Pana­ma Caves to Trump’s DC

Panama Caves to Trump’s DC

Pana­ma Caves to Trump’s DC

Despite some ges­tures at resis­tance, Pana­ma City seems ready, even eager to com­ply with Amer­i­can demands.

Panama,,Panama,City,,November,19,,2023:,Social,Mobilization,Of,Panamanians

When Mar­co Rubio arrived Sat­ur­day in Pana­ma for his first inter­na­tion­al trip as sec­re­tary of state, he was greet­ed by flags—Panamanian ones. They lit­tered the high­ways and roads on his route from the air­port to down­town Pana­ma City. They were dis­played on build­ings and streets in Cas­co Viejo, the his­toric “old town” where Rubio on Feb­ru­ary 2 met with Pres­i­dent José Raúl Muli­no. And they were vis­i­ble every­where in such sub­urbs as Albrook and Clay­ton, a for­mer neigh­bor­hood and fort, respec­tive­ly, in the pre­vi­ous­ly U.S.-administered Pana­ma Canal Zone.

Amer­i­can cor­po­rate media cov­er­ing the vis­it viewed the ubiq­ui­ty of the ban­ners as rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Pana­man­ian resolve in response to Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s inau­gur­al address threats that the Unit­ed States might be tak­ing back the canal. The MSNBC for­eign affairs cor­re­spon­dent Andrea Mitchell report­ed that “flags [are] being arrayed all across the streets in Pana­ma. It’s not a big hol­i­day here, it’s in defi­ance of the U.S. and Mar­co Rubio’s incom­ing vis­it.” Jorge Qui­jano, a for­mer Pana­ma Canal Author­i­ty admin­is­tra­tor, told Mitchell vis­i­ble with pride, “Every­body is wear­ing a flag, I’m wear­ing a flag.” Per­haps in light of Panama’s lack of a stand­ing mil­i­tary, one might call it a pol­i­cy of “ban­dera” (Span­ish for “flag”) deter­rence.

Yet giv­en the impor­tance of the canal to Panama—it earns the coun­try about $5 bil­lion a year and is the largest con­trib­u­tor to its pri­mar­i­ly ser­vice sec­tor economy—the reac­tion to Rubio’s vis­it was sur­pris­ing­ly mut­ed, with only a cou­ple hun­dred demon­stra­tors out­side the pres­i­den­tial palace. In the days lead­ing up to the vis­it, there were a few minor protests in the streets; a small demon­stra­tion of less than 100 peo­ple blocked the U.S. Embassy on Christ­mas Eve (a day on which the embassy was actu­al­ly closed because of an exec­u­tive order by the for­mer Pres­i­dent Joe Biden). In Jan­u­ary, a small crowd of Pana­ma­ni­ans protest­ed out­side the res­i­dence of the U.S. ambas­sador and burned an Amer­i­can flag, though, iron­i­cal­ly there was no senior diplo­mat there to wit­ness it—the for­mer Ambas­sador Mari Car­men Aponte, an appointee of the pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion, had already depart­ed the coun­try.

Not that the Pana­ma­ni­ans don’t know how to protest. Begin­ning in mid-Octo­ber 2023, Pana­man­ian activists led by a mil­i­tant left­ist labor union brought much of the coun­try to a stand­still for more than a month, block­ing roads and dai­ly fill­ing the cap­i­tal with thou­sands of demon­stra­tors against a cop­per-min­ing con­tract with a Cana­di­an firm. (They got their wish: in late Novem­ber 2023, the country’s supreme court declared uncon­sti­tu­tion­al ear­li­er bipar­ti­san leg­is­la­tion that had grant­ed the Cana­di­an firm’s cop­per mine a 20-year con­ces­sion.)

What gives? The Pana­ma­ni­ans are a (curi­ous­ly) fierce­ly patri­ot­ic people—they have three sep­a­rate inde­pen­dence days. They also have two fed­er­al hol­i­days com­mem­o­rat­ing resis­tance to the U.S. pres­ence in their coun­try: Mar­tyrs’ Day on Jan­u­ary 9 to hon­or those killed dur­ing the 1964 anti-Amer­i­can riots over the canal zone, and the Nation­al Day of Mourn­ing on Decem­ber 20 to hon­or those killed dur­ing Oper­a­tion Just Cause, the 1989 George H.W. Bush–authorized inter­ven­tion to pro­tect Amer­i­can cit­i­zens and over­throw the dic­ta­tor Manuel Nor­ie­ga. The most they could muster to counter threats that they might lose their great­est source of nation­al pride to the colo­nial­ist grin­gos was a few triv­ial protests and thou­sands of minia­ture flags?

One would think the con­tent of Rubio’s exchange with Muli­no, at least as it was dis­tilled in a brief read­out by the Depart­ment of State’s spokesper­son, did lit­tle to tem­per Pana­man­ian unease. Rubio report­ed­ly told Muli­no—who ear­li­er rebuked Trump’s inau­gur­al com­ments—and For­eign Min­is­ter Martínez-Acha that “the cur­rent posi­tion of influ­ence and con­trol of the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty over the Pana­ma Canal area is a threat to the canal and rep­re­sents a vio­la­tion of the Treaty Con­cern­ing the Per­ma­nent Neu­tral­i­ty and Oper­a­tion of the Pana­ma Canal.” Rubio added that the sta­tus quo was “unac­cept­able” and that absent imme­di­ate changes, Wash­ing­ton would “take mea­sures nec­es­sary to pro­tect its rights under the Treaty.” (Trump lat­er on Sun­day told reporters, “We’re going to take it [the canal] back, or some­thing very pow­er­ful is going to hap­pen.”)

The respect­ed Pana­man­ian polit­i­cal ana­lyst and for­mer offi­cial Ita­lo I. Anti­nori recent­ly gave cre­dence to Amer­i­can anx­i­ety regard­ing the canal, describ­ing the PRC’s decades-long “strat­e­gy to exert influ­ence in Latin Amer­i­ca.” For exam­ple, Anti­nori not­ed, Chi­na is the only per­ma­nent mem­ber of the UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil to not acknowl­edge the afore­men­tioned canal treaty. More­over, in addi­tion to PRC con­trol of ports at the the Atlantic and Pacif­ic side of the canal—providing Chi­na with strate­gi­cal­ly use­ful infor­ma­tion on ships tran­sit­ing the canal—the Pana­man­ian gov­ern­ment under Juan Car­los Varela in 2017 switched diplo­mat­ic recog­ni­tion from Tai­wan to Chi­na (with alle­ga­tions still haunt­ing Varela that he was bribed to do so). Varela’s gov­ern­ment also grant­ed a con­ces­sion to a con­sor­tium formed by Chi­na Har­bour Engi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny (CHEC) to con­struct a cruise port on Peri­co Island, com­plet­ed in March 2024

There are also the fourth bridge over the Pana­ma Canal (con­tract­ed to Chi­na Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny and CHEC) and the under­wa­ter metro line tun­nel under the canal (con­tract­ed to a con­sor­tium of South Kore­an com­pa­nies but sub­con­tract­ed to Chi­na Rail­way Tun­nel Group). Add to that the con­struc­tion of a new PRC Embassy in the for­mer canal zone, and it’s not hard to per­ceive the prob­lem. “If Chi­na enters into a war with the Unit­ed States, it could right now close the pas­sage to ships of the Unit­ed States Navy at the two entrances of the Canal or they could explode some elec­tron­ic device that they could have left when mak­ing the tun­nel under the Pana­ma Canal,” Anti­nori warns.

Then there are the issues with the Pana­ma Canal Author­i­ty, or ACP, itself. Asser­tions of its inde­pen­dence were under­mined by wide­spread local media spec­u­la­tion that Jorge Gon­za­lez, a mem­ber of the ACP Board of Direc­tors, was asked to resign in May 2023 because of a cor­rupt rela­tion­ship with a major Chi­nese state-owned enter­prise (SOE) doing busi­ness relat­ed to the canal. Even many Pana­ma­ni­ans believe that the Unit­ed States could prob­a­bly run the canal bet­ter than Pana­ma does, as NBC oblique­ly men­tioned in a piece intend­ed to fore­ground Pana­man­ian resis­tance to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion.

Mulino’s gov­ern­ment cer­tain­ly seems to be tak­ing the Trump administration’s warn­ings seri­ous­ly. Fol­low­ing his meet­ing with Rubio, Muli­no declared that Pana­ma would not renew the 2017 MoU to join China’s Belt and Road ini­tia­tive, and sug­gest­ed he might pre­ma­ture­ly end the cur­rent agree­ment with Bei­jing. And two weeks ago, on the same day as Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion, Pana­man­ian gov­ern­ment audi­tors vis­it­ed the two canal ports oper­at­ed by a sub­sidiary of Hong Kong–based con­glom­er­ate CK Hutchi­son Hold­ings to eval­u­ate the company’s com­pli­ance with its port con­ces­sion agree­ments.

These seem to be good­will ges­tures by a rel­a­tive­ly new Pana­man­ian admin­is­tra­tion that is demon­stra­bly more pro‑U.S. than its pre­de­ces­sor, sign­ing an MoU with the Unit­ed States for clos­ing the Dar­ién Gap to ille­gal migrants imme­di­ate­ly after com­ing into pow­er. The Pana­ma­ni­ans claim to be uphold­ing their end of the agree­ment, with migra­tion through the gap drop­ping by almost half in 2024. Nev­er­the­less it’s pos­si­ble more con­ces­sions will be demand­ed of Pana­ma to cur­tail PRC influence—Trump’s incom­ing envoy to Latin Amer­i­ca, Mauri­cio Claver-Carone, report­ed­ly sug­gest­ed the Pana­ma­ni­ans offer to allow U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships to tran­sit the canal for free.

It’s unclear what oth­er concessions—short of giv­ing back the canal itself—might be asked of Pana­ma to sat­is­fy con­cerns about an issue that, incred­i­bly, seems to now have bipar­ti­san con­sen­sus as a secu­ri­ty con­cern that will become more acute absent sig­nif­i­cant coun­ter­mea­sures. (As I not­ed pre­vi­ous­ly for The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive, there are a total of five PRC SOEs oper­at­ing along the canal). It’s an iron­ic turn of events for the coun­try, which just cel­e­brat­ed 25 years since the end of Amer­i­can con­trol over the water­way. But for all the nation­al­is­tic blus­ter of Panama’s ban­dera deter­rence, its leaders—perhaps dri­ven by fear—seem will­ing to hon­or Washington’s demand that they more aggres­sive­ly address the threat posed by the PRC. 

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