IS TRUMP PLANNING TO RETAKE PANAMA AGAIN?
Watch the video: TRUMP’S MILITARY BUILDUP IN PANAMA
By Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D.
Anthropology, UCLA
Contributor: Janet Kira Lessin
See way more on this—illustrations, videos, analogs—at:
https://wp.me/p1TVCy-8Xv
Panama’s geography made it a corridor that outsiders repeatedly tried to control. Long before Europeans arrived, communities lived by farming, fishing, and trade across river paths and coastal routes. But once imperial powers recognized the Isthmus as a shortcut between oceans, the corridor itself became the prize. Whoever controlled the crossing could tax movement, police labor, and concentrate wealth at chokepoints.
200 BCE–1500 CE: GRAN COCLÉ INDIANS, THOUGH STILL ENTHRALLED WITH ANUNNAKI DOMINATION CONSCIOUSNESS, INHABITED PANAMA
At El Caño Archaeological Park, Dr. Julia Mayo unearthed gold artifacts and necropolises dating back nearly 300 years. Gran Coclé buried their chiefs, and their retainer-sacrifices—as many as 30—face down.
The Gran Coclé chiefs were both political and spiritual; they were obsessed with domination, which the Anunnaki from Planet Nibiru had transmitted to their ancestors.
An El Caño chief led shamanic rituals to mediate relations with the spirit world. He wore gold regalia made of tumbaga, a gold–copper alloy, that, to the El Caño, symbolized the sacred entities that represented natural processes on which the El Caño depended: the bat, crocodile, shark, fish, and butterfly, as well as hybrid humanoid and animal hybrids.
The bat Indians made gold bat jewelry for their chiefs to wear; bats represented cave-dwelling night navigators and underworld guides. The chief’s gold shark ornaments symbolized unseen power. Butterflies on his regalia depicted metamorphosis and the soul’s transition. Hybrid human-animal elements on his costume reinforced his role as a master of shamanic transformations.
Collectively, his jewels reflected his realm-crossing power. He, they said, could traverse Earth, air, water, and spirit.
Panama’s gold in the Gran Coclé was sacred, not ornamental.
1500s–1700s: SPANISH CONQUERORS MADE THE INDIANS MINE SILVER AND GOLD FOR SPAIN TO EMPLOY IN ITS FIGHT WITH ENGLAND
The Spanish saw the narrow Panama Isthmus, home of the Indians, as a logistical chokepoint. Silver from Peru had to cross the Isthmus to reach Spain, subordinating the Gran Coclé, relegating them to mining gold and silver and building land and sea routes for Panama’s gold and silver exports.
Panama’s Spanish masters also imported enslaved Africans to extract Panama’s silver and gold and prepare it to ship to Spain. Their labor structure was the Encomienda System.
THE ENCOMIENDA SYSTEM
Spain imposed communal slavery—encomiendas—in Panama. The system meant that Spanish settlers, known as encomenderos, received rights to Indigenous tribute and labor.
Spaniards forced the Indians to mine gold, carry goods across the Trans-Isthmian trade route, farm for colonial settlements, and build towns and fortifications across the transit corridor between Peru and Spain.
They forced the Indians into river navigation, mule-train transport along the Camino Real and Camino de Cruces, and port loading at Nombre de Dios and later at Portobelo. Indian and slave populations suffered huge death rates.
REPARTIMIENTO AND FORCED-DRAFT LABOR
The Spanish brought diseases and forced labor to the Gran Coclé. The Indian population shrank.
Spain rotated labor drafts, making men serve set periods in mines or on transport, receive nominal wages, and return to their villages, often weakened or dead.
As Panama’s Native population declined, colonists increasingly imported enslaved Africans by the mid-1500s.
Indigenous groups—the Guna or Kuna, Ngäbe, and others—fled into the interior highlands and jungles, formed alliances with English privateers, fought the Spanish, and hid their religious traditions. Some Native groups remained semi-independent for centuries.
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN PANAMA
In Panama, the Catholic Church and Spanish Administration operated together.
Franciscan, Dominican, and Mercedarian priests established missions, led mass baptisms, suppressed Native rituals, destroyed the Gran Coclé’s sacred objects, and replaced chiefs’ spiritual authority with the Catholic priests’ hierarchy.
The priests rebranded Indians’ sacred sites as Catholic shrines, confiscated their ritual objects, and criminalized their shamanic practices as “idolatry.”
SPANISH BOSSES IN PANAMA DISSED NATIVE CHIEFS AND SHAMANS
Spain’s administrators and clergy in Panama labeled Indigenous spiritual leaders as sorcerers, idolaters, and “servants of the devil.”
The Spaniards publicly humiliated and flogged shamans, forced them to watch the destruction of their ritual paraphernalia, and sometimes executed them.
If Native chiefs, or caciques, obeyed the Spanish bosses, the bosses kept them as straw bosses and tribute collectors. Otherwise, they replaced them with obedient Indians.
INDIGENOUS ADAPTATIONS
The Gran Coclé resisted the Spanish through outward conversion that masked inward continuity, syncretism in which saints were mapped onto older spirits, migration into inaccessible regions, strategic cooperation to protect communities, and revolts—some small-scale, others regionally significant.
The Guna people of Panama preserved their autonomy longer than many other Indian rebel groups.
CONTEMPORARY COMMENTS: VOICES FROM THE PERIOD
Some missionaries believed Natives were rational, capable of salvation, and should not be enslaved.
Spanish governors complained about labor shortages, the flight of Indigenous communities, and English and French incursions. The Spaniards rationalized their virtual slavery of the Indians as an economic necessity.
INDIGENOUS TESTIMONY
Archaeological continuity and later oral traditions confirm Indians’ memories of forced labor and the local sacred sites, which they hid from the Spanish to conceal their distrust.
ENGLISH PIRATE MORGAN SACKED PANAMA CITY
English pirates noticed, and in 1671, Henry Morgan—Welsh by birth, English by allegiance, and a key instrument of English expansion in the Caribbean—led 1,500 men across the Isthmus of Panama and attacked Panama City, then called Panamá Viejo, or Old Panama.
Spanish officials saw the attack coming and hid or shipped much of their silver and gold before Morgan arrived. Ironically, he raided Panama just as England and Spain signed the Treaty of Madrid, which was supposed to reduce hostilities.
Morgan seized the city’s private merchant wealth, Church valuables, household gold and silver, enslaved people, and trade goods. Panama City burned much Spanish wealth.
Spanish officials said the booty from Morgan’s raid was far less than Morgan’s men expected. Many of his officers later claimed that he had secretly withheld part of the treasure, underreported the total haul, and fled Panama before distributing shares fairly.
Resentment spread among his men. Morgan had captured Panama City, but not Spain’s main treasury reserves in Panama. He took substantial loot—just not the royal silver convoy he hoped for.
Spain protested and had Morgan arrested and sent to England. Instead of punishment, however, the English knighted him and later made him Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica.
England threatened Panama because it supplied Spain with silver and gold to pay for ships and armies to fight England.
1821: PANAMA, FREE FROM SPAIN, JOINED BOLÍVAR’S GRAN COLOMBIA ALLIANCE
Panama’s geography made it a corridor that outsiders repeatedly tried to control. Long before Europeans arrived, communities lived by farming, fishing, and trade across river paths and coastal routes.
But once imperial powers recognized the Isthmus as a shortcut between oceans, the corridor itself became the prize. Whoever controlled the crossing could tax movement, police labor, and concentrate wealth at chokepoints.
In 1846, the Mallarino–Bidlack Treaty granted the U.S. transit rights and the authority to intervene militarily in Panama.
In 1855, the Panama Railroad crossed the Isthmus.
In 1856, the Watermelon Riot protested foreign domination of Panama.
Panama governed itself internally but could not escape international pressure.
1903–1999: THE CANAL ERA PEAKED PANAMA’S POWER
In 1903, Panama, with U.S. backing, separated from Colombia.
The Panama Canal, constructed between 1904 and 1914, was an American engineering triumph. The United States primarily constructed the Canal.
France made initial efforts in the 1880s but was unsuccessful. The U.S. took over the project in 1904 after France abandoned it.
The Canal was completed and officially opened on August 15, 1914. The U.S. controlled the Canal until control transferred to Panama on December 31, 1999.
In 1964, sovereignty protests erupted on what became Panama’s Martyrs’ Day.
In 1977, Panama’s Omar Torrijos and America’s President Carter signed treaties that mandated the return of the Canal to Panama by December 31, 1999.
2000–2026: MODERN PANAMA MANAGED THE CANAL
The Canal was expanded in 2016. Panama expanded its banking and logistics sectors and faced rising demands from Panama’s citizens.
PANAMA JOINED BOLÍVAR’S NEW GRANADA
New Granada gained independence from Spain in 1819. Panama considered joining federations forming in the region, possibly aligning with Peru or Central America. Ultimately, however, Panama joined Simón Bolívar’s Gran Colombia.
In 1831, Panama reaffirmed its independence under General José Domingo Espinar during the separation of Venezuela and Ecuador. Colonel Tomás de Herrera defeated and killed Espinar. Herrera restored Panama’s relations with Granada.
In November 1840, a civil war over religious disputes led the Isthmus, under Herrera, to proclaim independence again.
In March 1841, Panama adopted the name Estado Libre del Istmo, or Free State of the Isthmus. It drafted a constitution that allowed it to rejoin New Granada as a federal district.
But after 13 months of independence, Panama rejoined New Granada.
In 1846, U.S. diplomat Bidlack and New Granada’s commissioner Mallarino negotiated the Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation for cooperation.
The Treaty gave the U.S. rights to transit, conduct business, influence politics, deploy troops, suppress social conflicts, and intervene in independence struggles against Colombia.
Under the Treaty, the U.S. intervened militarily many times on the Isthmus, usually against civilians, peasant guerrillas, or Liberal Party independence struggles.
After the beginning of the California Gold Rush of 1848, the U.S. spent seven years building a Trans-Isthmian Panama Railway.
In 1855, the Panama Railroad completed its sea-to-sea line.
1851–1852: NEW GRANADA ABOLISHED SLAVERY
New Granada abolished slavery in 1852.
THE WATERMELON RIOT
In April 1856, an American traveler refused to pay a fruit vendor. The “Watermelon Riot” erupted.
American troops intervened, ostensibly to “guard railway terminals.”
THE U.S. DUG THE CANAL AND TOOK PANAMA
Yanks dug the Panama Canal from the Caribbean to the Pacific Ocean.
During Colombia’s Thousand Days’ War, from 1899 to 1902, France tried and failed to dig a canal across Panama. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built it. It is 50 miles long.
Panama declared independence in November 1903 and ceded control of the Canal Zone for an initial $10 million payment and an annual payment of $250,000 starting in 1912.
1903–1968: OLIGARCHY AND MILITARY RULE
Business oligarchs ran Panama. In the 1950s, the American military challenged the authority of Panama’s oligarchs over the Canal Zone.
On Martyrs’ Day, rioting U.S. soldiers killed 20 Panamanians. The rioters killed four U.S. soldiers.
Panama’s National Guard removed the country’s President, Madrid. General Torrijos took charge of Panama.
U.S. PRESIDENT CARTER AND PANAMA PRESIDENT TORRIJOS RESTORED PANAMA’S SOVEREIGNTY—KIND OF
Torrijos implemented populist reforms, including expanding education, creating jobs, and redistributing land. He negotiated with multinational corporations for economic sovereignty.
In 1977, Torrijos and U.S. President Carter signed the Torrijos–Carter Treaties, transferring control of the Canal to Panama by 1999, while preserving U.S. rights of intervention.
Torrijos died in a plane crash on July 31, 1981, under circumstances that sparked speculation.
NORIEGA AND THE U.S. INVASION
General Manuel Noriega, Torrijos’s intelligence chief, took charge of Panama.
In 1989, the Soviet Union, against which the U.S. had stockpiled huge arms and fed the rapacious defense and arms industry that American President Bush Jr. had maintained against a Soviet threat, no longer existed as a threat to the U.S.
“The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union left U.S. political leaders unprepared. The American military-industrial complex had spent several trillion dollars, taken from American taxpayers to pay for a huge military buildup all over the world to defend the U.S. from the Soviet Threat.
“Now the threat was gone. Liberals could redirect billions of dollars from the military budget to fund constructive, healthful projects. But this didn’t happen.
“U.S. leaders wondered what they could do to keep up the military establishment that had cost so many dollars over so many years. To prove that the gigantic military force was still needed, the Bush Administration started a war in Panama, where Noriega ruled as dictator.
“For years, the U.S. had overlooked Noriega’s corrupt and brutal rule because he went along with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in many ways.
“But once Noriega was openly known as a drug trafficker, his usefulness was over. The U.S. invaded Panama in December 1989, saying it wanted Noriega to stand trial for drug crimes. American troops quickly captured Noriega, who went to trial and then to prison, as will Venezuela’s Maduro under Trump.
“But the U.S. bombing of Panamanian neighborhoods killed thousands of civilians and left thousands homeless.”
—Zinn, H. and Stefoff, R., A Young People’s History of the United States, Vol. 2
DOMINATOR AND COOPERATOR IDEOLOGIES CLASHED
Partnership perspective: Rebuild civilian institutions and restore norms of consent.
Dominators’ demands: Militarize and subjugate Panama with pliant puppet presidents.
Guillermo Endara was sworn in as president at a U.S. military base.
DEMOCRATIC ERA
Endara, who served from 1989 to 1994, sought to restore democratic institutions and reform the military into a civilian police force.
The U.S. State Department and the Panama Canal Authority both note the noon transfer on December 31, 1999.
Subsequent presidents included Ernesto Pérez Balladares in 1994 and Mireya Moscoso in 1999.
On January 1, 2000, control of the Panama Canal officially transferred to Panama.
Subsequent presidents included Martín Torrijos in 2004, Ricardo Martinelli in 2009, Juan Carlos Varela in 2014, Laurentino “Nito” Cortizo in 2019, and José Raúl Mulino in 2024.
CANAL FACTS: 1914 CE TO 2026
The canal length is commonly given as approximately 82 kilometers, or 50 to 51 miles. The U.S. took over construction in 1904, and the Canal opened in 1914.
Current president as of July 1, 2024: José Raúl Mulino, sworn in July 1, 2024.
- Mallarino–Bidlack Treaty, 1846
- Panama Railroad or Panama Canal Railway, opened in 1855
- Watermelon Riot, 1856
- Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty, 1903
- Omar Torrijos and the Torrijos–Carter Treaties, 1977
- Manuel Noriega and Operation Just Cause, 1989
INDEPENDENCE WITH REPEATED CONSTITUTIONAL RESHUFFLES
1819: Independence movements succeeded in the region; Panama became tied to the political projects of New Granada and Gran Colombia.
1831 and 1840–1841: Local independence assertions and reattachments to New Granada appeared in cycles.
CANAL ERA: FROM FOREIGN CONTROL TO SOVEREIGNTY
1903: The Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty established Canal Zone terms after Panama’s separation from Colombia.
1904–1914: The U.S. took over and completed the Canal. It opened in 1914 and measured approximately 82 kilometers.
January 9, 1964: Martyrs’ Day and the Flag Protests resulted in deaths on both sides and accelerated sovereignty pressure.
September 7, 1977: The Torrijos–Carter Treaties were signed, creating a path to turnover.
December 31, 1999, at noon: Canal operation and Canal Zone responsibilities transferred fully to Panama.
MILITARY RULE, INVASION, AND ELECTORAL POLITICS
Under the 1846 treaty, the United States gained the right of passage across the Isthmus and the authority to intervene militarily to preserve neutrality and sovereignty.
The Panama Railroad, completed in 1855, became the first transcontinental railroad. It connected Aspinwall, now Colón, and Panama City.
December 20, 1989: Operation Just Cause began. Noriega was removed and Endara installed.
July 1, 2024: José Raúl Mulino was sworn in as president.
PARTNERSHIP VERSUS DOMINATION
Domination determiners: The Isthmus is a “corridor prize.”
Partnership awareness: Preserve local lifeways that distributed survival skills—food-growing, fishing, and intercommunity exchange.
Anunnaki Heritage’s Domination Dictates: Corridor control—gatekeeping transit, extracting fees, and enforcing hierarchy.
The 1846 Mallarino–Bidlack Treaty turned transit into a legal pipeline of U.S. influence: right-of-way, neutrality guarantees, and a standing rationale for intervention.
The railroad intensified the corridor pressure—foreign travelers, foreign capital, and a transit economy that magnified inequality at the crossing.
The Watermelon Riot highlighted the social friction of corridor rule. Ordinary disputes could escalate into violent conflict because the transit system itself fostered arrogance, resentment, and unequal protection.
Partnership persisted: Local vendors, workers, and residents defended dignity and livelihood.
Domination doubled down: Treaty-backed intervention power combined with transit infrastructure serving outside priorities.
The Canal became a global machine—an engineering triumph that also hardened an asymmetry. Panama hosted the corridor while another state held decisive control over it.
That imbalance produced a long sovereignty struggle, crystallizing in the 1964 flag protests and ultimately the 1977 treaties.
The final turnover in 1999 did more than shift administration. It marked a psychological victory: the corridor was no longer governed as a foreign enclave.
PARTNERSHIP PROPONENTS PROPOSED NATIONAL MOBILIZATION AROUND SOVEREIGNTY AND DIGNITY
Domination devotees encouraged enclave rule, policing, and enforced hierarchy inside the Canal Zone.
MILITARY POWER, NORIEGA, AND THE INVASION
The late 20th century showed how corridor geopolitics could weaponize internal politics.
Military authority eclipsed civilian legitimacy, and Panama became a battlefield of covert alliances and public crackdowns.
When the U.S. invaded in 1989, it justified the action on security grounds, but the deeper pattern was familiar: the corridor’s strategic value made Panama unusually vulnerable to outside pressure.
“In 1989, the Soviet Union, against which the U.S. had stockpiled huge arms and fed the rapacious defense and arms industry that American President Bush Jr. had maintained against a Soviet threat, no longer existed as a threat to the U.S.
“The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union left U.S. political leaders unprepared. Several trillion dollars had been taken from American taxpayers to pay for a huge military buildup all over the world to defend the U.S. from the ‘Soviet Threat.’
“Now the threat was gone. Hundreds of billions of dollars could be freed from the military budget to pay for constructive, healthful projects. But this didn’t happen.
“U.S. leaders wondered what they could do to keep up the military establishment that had cost so many dollars over so many years.
“To prove that the gigantic military force was still needed, the Bush Administration started a war in Panama, where General Manuel Noriega ruled as dictator.”
Partnership preference: Rebuilding civilian institutions afterward and restoring norms of consent.
Domination dictates: Militarization and external regime-shaping pressure.
Modern Panama has continued to live with its corridor identity—only now, the central task has been to run the corridor as a national asset rather than a foreign possession.
Presidents rise and fall amid familiar pressures: corruption claims, inequality, migration routes, and narratives of great-power competition that still orbit the Canal.
Partnership advocates demand: Institutional competence, public accountability, and shared benefit from corridor revenues.
Domination dopes demand: Oligarchic capture, external leverage, and the constant temptation to treat Panama as a pawn.
1903–1999: THE CANAL ERA—THE PEAK OF CORRIDOR POWER
In 1903, Panama separated from Colombia with U.S. backing.
The Panama Canal, constructed from 1904 to 1914, was an engineering triumph—and a geopolitical fulcrum.
The U.S. controlled Panama’s Canal Zone. Although Panama hosted the corridor, the U.S. controlled the Canal.
In 1964, sovereignty protests erupted on Martyrs’ Day.
In 1977, Omar Torrijos and Jimmy Carter signed treaties returning the Canal to Panama by December 31, 1999.
DECEMBER 1989: OPERATION JUST CAUSE
On December 20, 1989, the U.S. launched a full-scale invasion of Panama, supposedly to protect American lives—lol—restore democracy, defend the Panama Canal treaties, and arrest Noriega on drug charges.
The Cold War’s end meant that the U.S. global military posture required a new justification. America needed a decisive, rapid military operation to demonstrate continued force-projection capability that signaled that U.S. intervention power remained intact despite Soviet collapse.
The U.S. invasion of Panama deployed 27,000 U.S. troops.
American planes dropped huge amounts of bombs on Panama’s densely populated areas, especially El Chorrillo, killing thousands and leaving thousands more homeless.
American soldiers quickly overwhelmed Panama’s forces.
Noriega took refuge in the Vatican embassy but surrendered on January 3, 1990.
The Yanks spirited him off to the U.S., where courts tried and convicted him, then sent him to prison incommunicado, so he wouldn’t blab about his work as a U.S. asset.
The U.S. shifted its rationale for spending its people’s money from containing Communism to drug enforcement, humanitarian intervention, defense of democracy—lol—and regional stability, meaning U.S. control.
War kept the CIA’s funding channel to the country’s military-industrial complex and increased its share of America’s wealth.
2000–2026: MODERN PANAMA—THE CORRIDOR MANAGED FROM WITHIN
Recently, American dictator Trump said that he plans to retake American control of the Panama Canal.
Please share this post. No wonder many Americans prefer that America spend its money on its people rather than on the Military-Industrial Complex that Ike warned them about.
HASHTAGS
#PanamaHistory #GranCoclé #ElCaño #PreColumbianPanama #SacredGold #PanamaCanal #IsthmusHistory #ChokepointGeography #SpanishEmpire #HenryMorgan #GranColombia #TorrijosCarter #CanalSovereignty #ModernPanama #EnkiSpeaks
