Panamanian President Jose Raul Molino said, “The statement of US President-elect Donald Trump regarding the Panama Canal is a manifestation of gross historical ignorance.”
Trump said on December 22, “He will demand the rapid return of the Panama Canal to American ownership due to the high tariffs for transportation and the passage of ships through it,” stressing that the canal is of great importance for American trade, as well as for the operational deployment of American naval forces in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
“This is a manifestation of gross historical ignorance,” the Panamanian leader said in an interview with CNN. “December 31st will mark 25 years since the Panama Canal passed into Panamanian hands.”
“The Panama Canal is fully owned by the state based on the 1977 treaty, and the country’s sovereignty is non-negotiable,” the Panamanian president said on Sunday.
According to him, the complete transfer of the Canal to Panama was completed on December 31, 1999, on the basis of the Torrijos-Carter Treaty of 1977, which provided in particular for the dissolution of the former Canal Zone, the recognition of Panama’s sovereignty and the complete transfer of the Canal to it.
The Panama Canal is an artificial waterway in the state of Panama in Central America. It is also one of the most important transport waterways of global importance.
The canal transports ships across Lake Gatun, which rises about 26 meters above sea level, through a series of water locks, and each ship requires about 200 million liters of fresh water to cross.
Spanish colonists began studying the construction of an oceanic canal that would cross the strait at its narrowest point in southern Central America in the 1630s, but this did not happen until 1878 when Colombia – which then considered Panama a province – signed a concession agreement with French engineers.
The French efforts were ultimately unsuccessful and the company founded for the purpose of constructing the Trans-Panama Canal in 1899 went bankrupt, after about 22,000 workers lost their lives in the project, many of them due to disease and accidents.
In 1903, the United States sought to obtain from Colombia a permanent concession for the canal, but Colombia rejected the proposal. In response, the United States supported Panama’s independence, which was declared on November 3 of the same year.
Three days after independence, the Panamanian ambassador in Washington signed an agreement granting the United States the rights to build and manage the canal indefinitely.
The canal was finally opened in 1914 after more than 5,000 workers died during construction.
The United States paid Panama $10 million and then $250,000 annually in exchange for these rights, and many Panamanians denounced the agreement and considered it a violation of sovereignty.
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