PANAMA CANAL'S LESSON: U.S. MUST BUILD BRIDGES, NOT FENCES --- LA LECCION DEL CANAL DE PANAMA
Last weekend's decision by Panama to embark on a $5.2 billion expansion of the Panama Canal should teach a lesson to the new crowd of U.S. Latin America bashers -- often disguised as immigration control advocates on cable television networks -- about how wrong their predecessors were in one of Washington's biggest debates over Latin America ever. I'm talking about the 1977 Panama Canal treaties, which turned over full control of the canal to Panama in 2000. Read
the full column here, and let us know what YOU think.
My opinion Andrés Oppenheimer : Panama delivers a lesson to isolationists
My opinion Andrés Oppenheimer
Last weekend's decision by Panama to embark on a $5.2 billion expansion of the Panama Canal should teach a lesson to the new crowd of U.S. Latin America bashers — often disguised as immigration control advocates — about how wrong their predecessors were in one of the biggest U.S. debates over Latin America ever.
I'm talking about the 1977 Panama Canal treaties, which turned over full control of the inter-oceanic canal to Panama in 2000. During the Carter administration, when the U.S. Congress debated passionately over whether to ratify the treaties, powerful senators and journalists claimed that Panama would be incapable of running one of the world's biggest waterways.
"Panama is woefully lacking in management skills," Adm. Thomas H. Moorer, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a congressional committee during the 1978 ratification process. "It is very doubtful whether it will acquire the capability to maintain and efficiently operate the canal."
"The mechanisms of the canal do not operate by means of good feelings … but requires the skillful manipulation of a complex series of locks," then-Sen. Paul Laxalt, R-Nev., told the same committee. "Panama does not have such qualified people."
The late Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., was quoted by The New York Times on Feb. 23, 1978, as saying that Panama's corruption would ruin the canal. "I know these Latin countries. I know when it's perfectly all right to lie. You couldn't get away in the United States with the things we see gotten away in many other parts of the world," Goldwater said.
But opponents of the treaty turned out to be dead wrong. Last week, after approval of a referendum in Panama to expand the canal, I decided to do a reality check and find out how the Panamanians have managed the canal since they took it over on Dec. 31, 1999.
On virtually all counts, Panama did extremely well:
● The Panama Canal's income has soared from $769 million in 2000, the first year under Panamanian control, to $1.4 billion in 2006, according to Panama Canal Authority figures.
● Traffic through the canal went up from 230 million tons in 2000 to nearly 300 million tons in 2006;
● The number of accidents has gone down from an average of 28 per year in the late '90s to 12 accidents in 2005;
● The average transit time through the canal is averaging about 30 hours, about the same as in the late '90s;
● Canal expenses have increased much less than revenues over the past six years — from $427 million in 2000 to $497 million in 2006.
"All the indicators are positive," Panama Canal Authority head Alberto Aleman Zubieta told me in an interview this week. "Contrary to the claims of those who said that Panama would be incapable of running one of the biggest routes of world trade, the opposite has happened: It has been managed just as well, if not better, than when it was under U.S. control."
Former U.S. Ambassador to Panama Linda Watt, who served in Panama from 2002 to 2005, agrees. She told me in a telephone interview that the canal operation under Panamanian hands has been "outstanding." She added, "The international shipping community is quite pleased."
Some of today's anti-immigration isolationists — such as CNN's Lou Dobbs and recurrent presidential candidate Pat Buchanan — have cried wolf over the fact that Panama has allowed a Hong Kong company, Hutchinson Whampoa Ltd., to run two of Panama's six ports. Panama says it's a business operation like any other. U.S. Ambassador to Panama William Eaton was quoted by the Associated Press this week as saying that China's interest in the canal is "purely economic."
My opinion: Latin America may have all kinds of unresolved problems, but history shows that America's Hispanic-allergic isolationists are often more influenced by their prejudices than by reality.
Instead of building walls to further separate the United States from Latin America, Washington should follow the European example and build bridges to the region. As the Panama Canal story shows, it can be done, if we just give people a chance.