Part One: How The U.S.A. Murdered Panama with Chelsea Manning

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
What's worrying my crimes? I'm I'm Robert Evans hosted Behind
the Bastards podcast about the worst people in all of
history and consequently about an awful lot of war crimes,
which is what we're gonna be talking about today more
or less with our special guests, Sophie Cut the airhorns,
the airhorns eight or nine, eight or nine airhorns. Chelsea mending, Chelsea. Hey,

(00:27):
how are you doing today? How are doing today? It's
all right, a little it's a little cold and snowy
out here in New York. Got the uh, got the
lovely Brooklyn weather. But I have at least at least
they have power and some kind of functioning, functioning emergency
services and transportation and water and basic essentials, all those

(00:48):
Yankee things, those carpetbagger luxuries that we don't have down
in Texas. All we need is to freeze to death.
And if we don't freeze to death, to be build
tens of thousands of dollars for several ways of natural gas,
because that's how freedom looks. I'm in Texas, by the way, yes, uh, Chelsea, Um,

(01:10):
what do you know? What do you know about Panama? Uh?
What do I know about Panama? Whenever I think about it.
Whenever I think about I usually think of like Teddy
Roosevelt and uh, steam shovels. So yeah, that's that's that's
what I usually think of. Um, I don't know much
about the actual I don't know much about it beyond

(01:31):
like imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, naval strategy, and engineering. That is
a lot of the history of Panama. And that's what
we're gonna be talking about today. Today. Our bastard is
the United States of America, a little country you might
have heard of, I don't know. Um. And and specifically,
we're talking about the relationship between the United States of

(01:52):
America and Panama, which is one of the most abusive
relationships in the entire history of geopolitics. It's it's really outstanding. Hey,
that's a nice it's miss you got. There be a
shame if America were to happen to it North America. UM. Yeah.

(02:12):
So this this was all inspired when a friend advised
me to take a look at a documentary called The
Panama Deception, which was made in UH and is quite good.
And so I decided to start looking a little deeper
into the history of Panama. I found a book length
study on the history of US Panamanian relations and a
bunch of articles, and my god, it is it is, Chelsea.

(02:36):
It is as fucked up as I don't know, Sophie.
What's something that's sucked up like a like a like
a bed lash to the ceiling. I mean that makes sense.
I was gonna say when people put their beds in
their closets and then like then they can't get into
it gets stuck, and then you just it's just like
then you have no bed. Yeah, it's as fucked up

(02:58):
as a bed closet. Chelsea. Well, I usually I usually
think of somebody who like uses the toilet and then
it doesn't slush and then come back three or four
days later. Yeah, you could say I just choked on coffee.
You could. You could say that the history of US
Panamanian relations would be embodied. Is like if Panama is

(03:18):
like a small apartment in the US, is a guest
at a party in that apartment. The US has just
like continuously been leaving upper deckers for the last hundred
and fifty years or so, just just just shipping in
the water tank. That's that's America, as regards Panama and
also drinking all of their beer. It's good stuff. It's
good stuff. So Panama is one of those countries you

(03:41):
can look at on a map and immediately no is
just kind of completely fucked in a historic sense, right,
It's a beautiful place, but in terms of geopolitics, it's
just doomed because of where it is in the world.
It's sort of like how you can look at Ukraine
with its fertile soil and its position like right between
the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Western Europe and be like, boy,
I bet those people got their ship fucked up constantly

(04:03):
because other folks needed wheat. Panamas in the same kind
of position. Their northern neighbor is Costa Rica and their
southern neighbor is Columbia. The nation is the bridge between
Central and South America, and more to the point, it
is the narrowest land mass in Central America. So if
you wanted to say, dig a big trench through a
country to let people travel from the Atlantic Ocean to
the Pacific Ocean without sailing around an entire extra continent,

(04:26):
it's basically the best place to do it. And people
realize that pretty much as soon as they found Panama.
In the seventeen hundreds and eighteen hundreds, travelers who wanted
to go from New York to San Francisco would generally
go by way of Panama. So if you were trying
to get to like, if you were doing like the
New York to San Francisco route, traveling through the middle
of the United States was just you would you were
you would probably die horribly, right. We all played Oregon

(04:49):
Trail or some version of that. Um, So your best
bet was to sail down to Panama from New York,
then spend like three days going across Panama on the
back of a borough, and then sail from Panama's Pacific
coast up to San Francisco. That was how you did,
like went from east coast to west coast back in
the day. UM. And I think if things were still

(05:10):
that way, rint would probably be cheaper in Los Angeles.
So you've got this, You've got this perfectly situated country,
and from kind of the beginning of the United States
being a thing, American or US leaders are looking down
there and being like, boy, I bet we could fucking
cut cut a hole in the middle of that country,
and that would really make it easier for us to
colonize North America. Um So, like most of Latin America,

(05:34):
Panama was owned by Spain for centuries, and Spain used
its resources to buy gold for their various kings and
spices to make better paya. In eight one, Panama freed
itself from its now ailing colonial master. There was a
strong independence movement in the Isthmus, but they were overruled
by the folks who wanted to join the Grand Columbia Federation. So, yeah, Panama,

(05:55):
and like Colombia, a whole bunch of Central and South
America separates from Spain in eighteen twenty one, and a
bunch of guys in Panama are like, hey, you know,
would be rad if we were our own country, But
more of them are like, you know what, would probably
be a better idea if we were part of Colombia
because we're tiny and Columbia is real big, and they're
probably just gonna take us over if we're if we're not,

(06:15):
if we don't get on board the Columbia train. It's
the story as old at time now. Panama subsequently tried
to free itself from Columbia, and like eighty they there
were a bunch of different independence attempts in the eighteen
thirties and up to eighteen forty, but it never quite
worked out. Um and the region's separatist tendencies were boosted
by the fact that they were very isolated. There were
no roads connecting them to Colombia. There were a couple

(06:36):
of cities and towns in Panama, was not heavily populated,
and they didn't really trade with Columbia. They mainly traded
with the Caribbean and other parts of like South America,
rather than their countrymen in Bogata. From the beginning of Panama,
Americans saw the isthmus as something to exploit. In eighteen
forty six, the USA signed the bid Lack Treaty with Columbia,
and this basically, in the bid Lack Treaty, the US

(07:00):
promise to protect Columbia's control over Panama in exchange for
access to any future canal that might be dug through
the country. So we were like, hey, hey, Columbia, you know,
you guys are a new country, you don't have much
of a military yet. This place is real isolated and valuable.
We'll we'll take we'll protect it for you. We're a
big country. We've got a whole lot of developed we
got ships and everything. Do you just chill out. Let

(07:23):
us protect Panama and if someone happens to build a
canal there, we get free access to it. Because it
was you know, surely a deal without any sort of
ulterior motives to it that will never be abused by
the United States, Right, but it wasn't. The United States
of the time still considered by the rest of the
world to be a young upstart with US. Yeah. Yeah,

(07:44):
like in comparison, it compares it to the European powers
of the time, like France and France and Spain. And
for for reference, the USA in this period is younger
than Nancy Pelosi. Um. So yeah, we are a young upstart,
but we've got more resources than Columbia, which which has

(08:05):
nothing in Panama, which has like less than nothing. So yeah,
the US signs this this wonderful treaty that will never
have any any ulterior consequences. Um. And it was kind
of like there wasn't really a lot of other options
that Columbia had at the point, um, because Panama barely
anyone lived there and they didn't have any sort of
ability to stop someone from invading them in Columbia didn't

(08:26):
have any roads connecting them to Panama, so they couldn't
do anything. And in the eighteen forties everyone knew that
somebody was going to figure out how to dig a
canal through Panama. So it kind of made sense, like
trusting in the United States is basically our best bet.
Maybe they won't suck us over, which is never a
good bet to make with the United States. Nope. So

(08:48):
the deal was inked right at the end of the
US Mexican War, and it established a pattern that would
hold true for more than a century, which was that
Panama was to become a pawn of United States power politics.
Um and not just the United States really, just in general.
White people were going to continue to come in and
funk around in Panama because we wanted to get to
the Pacific Ocean more easily. So after the bid Lack Treaty,

(09:11):
the US government felt free to act as if the
Isthmus was basically their property. In eighteen fifty, we signed
the Clayton Bulward Treaty with England, which guaranteed US British
cooperation to build a canal in Panama in the future.
Neither Colombia nor the Panamanian government were referenced in the
treaty or consulted in this. So as soon as the
US signs this treaty to protect Panama, we make a

(09:32):
deal with the British to build a canal, and nobody
talks to the people who lived there at all, Like
it's it's just the white people being consulted here, because
who else do you really need? They don't have shovels,
not our shovels, not steam shovels. Yeah, steam shovels, clean coal,
clean burning coal. Um. The California Gold Rush of eighteen

(09:53):
forty nine that the first massive wave of US citizens
in the Panama. Most of these people were just traveling through,
but a sizeable minority settled in Panama, mainly to establish
businesses in Panama City and Cologne. Uh. And these businesses
just serviced white people who are on their way to
strike it rich in California. So you get all these
white people traveling through through Panama to get to California

(10:14):
to dig for gold near San Francisco. And you also
get a whole bunch of white people who settled in
Panama because they're like it seems like everyone's gonna die
panning for gold, and it's better to just take their
money before they make it to the West coast, which
is the smart play, right. That's those are the people
who really made bank off of the gold rush. Now,
since the US had just won a nasty little colonial

(10:36):
war in Mexico and taken a third of the country
for the United States, most of the whites who settled
in Panama did so assuming that it was going to
be a part of the United States. At this point
in time, a lot of Americans are like, well, of
course we're going to own all of Central and South
America at some point. They're connected to us. Why wouldn't
they be our property, which, you know South, that was

(11:00):
the goal. I mean, there was a lot of talk
even in like the early stages of the Civil War
among the Confederacy about like, once we once we beat
the Union, why wouldn't we go down and take Yeah,
let's get Cuba, let's get Mexico, let's take it all. Baby.
Uh it was you know, we don't talk so much
about that anymore. So, Yeah, all of these Americans who
moved to Panama to make money off of forty niners

(11:22):
or like eventually this will be like the the I
don't know at this point on what that point would
have been, like the thirtieth state or something, but they
were sure it was going to be a state now.
At around this time, the Pacific Male Steamship Company ink
to deal with the Colombian government to build a railroad
through the region, and the goal of this was to
speed up the journey from east coast to west coast.
And I'm gonna quote now from a wonderful book titled

(11:43):
Emperors in the Jungle about the United States relationship with Panama.
The company imported workers from China, Ireland and elsewhere for
the job, but most workers were blacks from Jamaica or Cartagena.
The imported workers gave rise in eighteen fifty three and
eighteen fifty five to epidemics of yellow fever, which previously
had been rare, exploited, Sick, and full of despair, hundreds

(12:03):
of Chinese workers in their families killed themselves and moss.
In eighteen fifty four, more than six thousand laborers, perhaps
twice that many died in the railroad's construction. Completed in
eighteen fifty five, the railroad allowed passengers to cross the
Isthmus and leave Panama more quickly in three hours instead
of three days required by Mueller Boat, charging twenty five
dollars in gold for passenger and with forty passages annually.

(12:25):
The railroad was a cash flow for its New York
owners and netted more than seven million in its first
six years of operation. So this is the kind of
thing like I I heard as a kid that we
built a railroad for Panama. You never hear about like
the human cost. Like one of the things is there
used to be a sizeable Chinese population in Panama, but
they committed mass suicide because of how miserable the work was.

(12:48):
It's just like that didn't make it into the history
books that I that I came across um as a
kid probably shouldn't. Uh the fact that to nine eleven's
worth of laborers and maybe more died making the railroad.
We also, I mean that was every railroad they were
just like they were just like built in blood and bones.
It's pretty cool stuff railroads anyway. So the human shrapnel

(13:11):
from this railroad through Panama didn't stop it, just like
the massive death toll that was made to build it.
Because when they built the railroad. There had been this
whole industry in Panama writing white people across the country
for three days or so to get them to the
port on the west coast of Panama, and that industry dies.
So all of the money that used to be going
to Panamanians is now going to this US owned railroad,

(13:33):
So instead of flowing into the country, it flows to
New York where you live. Yeah. So it's it's a
it's basically a cycle where it's just like it's a
it's a reinvestment cycle. Yeah, a reinvestment away from away
from the place where the railroad actually exists, to the
United States. It's a siphoning of wealth. Yeah. Yeah, it's great. Um,

(13:55):
so this is an absolute They invented liberalism, Yeah, they
figured it out real early. Panama was the test case.
Uh so. Yeah, it's it's kind of a fucking disaster
for Panama, and an economic depression strikes the isthmus as
soon as the railroad really like gets going. Um. This
leads to a simmering anti US sentiment, which was stoked

(14:17):
by news that Bastard's pot alumni William Walker, had recently
conquered nearby Nicaragua and declared at a slave state. We
did a couple episodes on him back in the day.
But yeah, that he was like an American who conquered
Nicaragua briefly in order to spread slavery there. So this
really freaked out people in Panama because a ton of
black slaves in Panama had been freed while in Colombia

(14:38):
had been freed in eighteen fifty two. Um, there were
huge numbers of them in Panama to build the railroad,
and they started to worry that America was coming for them. Right,
we just got freed. This American just conquered Nicaragua to
make slavery legal there. It's not far away from us. Clearly,
they're getting ready to take us over and re enslave
us again. And all of these tensions boiled over in

(15:00):
April nineteen, eighteen fifty six, into what came to be
called the Watermelon Riot. The gist of the story was
that a drunken man named John Oliver um and I'm
pretty sure it's a different John Oliver than the guy
who has a TV show so Television's darling. John Oliver
was on his way to California in eighteen fifties six,
waiting at a train station in Cologne, and he decided

(15:21):
he wanted some watermelon, so he walks over to a
fruit stand and because he's wasted, he just steals it. Now,
the fruit stands owned by a guy named Jose Manuel
Luna Uh, and Luna gets angry that John Oliver, NBC's
darling has just walked off. Is it HBO? They're the
same thing, they are, but they're not, they're not at all.

(15:41):
I'm sorry. So John Oliver, with his big Hollywood salary,
steals some fucking watermelon and this guy Luna, gets really
angry and he chases after him, being like, what the funk, dude,
you make millions of dollars a year. John Oliver pulls
a gun on him. Luna pulls a knife in return,
which takes some takes some balls, like to for someone

(16:01):
to pull a gun on you and you just pull
a knife right back. That's a that's a move, um.
And thankfully there's a lot of like Panamanians around. It's
a crowded market area. And as soon as John Oliver
pulls a gun, another man pulls like grabs the gun
away from Oliver and takes it from him and it
fires in the in the process of this, but it
doesn't injure anyone. So John Oliver runs like hell um,

(16:23):
but word of the theft in the confrontation spreads quickly
and everybody's already angry at the United States here, So
this kind of sparks a mob, and the mob heads
to the train station, protesting the U S in general
and protesting American travelers in particular. They assault people along
the way and they loot traveler's luggage. By the time
the violence dies down, sixteen passengers had been killed and

(16:44):
another sixteen had been injured, and one or two locals
were also killed. And just like the general melee that
breaks out. So yeah, they kill a bunch of people. Um,
this causes an uproar in the United States. Yeah. This
you know, this is this is this is a this
is a country that was funded basically on like they
massacred nine people in Boston in time to start a war.

(17:06):
Yeah much, I mean, and it's just you know, obviously
America has changed since then, because now we're still in
massacred nine people in Boston. We wouldn't do anything, you know,
it's just Boston, right, Um, it's not like I don't
know Pittsburgh, shout out to Pittsburgh. Um, so yeah, it's
we're a different country then, and we get angry over this,

(17:27):
but we don't go to war because again America is
a lot chiller in these days. Um. We do, however,
demand reparations from Columbia, which is broadly reasonable. You know,
sixteen citizens get murdered in a in a riot. You know,
you kind of sparked the riot by being shitty, but
it's not unreasonably be like, hey, he should give us
some money because a bunch of our people got killed,
better than going to war. So at this point the

(17:50):
United States is old. US is getting a better grade
than I think New u s would have gotten because
if sixteen Americans got killed in Panama to day, well
we'll talk about what happens when one American gets killed
in Panama in nineteen eighty nine. So the next couple
commenced five months later, So they pay off the United
States and we we we chill out. The next couple
happens five months later. Due to internal unrest that started

(18:12):
in the Panamanian General Assembly, the Blacks, which were Panama's
opposition party, threatened to take up arms over a political dispute,
William Mervin, commanding the U. S. Pacific Squadron, landed troops
in Panama under the ages of protecting U. S. Citizens
who lived in Panama from unrest. The whole situation ended uneventfully,
but Mervin unwittingly established a pattern that would repeat itself

(18:34):
more than a dozen times up to nineteen eighty nine.
In fact, the United States intervened militarily on at least
a dozen occasions in Panama just during the later half
of the Night of the eighteen hundreds. So this guy Mervyn,
he sends in U. S. Troops for the first time
just to protect American citizens from unrest and local Panamanian politics,
and that just keeps happening forever up until like literally

(18:55):
the nineteen nineties. In eighteen sixty, violence breaks out in
the Panamanian led Slatter again. Black Panamanians take up arms
against the government. US railway agent William Nelson writes worryingly
to the US Console, the in words are at the
railroad bridge, and I fear that if they get out
of ammunition, they may come here to take our arms.
Nelson begged the government to send in the Marines to

(19:17):
protect the railroad. The Panamanian government also begged the US
to send in the Marines, and again a popular domestic
political movement was clamped down on with the help of
North American soldiers. So this is the first time that
we actually send in troops to shut down like a
popular uprising, that's a local uprising. The Blacks as a
political party are heavily dominated by like Caribbean immigrants who

(19:40):
were brought in to build the railroad, and they're agitating
for better, uh like treatment from the government. And because
they're threatening the government, which is friendly to the United States,
the US sends and marines to crack some skulls and
stop them from you know, protesting. Uh. This would again
content that's the whole history of the y car that

(20:01):
Smedley Butler would agree with you, and he spent a
lot of time in Panama. UM. So, the Civil War
breaks out back in the United States, and after a
year or two, it was pretty clear that ought to
uh Abraham Lincoln that the United States wasn't going to
get out of this thing without proclaiming, you know, some emancipation. Now,
Abe was a bit of a racist himself, and he

(20:21):
was still convinced that white people and black people could
not co exist together in the same country. The only
solution he could see was to find a big, empty
foreign land that he could ship all of the United
States as black people too. And this is how we
got Liberia. As I think most people know. But Abe's
first idea was actually Panama. See it was filled with
coal mines, and in Lincoln's head, this made it the

(20:41):
perfect place to send freed slaves. And I'm gonna quote
again from Emperors in the Jungle by John Lindsay poland
coal mines, he told a room full of free blacks
and eight in August eighteen sixty two, will afford an
opportunity to the inhabitants for immediate employment until they get
ready to settle permanently in their homes. Columbia, however, saw
the plan the kind of subtle invasion. Central American countries

(21:02):
were also opposed, and many free blacks in the United
States greeted Lincoln's proposal with hostility. It was scrapped. So, yeah,
that was that was abs first idea. It's like, you know,
you know what, these freed slaves are gonna need to
do coal mining. That'll make him happy. Philip fill the
minds up. No, no, I mean it counted as woke

(21:25):
for the day because he didn't think they should be
able to earn money. So I guess I mean fair,
but good on, good on you. It's there. No, So
the Civil War ends, and yeah, I mean everybody's like
it's it's right there. Yeah. Yeah, with Abraham Lincoln taking

(21:50):
the role of ices. So the Civil War ends, and
you know, pretty pretty much the best case scenario if
you're gonna have a civil war, the worst people don't win.
But then comes reconstruction, which is pretty much the worst
case scenario. The US never gives up on its dream
of a Panama Canal controlled controlled for the profit of
the United States, but for a while, devastated by war,

(22:12):
it had no ability to pursue that goal. So France
steps in because France, you know, they're doing a lot
better at this point, and they do have the ability
to go into Panama and try to make a canal
of their own, and they have experience in colonies. Yeah,
they've got they've got a lot more experience in colonies.
They've got a better navy at this point. Um, they're
really good at imperialism in these days. But you know what.

(22:34):
They're bad at Chelsea building a fucking canal. And it's
not the only it's not the only canal that they
failed at building. No, no, this might be the worst
failure of canal building probably that anyone has. This is
second to the Suez Canal. Yeah. Second, well we'll see

(22:55):
that they finished the Suez Canal though, right, I don't
think the French did. Oh yeah, you're right. This is
the same story because I think the British had to fit. Yeah,
France has a proud history of fucking up canals, getting
thousands of people killed, and then someone else finishes it. Well,
here's another story of that. I'm gonna quote from a
rite up by Thomas Leidenberg of the University of Houston.

(23:17):
In the eighteen seventies, a brilliant French engineer by the
name of Ferdinand de Lessups was put in charge of
a project to replace the railroad link connecting the the
Atlantic to the Pacific with the sea level Canal. De
Lessups one worldwide acclaim for completing the Suez Canal, and
he fervently believed that he was the best man to
meet the new challenge, paying scant attention to reports by
the American Army engineers that the obstacles in the mountains

(23:40):
and jungles of Panama were too numerous. The great engineer
determined to build a sea level canal like the one
at Suez. De lessups attempted canal building in Panama was
a disaster from the beginning to end. Malaria and yellow
fever carried away the lives of French engineers, their families,
and the hapless workers who took part in the project. Altogether,
twenty thousand people died in the eight years, and fluding

(24:00):
the best young engineers graduating from French universities. Nature itself
conspired against the French canal builders. With an hour's slippery
soil filled up with holes which had taken days to dig,
Machines rusted in the rain and broken er heavy loads.
The river Chagra rose up more than its normal forty
feet and even wiped out the railroad tracks built above
it thirty years earlier. Less Ups was forced to give

(24:20):
up on his projected sea level canal after eight torturous years.
By this time it had already cost twice the original
estimate of a hundred and thirty one million dollars, with
less than one third of the canal completed, the famous
Canal Company to declared bankruptcy. De lessups in the company's
directors had light about or covered up the many factors
that plagued the canals progress, its costs, the death's caven's malaria,

(24:41):
broken machinery, and the pickled corpses sent to French medical
schools to help pay the bills. Yeah, they sent the
corpses of the people who died building the canal to
medical schools. Yeah, pickled them and mailed them over. I
thought you used the word pickled. I wasn't. Yeah, all
of like France's young engine years die and they just
pickle the corpses and send them to medical schools because

(25:03):
they're trying to make ends meet. It's so expensive. The
thing that's most valuable about the canal winds up being
the corpses of the men who try to build it.
It's pretty great. Yeah, yeah, what what are you gonna dorry?
Are you going to preserve a corpse in the word
when you're talking about like a human. No, they didn't

(25:24):
have refrigeration yet, didn't know. They did not pickle. They
have pickles, though they have a lot of pickles. Those
are your options back in the day. So this like
almost leads to the collapse of the French government because
it was such a big project that basically everyone in
French society of any position of power was involved, not

(25:46):
just like politicians, but journalists and editors of newspapers and
business leaders. All of these guys have been bribed by
members of the canal company in order to provide positive
coverage and in order to like get the government on board.
And when this thing fails, so does asterous lye. It
like almost collapses the French government. It's it's hard to
exaggerate how big of a funk up this canal is.

(26:07):
It fucking rules In other words, it's a very fun story,
minus the pickled part. That's the best part of it.
That's literally not the best part of it. You know,
you've really succeeded in building a canal when the corpses
of the men who worked on it are the most
valuable part of it, that's just awesome to me. Robert, Well,
you know what the most valuable part of our podcast

(26:28):
is are we selling pickled corpses? So we are absolutely
not selling pickled corpses. I don't think you can guarantee
that I can guarantee you we're not selling pickled corpses.
I mean, look, who knows what ad is going to
come on after this. I'm sure the fridge, I mean,
that could be a new raytheon makes a lot of corpses.

(26:51):
You're leaving money on the table by not pickling them.
Let's just see what the ads happened to be. We're
back and Chelsea just finished doing a little on the
spot research. Well, y'all were hearing all those wonderful ads
for pickled corpses on the Suez Canal because we were
we were talking out of our our our rears a

(27:13):
little bit there, Although it's a nice at anyway, Chelsea,
why don't you throw out what you found? I found
that the French did maintain control of the of of
the Suez Canal for at least for at least a
few years, but it basically had enormous difficulties and was
a financial and economics sort of disaster for a few years.

(27:33):
So that was a I just wanted to job. I
just wanted to double check that because I was like,
I'm pretty sure it didn't end up well for the
French either. There and and and you know what the
death toll on the Suez Canal was. Uh no, I don't.
I don't have that in front of me. Okay, I'm curious.
And it must have been astronomical. Yeah, because it's a
it's it's basically a dessert and you have to it's
it's not like you have, like you know, equatorial rains constantly.

(27:56):
Holy shit, I just looked it up. A hundred twenty Yeah,
it was didn't mark out for a well, yeah, a
hundred and twenty thousand deaths among one point five million workers.
Jesus Christ canals a brutal. Yeah, that's so many dead people.

(28:17):
That's like a war. I don't know. So I guess
we're really having trouble when we're trying to determine which
canal is more of a funk up, because way more
people died on the Suez Canal. But at least they
got a canal out of the deal. I mean, you know,
but you know, maintaining control of it seems to be

(28:38):
an issue. Yeah, that was also a problem for them.
Good God Almighty, don't build canals, is the message I'm
taking out of the existing one. Endlessly leave the land
where it is. Bred them, don't build them, sail around
fucking wherever. Just stop this terrible idea. It doesn't it's bad.

(29:00):
Don't build canals. That's gonna be my only motto now. So, uh,
French efforts in Panama end in disaster. Uh. And the
US government was still really but so the French obviously
failed to make this canal. And even though they fail
their efforts, they're really worry the United States, UM, because
we assume that like, okay, France didn't make it happen

(29:20):
this time, but one of these fucking Europeans is going
to figure out how to make a canal, and then
they're gonna be making all that sweet canal money and
we in the US are going to be left to
sit and spin. Uh. And you know, this is the
era of the Monroe doctrine, when President Monroe had been like,
all of Latin America is basically our backyard, and if
if Europe fox around there, then then we'll come. We'll

(29:41):
come beat them up. And it was not like a
we want to protect Latin America thing. It was a
we want to profit off of Latin America. You guys,
you guys steal Africa. Um. And President Rutherford Hades, after
French failure in the canal, warned Europe that when it
came to Panama, the policy of this country is a
canal under a American control. Obviously, Panamanians were not consulted

(30:03):
in this declaration, but Ruth Oft Hayes didn't really care
what they thought. He was trying to scare Europe away
from building a canal, and to this end, he warned
them that if they did succeed in building a canal
there and local unrest threatened their control of it, they
would have to send in their navy and their soldiers.
And since this would be a violation of the Monroe doctrine,
the United States would get involved to fight Europeans trying

(30:24):
to regain control of the canal. It's a little bit
of i don't know, pre gun boat diplomacy there. And
right around this same time, the United States is like
the eighteen eighties, uh, eighteen seventies, eighteen eighties, the United
States sends in a flotilla of ships to scout out
the area around the Panamanian Isthmus and this is so
that the United States can start making plans to construct
a canal of their own. Again, the Colombian government was

(30:46):
not consulted. Neither was anyone in Panama. We just send
some boats over to scout shit out, and the president
gives the ship's captain's orders to open fire on any
local boats that try to stop them. This pisss off
the Colombian government's representative in Washington, d See, and he
complained in writing, when government's attempt to acquire land in
foreign countries for construction or enterprises such as that under discussion,

(31:08):
they normally begin by obtaining the consent of the sovereign
of the country in which the land is located. Um,
which is a fair point. But the United States is
not going to do that. Uh. In the mid eighties,
this piece of metal right here is sovereign. Yeah, we
have we have the last argument of kings. Yeah, is

(31:28):
the cannon. And it also is the last argument of
people who don't really care if you have a king,
because we got democracy guns. Baby, they're better than your
king guns. I don't know anyway. In the mid eighteen eighties,
Columbia was convulsed by a civil war with between the
conservative government and an insurgent liberal army. The rebel leader,

(31:50):
a guy named Preston, was ordered ordered a shipload of
weapons from the United States, and we sold them to him.
But when the shipment arrived in Central America, the U. S.
Customs clear refused to release east them at the pressuring
of Columbia's right wing government. This provokes a riot, and
Preston briefly took US citizen hostage to try to get
his guns released. The U. S. Marines were sent into
Panama again, and the resulting situation degenerated into a riot.

(32:13):
Some rioters looted property owned by the French canal company,
who asked and received the help of U. S. Marines
to round up and execute looters. The New York Times
reported at the time fifty eight persons, among whom it
is believed were several innocent people, were thus summarily summarily dispatched.
Just a good solid report. They were probably innocent, but

(32:33):
you know we shot summary execution. Yeah. I mean, there's
so much that's in that that is just classic United
States right up to today, Like, oh, there's this rubble
and he wants guns, will sell them to him, but
then we won't let him take them because he's going
to fight against the government that that we broadly support.
Because they acquiesced to our needs. Yeah, it's it's it's

(32:56):
the it's the equivalent of the military age mail today. Yeah. Yeah,
it's it's fucking around contract ship. Yeah, I mean it's everything.
It's everything American in one perfect little package. Uh. We're
We've just always been the irrepressible little scamp that we
are today. So the war turned against the rebels, and
in March they fled the city of Cologne, leaving it

(33:17):
burning behind them. The fires tour through Panama's largest city,
leaving thousands of mostly black Panamanians homeless and launching a
refugee crisis. The United States Secretary of the Navy saw
this all as a great opportunity to make the case
that the U. S. Navy deserved a bigger role in
Latin America and thus more money. He dispatched ships to
Columbia to apprehend the rebel leader. He also sent in

(33:37):
Marines to protect the railroad in US property from unrest.
The Commodore in charge of all this was given special
orders to involve the press and give them all of
the access they wanted so that Navy could keep the
country with us in the matter. The guy the commodore
was also ordered to scout out good potential sites for
new navy bases. No attempt was taken to help refugees,
or to eliminate the or to alleviate the crisis. No

(33:59):
humanity arian aide was dispensed, but the Civil War led
to the start of what would become a century long
U S. Navy presence on the Panamanian ISTHMUS. Now this
should make it clear that from the beginning, the only
value Panama held to the United States government and military
was due to its location. The people who actually lived
there were an afterthought at best. And I meant it
when I said at best, because when US officials spent

(34:21):
time thinking about Panamanians, they tended to get really fucking
racist about it. Here's how the New York Herald wrote
about Panamanians in this period. I'm gonna try to put
on my old timey voice, my old timey racist voice.
Oh it's a very reliable newspaper too. It's the fake
Zoo incident. I think was the New York Herald. Wait,

(34:41):
what was the fake two incident? Oh it's an interesting
like do your thing, dear bit. First of all, I
go crap this, Okay. Uh So here's the New York Herald,
writing about Panamanians, the vast majority of the inhabitants of
the Isthmus have never emerged from a half savage condition
or else have relapsed into that state. But no one
can a to underestimate the prowess of the savages when

(35:02):
they are mustard and swarms as they can be here
from the miserable morass and the jungle clothed mountains. That's
some good that's some good racist pros right there. Yeah. Yeah,
so this is this is coming from the same news
that yeah, and the like. Apparently there was a awful calamity,

(35:24):
was like the headline in on November nine, eighteen seventy four. Yeah,
the Herald filled this entire front page news to an
account of an escape from the Central Park Zoo by
basically like a herd of animals like tigers, bears. Uh
and uh that twelve of the wild carnivorous beasts are

(35:44):
still at large. The Herald warned and left in a
very tiny little bit of small print and said that
this is that all of this, uh sounds true, but
it's not. Wait what they just wrote a fake article
that it's not true. By the way, heads up. This
was a joke. Amazing a little just a little bit

(36:06):
of light libel. It's history like that that makes you
proud to be a journalist. Yeah, just just lying about
a zoo breakout for nothing. Oh god, that's good. That's good,
you know it really it really serves to point out
how respectable journalism has always been as a discipline. Um,

(36:28):
just just makes my heart swell. So pamphleteera was the
original Twitter. Yeah, I mean there's actually a lot to
say about how um, the old kind of like and
this is in Europe to like the network of pamphlets
and newsletters and stuff that were just like these cheap,
little kind of mimiographed things printed out. We're like what
eight Chan became today. Right, It's where all of your

(36:51):
anti Semitic conspiracy theories, which this is actually happening in
this period of time eighteen seventies, eighteen eighties, eighteen nineties.
This is like the spread of of the toxic ship
that we have today that goes through through Twitter and
parlor and stuff like that. It was spreading in these
little shitty pamphlets and these yellow press magazines and stuff
like the New York Herald. You know, it's it's it's cool,

(37:13):
I guess is what I'm saying. This has been a
problem with forever. It's pre industrial Twitter, and then you
have like you have posted, you have like the industrial
area era of like circulated newspapers, widely circulated newspapers, and
now we're going back, you know, from mass media to
a decentralized platform anyway, and part of well, now, partly
I want to dig into this because part of why

(37:34):
this is a good comparison to make is that the
purpose of all of the racist propaganda spreading in places
like Parlor and Twitter right now is to build up
a kind of xenophobic and explicitly kind of exterminationist far right.
And the purpose of all of the racism that like
US newspapers were writing about Panamanians in the eighteen eighties
and nineties was to justify the US taking over the

(37:57):
country to build a canal. These people are savages, their monsters,
and they have this They don't deserve this valuable land.
We have to take it from them because they're they're
too incompetent and dangerous to manage it themselves. It is
it's the same basic process, right, It's the same thing
as scaring people about Mexican immigrants in order to, you know,
distract from the damage that neoliberal capitalism is doing from

(38:20):
the working class and blame it on immigrants and stuff
like it is or a fake or a fake you know,
central park Zewo escape effect and for park Zewo escape,
which I guess has less of a political purpose to it. Yeah,
I think it did, but I don't want to I
don't want to dig into that. Yeah, I'm sure there
was some bizarre, bizarre racist underpinning of that whole story anyway.

(38:41):
Uh So, Yeah, all of these interventions by U S
soldiers had been firmly one sided affairs up until this point.
Through the eighteen eighties, the U S would either gun
down or capture and execute people with very little resistance.
And this didn't look good in the media, right, Nobody,
nobody wants to see their soldiers is just shooting a
bunch of defenseless people protesting for better living conditions. So

(39:01):
the American media made sure to build a narrative of
Panamanian natives is terrifying, violent monsters. Irvan King of the
New York Tribune wrote that the people of Panama were
quote to all intents and purposes savages the Isthmian the
Isthmian Indians are an expert and a kind of savage
warfare and are always aided by a mob of negroes.

(39:21):
Some bad stuff. Yeah. King was an expert propagandist for
US interests, and while the locals were slavering beasts. In
his articles, US soldiers were described as having captured the
place as if by magic. Their neat and clean appearance
and quick and precise movements solicited the admiration and respective
men of all nations, even that of those who are

(39:43):
most opposed to the proceeding. I think about like when
Trump shot missiles at Syria, and that was an NBC
anchor was like talking about the beauty of our weapons. Yeah,
it's this, it's it's this constant need to like contrast
US military intervention as like shining and clean and precise

(40:03):
to the to the violent savages that we're deploying our
weapons against. It again, something that has now not changed
in a hundred and what forty years fifty something like that.
It's rade. So a lot of powerful, rich white North
Americans had a vested interest in getting and keeping other
Americans US citizens interested in Panama. Obviously, a Panama Canal

(40:25):
would have both military and economic benefits, but those were
not the only reasons for such a venture. US naval
strategist Alfred Mahon was one of the first to suggest
building a canal in order in order to make it
easier to people the US West coast with white Europeans.
From John Lindsay Poland quote Mahon, who strongly influenced the
young Theodore Roosevelt, believed that control of the seed determined

(40:48):
the world struggles for power, and had done so throughout history.
Mayhan's strategic thinking about the Panama Canal also had a
racial dimension. A canal would allow Europeans to reach Oregon
and California without even stepping off the coast en route,
thus avoiding contact with savages in the Western plains or
along the Panama Railroad. The greatest factor of sea power
in any region is the distribution and numbers of its

(41:11):
population and their characteristics. Mayhan wrote in an essay about
the canal two years before its completion, the foremost question
of the Pacific as affecting sea power is the filling
up of the now partly vacant regions our own Pacific
coast by a population of European derivation, it is most
desirable that such immigration should be from northern Europe. So

(41:31):
a big part of why the Panama Canal whether such
immediacy to it is that in this period of time,
it's actually easier in some cases for people from China,
from Japan, from Asia to migrate to the U. S.
West Coast or to the North American West Coast, because
it's kind of a more direct route for them, because
you gotta go all the way through fucking Panama to
get there from the east coast, and that makes it

(41:51):
harder for Europeans to fill up California, Oregon in Washington,
UM and so Mayhan and guys like Roosevelts started to
think that, like we in order to stop the Asiatic
hordes from dominating the West coast, we have to cut
a hole through Panama. That's another major factor in this um.
Asian immigration threatened political efficiency, in Mahean's view, because of

(42:14):
the different ethnic people's ideas quote do not allow intermingling
and consequently, if admitted, are ominous of national weakness through
flaws in homogeneity. Roosevelt shared Mahean's thesis no greater calamity
could now befall the United States that they have the
Pacific Slope fill up with a Mongolian population. Peake cringe.

(42:35):
Pete Roosevelt, I mean, he's this, It's there's there's two
Roosevelts in history. One of them is the Roosevelt you
learn about when you're a fourteen year old boy and
the boy scouts who is rad and like every young
man who likes knives in the wilderness is hero, right.
He and John the rough writers and like Hike and
with John Muir, and he's exploring the Amazon and he is,

(42:58):
you know, getting shot in the middle of the speech,
getting malaria. Well the Amazon does finally get It's like
Latin America gets its revenge on Roosevelt in the end.
But you when you learn about him as a young
like as like I'm literally holding a machette right now,
as the young kind of boy that I grew up
like you grew up idolizing Teddy Roosevelt. And then my

(43:19):
adulthood and I think a lot of people's adulthood is
a long process of learning, Oh my god, he was
one of the worst people who ever lived, just a
not just racist within a time of racism, but like
an arch an arch bigot of his day, like it's
so so bad and he's so he did split the
vote and allowed somebody even worse to come into power. Yeah,

(43:42):
he did, he did, he did. He fumed up in
a lot of ways politically. He did also give us
the National Park System, which is I mean, that's the
thing about America. It's like with Eisenhower, where there's a
lot of horrible stuff, including the military industrial complex that
you but we got the Interstates. Uh, it's very frustrating,

(44:03):
the comp past job of the AUTOMU. Yeah, I mean,
we will talk about the only US president that you
can even sort of feel good about in this episode two. Um,
who's who's the only US president who doesn't funk over Panama?
Jimmy Jimmy Carter. I'm sure that's not a surprise c anybody. Um. So.
Columbia had another civil war from eighteen ninety nine to

(44:24):
nineteen o two. This one was again between liberal and
conservative factions in the government. The Liberals were particularly popular
in rural areas among the peasantry. Before long, the war
became a fight between the left wing masses of peasants
in the country and poor laborers on the left in
Panama cities and wealthy conservative central conservatives who ran the
central government of Colombia. Liberal troops gained control of most

(44:47):
of Panama in nineteen o one, and again they're fighting
against the government in Bogata at this point, and the
government in Bogata goes to the US to beg for help,
taking advantage of the bid Lack Treaty, which again gives
the US the right to use force to defit into
its railroads and the canal zone, or the zone that
they think will be the canal. So the bid Luck
Treaty was just meant so the U s could protect
a future canal and protect the railroad that they have,

(45:10):
But as soon as Bogata calls in them for help,
they use it to justify going in to crack down
on a left wing populist movement that's threatening to free
Panama from Colombian control. Captain Thomas Perry and his gunboat
the Iowa, sail up and warn the liberal military leaders
that he's going to send in the Marines if liberals
interfere with the railroad. Because of how things were laid

(45:30):
out geographically, this made it impossible for the Liberals to
kick the central government out of the Isthmus and complete
their victory. Because of where the railroads located, it basically
lets the U. S. Marines wall off government controlled Panama
from the regions that the liberals control, so they're forced
to sign a peace settlement which has written out under
the watchful eye of U. S. Navy officers. The treaty

(45:51):
did not last, though, and fighting started up literally a
month later. The liberals quickly took again all of Panama
except for the big cities, and again Club asked for
the United States to intervene. Marines were sent in the
protect Cologne and Panama City. At this point, the US
throughout the bid lect treaty entirely and started stationing troops
on trains, saying that only U. S. Soldiers were allowed

(46:12):
to use the railwaid ways and basically acting as armed
enforces for the failed Colombian government. US interventions stopped a
Liberal victory which would have led to Panama separating and
establishing itself as an independent nation. By the end of
the civil war, which could have ended fairly quickly but
was elongated by years due to the United States, Panama
was completely fucking devastated, and the Colombian government was broke.

(46:34):
Six of Panama's cattle were killed during the fighting, thousands
of civilians were turned into refugees, agriculture broke down, and
the local economy shattered entirely. The only places that were
left sort of intact with the cities, which were dominated
by conservative elites who had by this point learned well
that their continued comfort relied on pleasing the North Americans.

(46:55):
Now right, yeah, it's not great now. Right before the
start of the Columbian Civil War in eighteen the US
had gone to war with Spain. This had been a
fairly quick and easy victory, but there had been one
major snack. The USA's most powerful battleship, the Oregon, had
been docked in San Francisco. Now, the Oregon had never

(47:16):
been used in war, and obviously American North American people
were really excited to see how good this ship was
going to be at killing foreigners. But it was far away,
and it took it weeks to actually get to Cuba,
and so it missed all of the fun fighting and stuff.
Um And like the news as it's sailing, the news
is breathlessly covering how far the Oregans made it because
everybody's just got such a boner to see how this

(47:37):
modern warship fucking you know, kills people. Um, And because
the Oregon gets there so late, all of these pundits
in the news are like, you know, if we had
a pan a canal and Panama, this eight thousand mile
journey would have just been four thousand miles and we
could have watched this boat kill Spaniards. Really, that wouldn't
that have been nice? That is a priorities. So the

(48:00):
fact that the Oregon takes so long to get into
the fight as the last draw for hawks in the
US defense establishment. With a canal in Panama, they argued,
and this was actually like, militarily is a good point.
The same fleet would be able to protect both the
Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Right, you don't need two feets
if you can sail went around both sides. Now, when
Teddy Roosevelt became president, he'd made building a canal in

(48:22):
Panama one of his top goals. That this canal would
be in Panama was not yet a foregone conclusion, though
many in Congress wanted to build through Nicaragua, which would
be you know, it would be a longer canal, but
it would also probably be easier and safer to build
because of Nicaraguan geography and stuff. So enter the New
Panama Canal Company, which was run by the same people

(48:43):
who had managed the disastrous French canal project that could
kill twenty thousand people. One of these people was Philippe
bunal Varia. He and one of his shareholders weren't warned
the United States to pick Panama because they'd gone to
all the wanted the United States to pick Panama because
they'd gone to all the trouble of purchasing a canal's
worth of land and from the Colombian government. If they
could sell it to the USA, it would mitigate the

(49:04):
horrible financial losses they had suffered failing to build a
canal for France. Thomas Leidenberg rights for the University of
Houston quote by priority agreement, The New Panama Company had
until December thirty one, nineteen o three, before the areas
approved by the Old Canal Company, as well as the
construction machinery, railroad track, locomotives and so forth, would be
deeded to the Columbia. Then Colombia and not the New

(49:26):
Panama Canal company could sell these rights, for which the
new canal company was demanding forty million dollars from the
United States. Congressmen serving on a committee to inspect the
sites where the canal might be built were invited to
talk with officials in France, where they were entertained lavishly
and presented with the French perspective on the doomed canal
project for five weeks. Then their fridge hosts brought the

(49:46):
congressman to Panama, where canal company officials showed them only
what the company wanted them to see. As luck would
have it, a volcano and Nicaragua erupted in nineteen o
two for the first time in sixty eight years. Yeah,
and Bueno Veria made quick quickly made postage stamps as
a reminder of the eruption and sent them to members
of Congress. Not surprisingly, Congress selected the Panama route. Jesus,

(50:12):
it's a really convenient volcano eruption, historically significant like natural occurrence. Yeah,
this is why the Panama Canal is not in Nicaragua. Well,
also would have been the Nicaraguan Canal. But yeah, and
of course Buenoveria, being a smart guy, is like, oh yeah,
we gotta like remind them of of how dangerous Nicaragua's

(50:32):
camp canal there we'll get volcanoed. Uh So. Obviously the
whole situation was not quite as simple as Buenoveria made
it out to be though. For one thing, the French
were selling land they didn't have the right to sell
because under their agreement with Colombia, that land was supposed
to revert to Colombian control and all of the equipment
pretty soon. And they also legally did not have the

(50:54):
right to sell that land to a foreign power because
it was not their land. Obviously, the United States not
care about this ship now, we do. We do not
give one solitary funk about what Columbia's contract with the
French says. Um any Yeah, And obviously, so the government
in Bogata is really unhappy with the fact that the

(51:16):
US is talking with the French like this, but they're
effective count Like, they can't really counter this because Bogata
is kind of in the middle of nowhere right in
this period of time, they don't have reliable telegraph connections.
It takes other representatives a while to get messages anywhere.
Um and when they eventually get in touch with the
US government and let them know that they don't agree
to the purchase. Washington said, like, by the time Columbia

(51:39):
is able to get a message out that like, hey,
the French don't have the right to sell you this stuff, um,
negotiations have already progressed. Now the US does try to
make a deal with Bogata. They're like, what if we
give you ten million of the forty million that we're
going to give to the French and a quarter of
a million dollars a year in rent. So we send
this offer back to Bogata and there's no response for
what Teddy Roosevelt considers to be an unacceptable length of time.

(52:03):
The President starts to get afraid that they're going to
have to be forced to go back and pic Nicaraguay
after all, and angry Teddy gets racist at a staff meeting,
yelling this is like, like, so America right now, it's
not Yeah, I think peak United States, Peak USA right now,
And again peak Teddy. Those contemptible little creatures in Bogata

(52:26):
ought to understand how much they are jeopardizing things and
imperiling their own future. I'm sorry, temptable little creatures. So
this is so this is the this is the this
is the dawn of the big stick of the Yeah,
he is about to use his big stick. Um. Yeah.
And he doesn't speak softly either. That always goes together

(52:48):
in the quote. But he's a pretty loud guy, you
know who does speak softly while carrying a big stick,
A big stick that they will sell you for a
reasonable price. Raytheon, Oh God, I was coming. Ray Theon
does speak softly. You rarely hear statements from the Raytheon corporation.
They prefer to speak through their missiles that are made

(53:10):
out of knives. Breda, And thank you for that, Chelsea.
I was out of breath from yelling products. Still, so
the reality of the situation so obviously, like the US

(53:32):
is like trying to at least kind of sort of
do the right thing. When Columbia points out that the
French don't have the right to sell this car, okay,
we'll we'll pay you a quarter of what we were
going to pay the French company. And they send this
out and they don't get a response for a long time,
and part of the reason why the response is delayed
is the fault of a lawyer for the French company,
Cromwell who was deliberately trying to gum things up in

(53:54):
order to make the Americans angry at the Colombians. And
one of the things he wants to avoid because he's
getting a cut of what the French company makes, he
doesn't want the company to part with any of the
forty million dollars they're being paid um by the Americans,
so he doesn't want the Colombian government to get paid off.
And he both like kind of jams up the works
within the Colombian government. And he has several meetings in

(54:17):
Rose with Roosevelt where he tries to convince him basically
that hey, you know, the Panamanians don't even want to
be a part of Colombia, and if Panama is an
independent country, this whole process of negotiation is going to
be a lot easier. Um. He also pays like journalists
in the United States to write articles on this same
like in this same line, he bribes the New York

(54:38):
World to put out an article because he knows that
Teddy reads the New York World, and the article announces
the state of Panama stands ready to secede from Colombia
and enter into a canal treaty with the United States.
So the final straw comes in late nineteen o three,
when the Colombian government rejects the US offer and demands
more money in exchange for the canal. The Colombian government
is very reasonably like, why is a French company getting

(55:00):
three quarters of the money you're paying for this canal
when it's our fucking land and they don't have the
right to sell it to you. And this really pisses
off Roosevelt because he doesn't want any delay. He calls
the Colombian people jack rabbits and a corrupt pithecoid community
undeserving of the rights and privileges enjoyed by Europeans, and
this causes Teddy Roosevelt to give the green light for

(55:22):
a US backed separatist coup in Panama. Now, Roosevelt and
his cronies had been chatting for a while about how
much easier this whole business would be if Panama were
its own country, conveniently dominated by the United States, and
obviously Cromwell had stoked these conversations. No one seemed to
think it was ironic that the United States had just
intervened repeatedly in a civil war to stop Panama from

(55:43):
separating from Colombia. Now, though the United States supported Panamanian
independence from a right up by the BBC quote, there
was indeed an independence movement in Panama centered around the
American owned railroad between Cologne and Panama City. This also
happened to be represented by Cromwell, and it was Cromwell
who sent a man he believed to be one of
Panama's conspirators, Gabrielle du Bac, to see Hay, who was

(56:06):
like the Secretary of State at the time. During that meeting,
Hay claimed that if revolutionaries were to seize power in Panama,
the United States could stop Colombian troops from intervening under
the guys of protecting the railway. And again this is
like the bid Lack Treaty. Unfortunately for Cromwell, Dubach reported
everything to the Colombian legation, double crossed exposed an unnerved
Cromwell disowned the genuine Panamanian rebel He had also been

(56:28):
dealing with Manuel Amador Guerrero. But Amador was quickly taken
up by Bueno Varia, who sent him back to Panama
with a revolution kit, a proclamation of independence, draft constitution,
a homemade flag, and a promise of a hundred thousand
dollars to underwrite the new government. It was quite by chance.
The frenchman later insisted that he bumped into the U. S.
Secretary of the Navy while strolling around Washington, who told

(56:50):
him that an American gunboat was on its way to
Cologne when Ovaria sent Amador and his accomplice as a
coded cable giving them the news which convinced them of
American support for their revolution. So well, lot is happening here,
but gist of it is the French find a Panamanian
revel give him a flag that they made themselves, a
constitution that they made themselves, and a hundred thousand dollars,

(57:12):
and say go start a revolution. Will take care of
the rest. And then the same French representative of the
Canal Company goes to the U. S. Secretary of the
Navy and is like, will you shoot the Colombians if
they try to stop this? And the Secretary of the
Navy is like, yeah, why the funk not? Yeah, let's go.
It's rad So the panem we're on You're on our

(57:33):
side now, So now everyone's fine with an independent Panama.
And that is what happens. The Panamanian rebels use the
money the US had given them to bribe the Colombian
military in Panama, and on November three nine, Panama to
claes it's independence. More US money and silver coins was
handed out to hundreds of Colombian soldiers who had all

(57:54):
been bribed to go along with it. Amador gave an
Independence Day speech where he declared, the world is astounded
in our heroism. Yesterday we were slaves of Colombia. Today
we are free. Long lived President Roosevelt. Yeah no, did
not age well, yeah, free would be a little bit
much to state about the status of Panamanians in the

(58:18):
new order of things. I didn't I didn't like that
very much. So the U. S. State Department recognizes Panama
as an independent nation. Several hours after the declaration, the press,
who weren't very corrupt, all attacked Teddy Roosevelt for this,
pointing out that basically he had stolen Panama from Colombia
and blatantly violated US treaties with Columbia um now. The

(58:40):
New York Times called it an act of sordid conquest.
Roosevelt responded by pointing out that no US troops or
ships had been in Panama City, but it was taken,
so how could this be an active conquest. Roosevelt told
Congress that the people of Panama rose literally as one man.
A senator responded, the one man was Roosevelt. That's solid

(59:04):
congressing guy. So Roosevelt immediately authorized the negotiation of a
new canal treaty with the new government of Panama. The
negotiation was handed by Bueno Varia, who had been permitted
to by the new government to discuss arrangements with the US.
So the new Panamanian government says to Bueno Varia, who
was the guy who had told the people who became
the new Panamanian government to start a revolution, They're like,

(59:27):
you can start negotiations with the United States, but he
had not been approved to actually sign a treaty or
conclude negotiations. Bueno Varia ignored this. He in the United
States decided that actual Panamanians were still not a necessary
part of the negotiations. They concluded a treaty, which was
ratified by the new Panamanian government after Teddy Roosevelt threatened

(59:47):
to let Columbia invade if they didn't ratify it. No
Panamanians actually signed the treaty giving the US the right
to build a Panama Canal. Hey, it sounds like how
foreign policies work fill last basically the eighth century. Yeah,
I mean this is this is we're definitely, like Teddy is,
establishing a lot of how US foreign relations and interventions

(01:00:08):
will work for more than a century afterwards. It's pretty great. Now.
Under the treaty, the United States was given control and
sovereignty over territory including and around the canal zone. Um,
and it was supposed to be in perpetuity, right, so
basically forever we get this territory. Roosevelt was over the
moon with the deal, but he had no trouble justifying
the blatant and shameless contempt for a people's right to

(01:00:30):
self determination. He said, quote, reasons of convenience have been
superseded by reasons of vital necessity, which do not admit
acts of infinite delays. If ever, a government could be
said to have received a mandate from civilization, the United
States holds that position with regard to the inter Oceanic Canal. So, yeah,
we stole this land from Panama. Yeah, we didn't ask

(01:00:53):
them or like, and we violated our principles of democracy.
But divine right, divine not just write all of civilization
demands that we make this canal, and then it be
as the profit from it. Right. But of course the
United States was not building a canal in Panama purely
for the good civilization. We were doing it for profit,
for military advantage, and to extend the white race across

(01:01:16):
the west coast of North America. The agreement Washington and
Panama signed was heavily influenced by the fact that the
Isthmus had been devastated by war and that Panama's continued
existence was contingent upon US goodwill. In their new constitution,
Panama was officially a protectorate of the United States, who
had the power to intervene militarily quote in any part
of the Republic of Panama to re establish public peace

(01:01:37):
and constitutional order in the event of their being disturbed.
So we take the bid Lack Treaty and we just
extended to now that we're building a canal, we can
send our soldiers anywhere in Panama for any reason. That's
wrap US efforts in Panama started with the removal of
nearly a hundred million cubic yards of soil which were
dumped just sort of wherever four dred and twenty three

(01:01:59):
square kilometers to be flooded for the project, which led
to the creation of Gattan Lake. This required the displacement
of thousands of Panamanians who previously leaved in the lived
in the territory we were digging up. Many of these
people were made homeless by the early stages of the
conuct construction product, and of course they were not paid
anything for this. We just forced them off of their
land and destroyed their owns. The creation of Gatton Lake, though,

(01:02:21):
created a problem for the white occupiers. Mosquitoes, Uh you know,
mosquitoes breed and water, and Gatton Lake was basically a
giant puddle of still water and mosquitoes bread like crazy
in it. Uh yeah, yeah, it's a bad idea. It
was not a great call for us. So soon all
of the white people that we had sent to Panama
to build this canal start dropping like flies, because we

(01:02:44):
basically build a giant mosquito incubator. Many of the workers
who died, of course, we're black Africans, but that was
not what concerned anyone in the United States. It was
the death of white workers that was really a problem. Um.
And this was in part of problem because the US
plans and Panama. This was not like a normal colonial venture, right,
This is not just about resource extraction. It was not

(01:03:05):
a situation of like, yeah, we're gonna lose some white people,
but eventually we'll get all of the good stuff out
of there and we can just abandon it. The canal
is always going to be valuable, so you need to
have a population of white people there to maintain it.
And that meant that Panama was going to be needed,
would need to be made safe for white people to
live it, um. And that meant that essentially what was

(01:03:26):
going to follow was a war on biology itself on
behalf of the white race, because like all of these
tropical diseases needed to be eradicated. John Lindsay Poland describes
it as the transformation of the canal zone to make
it biologically safe for white men. And in Part two, Chelsea,
that's what we're going to talk about. Oh yeah, this

(01:03:48):
is this is going in a fascinating direction that I'm
not familiar with, the sort of like bio the sort
of like the like terraforming of the region, or the
attempt to terraform yeah. This this is like a terraform
project and spoilers were bad at it. We we do
everything wrong. Yeah, which is probably why I don't know
much about it. No, yeah, it's it's very funny. But

(01:04:10):
we'll have to wait until Thursday for that. Until Thursday, Chelsea. Wait, wait,
we were people fighting on the interwebs dot net dot com.
You have socials to plug? You got plug? Oh I
have I have socials? What so? I? Yeah, so I
have a I have a Twitter account. Uh x y
Chelsea on Twitter. Um I am also x y Chelsea

(01:04:32):
eight seven on Twitch. I do twitch strings mostly video games.
Uh uh and uh a little bit of some text
of some like tech related stuff. Um so yeah, you know,
I just play video games and chat about technology. So
check Chelsea out there. And check out Panama when there's
not a plate We're not, I mean, I I don't know.

(01:04:53):
I assume they have a vibrant tourist industry that's been
suffering from this. Their food is great. Just may all
the money we really old Panama. We we we fucked
him up pretty bad. Um so send him money to Panama.
Stick at the mail like Panama and an en girlp
and send him forty dollars yep, hell yeah, yep, let's go.

(01:05:18):
H

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part One: How The U.S.A. Murdered Panama with Chelsea Manning