanian ownership.
On December 31, 1999, a rainy day, after almost a century of longing and hope, President Moscoso announced, "The Canal is ours.
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