|
The Panama Canal is an amazing international feat that was
built by Americans, local Latin Americans and other international workers,
which resulted in a mega canal that connects the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans,
which is used by private and public vessels around the world. This major
accomplishment is regarded as monumental success and is likened to Man's
Historic "Walk on the Moon" in the 1960s for those days.
- 1900 Panama: permanent US military bases protected
US-controlled Panama Canal Zone.
- The most spectacular of Roosevelt's foreign policy
initiatives involved the Panama Canal. It had been the dream for years of U.S.
naval leaders and internationalists to build a passage between the Atlantic and
Pacific oceans through Central America. During the war with Spain, American
ships in the Pacific had to steam around the tip of South America in two-month
voyages to join the U.S. fleet off the coast of Cuba. In negotiations with
Britain, the U.S. secured support for an American controlled canal
(Hay-Pauncefote Treaties, 1901) that would be constructed either in Nicaragua
or through a strip of land (Panama) owned by Colombia. In a flourish of
closed-door maneuvers that favored special interests, the Senate approved a
route through Panama if Colombia agreed. When Colombia balked at the terms,
Roosevelt supported a Panamanian revolution with money, naval support, and
mercenaries. The Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty with Panama gave the U.S. perpetual
control of the canal for a price of $10 million and an annual rent of
$250,000.
- Completed in 1914, the $400 million project was greeted in
America as one of the world's greatest engineering feats-equivalent in
resources and technology to placing a man on the moon in the 1960s.
|