Trump is threatening Panama and wants to take control of the canal. So it's time for a little history lesson on US imperialism and Panama: The US wanted to build a canal through the Isthmus of Panama in the 19th century. But they had a problem: the land required for the canal - the Canal Zone - belonged to somebody else, Colombia. Colombia said the US could build and operate the canal, taking over earlier failed efforts by French constructors, so long as Colombia retained sovereignty over the Canal Zone. US negotiators rejected this position and insisted that the US must control the Canal Zone. Colombian legislators refused, just as any nation would refuse the prospect of a foreign government exercising sovereign control over a strip of land bisecting their country. The idea is quite obviously absurd. So the US did what they always do: they intervened militarily. The US invaded Colombia in 1903. They supported a separatist insurgency in the Panama district, and forcibly blocked Colombian troops from containing it and reestablishing control over the area. The separatists declared an independent state, with US support, and immediately gave the US what they wanted: total sovereignty over the Canal Zone. In other words, the land for the Panama canal was obtained under conditions of imperialist intervention. And it was orchestrated by Theodore Roosevelt, who perpetrated several other imperialist interventions in the region during his presidency. The US governed the Canal Zone as its own sovereign territory - effectively a colony - until 1979, when it switched to joint control with Panama. It was only restored to full Panamanian sovereignty in 1999. As for who built the canal, it was created by 75,000 workers, most of them Afro-Caribbean from the West Indies, who laboured under extremely harsh and dangerous conditions, undertaking one of the most challenging engineering tasks in history. Some 28,000 workers died on the job. Without those workers, and without their extraordinary sacrifice, the canal simply would not exist. The Panama canal does not belong to the US. It belongs to the people of the region and they have a right to sovereign control over their own territory.
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