Panama, Canal celebrates 25 years in the hands of the country at the service of world trade

teleSUR English

*U.S. president-elect Donald Trump threatens to regain control of the Canal *U.S. Congress unilaterally introduced six amendments following the signing of the Torrijos-Carter treaties *U.S. threat to reclaim the Canal is a turning point in bilateral relations

Transcript

00:00In Panama, the canal celebrates 25 years in the hands of the country,

00:04but it continues to be overshadowed in a nation that is the fourth most unequal in the world

00:09and now faces the imperialist threat of the United States to conquer the canal again.

00:13Our colleague Rekha Chandiramani with the details.

00:19When the Panamanians recovered the canal in 2000, the waterway ceased to be a U.S. military asset

00:25and became an enterprise at the service of world trade, connecting 1,920 ports,

00:31180 maritime routes, and serving 170 countries. And although the canal generates billions of

00:37dollars a year, these benefits seem imperceptible to the majority of the population.

00:46But history did not end up making the most collective use possible of the assets

00:50that were reverted. It turns out that here, after the invasion, once the military regime

01:00was suppressed, the democracy of those at the top organized things in such a way that those

01:09reverted goods passed into the hands of the oligarchy, and $30 billion went to the great

01:14robbery of that century.

01:21The milestone comes with a bittersweet taste. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's onslaught

01:26on recovering the canal, citing alleged Chinese control and high tariffs, has brought to the

01:32fore debates on the background and remaining forms of interventionism after the reversion.

01:37The canal is problematically involved with a treaty called the Canal Neutrality Treaty,

01:45which is not legal, is not in accordance with international law, and is not convenient for

01:51Panama. On top of that, it turns out that the reverted areas are in the hands of the new

01:56North Americans, in quotation marks, the new white people, and not in the hands of the

02:02Panamanian people. But we have to disassociate ourselves from that treaty and that should be

02:11the government's position to start talking about it. We cannot accept that every time they want

02:17they threaten us because we are a small nation. After the signing of the Torrijos-Carter treaties

02:26in 1977, the U.S. Congress unilaterally introduced at least six amendments before

02:32ratifying it in 1979, the Conchini Amendment and the Church in Number Reservation being the

02:37most controversial and interventionist in tenure. We continue to be seen by the United States as

02:46their position to take care of their backyard in South America, and that is what Donald Trump

02:50is referring to, in the face of the possibility of a global conflict, to put us as a military

02:55objective of their enemies. The Mulino government has been cautious in its responses to Trump,

03:07whose statements come as a bucket of cold water in the face of the accommodating attitude that

03:11has characterized all post-invasion Panamanian governments. Trump replaced current Ambassador

03:17Mari Carmen Aponte with Kevin Marino Cabrera, a Miami-Dade County Commissioner in Florida,

03:23an active Republican member and businessman, which signals a 180-degree turn in relations

03:28between the two countries. With control of the canal, now the central focus.

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