By Olmedo Beluche
January 31, 2025

The author of this Jan. 16, 2025, article reacting to President Donald Trump’s threats is a Panamanian anti-imperialist and Marxist analyst. Translation: John Catalinotto.

Since December 21, 2024, in the framework of the commemoration of the 35th anniversary of the last U.S. military invasion against Panama (Dec. 20, 1989), U.S. President Donald Trump, before having taken office, began a series of repeated statements in which he threatened to take over the Panama Canal by force.

The arguments used by Trump to justify these claims against Panama are varied but all false, ranging from the complaint that U.S. ships passing through the canal are allegedly being charged high tariffs to the assertion that the canal is controlled by the Chinese.

An update of the Monroe Doctrine

Donald Trump’s statements against the Panamanian canal are associated with other equally controversial ones in which he intends to add Canada as the 51st state of the United States of America, the idea that he should acquire Greenland for his country’s control, a territory that is under the administration of Denmark, or the pretension to rename the Gulf of Mexico as “Gulf of America.”

The proposals on Panama, Canada, Greenland and the Gulf of Mexico are part of a sort of updating of the old “Monroe Doctrine” to the 21st century by Trump. President James Monroe, in 1823, issued a statement of American foreign policy that has become known by the slogan “America for the Americans,” which at the time was a warning to the European monarchies that had formed a military bloc called the “Holy Alliance” that he would not allow them to reconquer the newly independent territories of Spanish America. Of course, since then it was understood that Monroe’s “Americans” were the United States, not the Spanish or Latin Americans.

Following the Monroe Doctrine, from the 19th century to the present the United States has acted under the conviction that Latin America and the Caribbean are its “backyard” and exclusive zone of economic plunder and political neocolonialism. Repeated invasions, coups d’état, economic sanctions against states that try to escape (Cuba, Venezuela) demonstrate this, especially during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Institutions such as the Organization of American States (OAS), the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR) and the School of the Americas have been instruments of this U.S. foreign policy.

Whether American governments have acted with blatant imperialist manners, as was the case under Theodore Roosevelt’s “big stick” policy, or with the refined hypocrisy of Franklin D. Roosevelt and his “good neighbor” policy, or the so-called “national security doctrine” of the Cold War, Republican or Democrat, all American governments have been guided by the Monroe Doctrine vis-à-vis Latin America and the Caribbean.

Trump’s aggressive response to U.S. decline and the Chinese phantom

Donald Trump knows he is lying, but he cannot help but express his greatest fear when he affirms: “The Panama Canal is being operated by China. China! We didn’t give it to China. And they (Panama) have abused it. They have abused this gift.” (La Prensa, Jan. 13, 2025)

Those words express the crux of the problem. Trump’s foreign and trade policy is intended as a response to an objective process of economic and political decline in the United States, which is finding it increasingly difficult to compete with the influence of Chinese investments. Wielding the big stick against Panama now is part of his project to close the North American market, and by extension Latin America, to Chinese products that compete with U.S. companies.

The intention is to cut off wherever possible the advance of Chinese investments. This is a competition that seems to be evolving towards a confrontation of economic blocs similar to those that gave rise to the First and Second World Wars.

Panama being a relevant place in world geopolitics, the United States has been concerned about the Chinese presence in the isthmus, at least since 2017, when diplomatic relations between the two countries were normalized. Before that, Panama was one of the Central American governments bribed by Taipei to block hina. But China has been the second-largest user of the canal after the United States for decades, so diplomatic relations were a logical necessity.

Of particular concern to Trump is that diplomatic relations were accompanied by several proposals, such as the construction of a railroad to the border with Costa Rica, a project that has not materialized but was immediately objected to by sectors loyal to the United States in Panama. The railroad did not proceed, but Chinese companies are participating in the construction of the fourth bridge over the Panama Canal and other works.

Hong Kong’s Hutchison Whampoa [CK Hutchison Holdings] manages the ports next to the canal, Balboa and Cristobal. There are even Chinese investors involved with Canadians in the Cobre Panama mine, whose contract was declared unconstitutional after major popular demonstrations in 2023. Most of the goods re-exported to South America from the Colon Free Zone are Chinese.

These economic facts are part of the world market trend resulting from the neoliberal globalization imposed by the United States 40 years ago. But this has not turned Panama into a “neo-colony” of “Chinese imperialism.” On the contrary, the Panamanian governments and the local bourgeoisie continue to be puppets of U.S. imperialism. This is demonstrated by their international alignment in the U.N.,  in the Organization of American States and recently in the case of Venezuela.

Panama, a struggle history against the Monroe Doctrine

The Isthmus of Panama has been a particular victim of the Monroe Doctrine, as it is a strategic region for passage between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The first occupation of the isthmian territory occurred shortly after the United States robbed Mexico of half of its territory, including California, in 1846. The Americans built an inter-oceanic railroad in Panama and actually occupied it militarily.

At the end of the 19th century, after the “War of ‘98,” in which the United States wrested from Spain its last colonies in America and Asia (Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam), the United States decided to build a canal to enable its naval forces to guard its imperialist interests in both oceans. To this end, it proceeded to separate Panama from Colombia, by means of a mock invasion, and to impose a treaty signed on Nov. 18, 1903, whereby the United States was given the “right” to build, administer and defend the canal and an adjacent area (Canal Zone) that would be controlled as if it were part of that country.

One of the fallacies told by Donald Trump is that supposedly thousands of Americans died in the construction of the canal. False. While the engineers who built the canal were part of the U.S. military, the workforce was mainly made up of workers from the Caribbean, including Jamaicans, Guadeloupeans, etc.

They worked under a racist “apartheid” regime which physically and socially separated the white Anglo-Saxons from the “colored races,” even in terms of wages. According to reports from the Isthmian Canal Commission itself during the construction of the canal (1903-1914), 5,611 workers died, of which only 350 were U.S. citizens, equivalent to 6% of the total. (La Prensa Jan. 16, 2025)

The Panamanian people fought during the 20th century against the colonial enclave of the Canal Zone and to return the administration of the canal to Panama. Throughout the century, each isthmian generation led various popular revolts and confrontations with the U.S. military. The demand for the nationalization of the Panama Canal gained strength in 1956, when [Egyptian] President [Gamal Abdel] Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in Egypt.

These claims had their culminating moment on January 9, 1964, when a group of Panamanian students went to the Canal Zone to demand that the national flag be raised next to the American flag as a symbol of sovereignty over that territory. The students were attacked by the police and the American inhabitants of the Canal Zone. Faced with these events, the people began to flock to the fence that divided the Panamanian city from the American city to plant flags, which was answered by gunfire from the U.S. Army.

The events turned into a small anti-colonial revolution that lasted three days, causing more than 20 dead and 500 wounded on the Panamanian side and the destruction of U.S. property. From then on it was evident that a new canal treaty had to be negotiated to resolve the “causes of the conflict”: end of the canal enclave, Panamanian administration of the canal and elimination of the Yankee military bases. This led to the signing of the 1977 Treaties between General Omar Torrijos and President James Carter.

Youth Against War and Fascism, youth organization of Workers World Party, held this demonstration in New York City with Panamanian youth resisting U.S. repression in January 1964.

A Panama-administered canal since 2000

In the 1980s, when the canal was already in the process of reverting to Panamanian hands, a serious political and economic crisis arose, the complexity of which included the discussion of how Panama was going to administer the canal and how to use the adjacent resources, mainly ports. Although Omar Torrijos’ promise had been to give it “the greatest possible collective use,” the bourgeois sector around [Panamanian] General Manuel Noriega intended to turn it into a large military base, replacing the U.S. barracks with Panamanian ones. But another sector of the Panamanian bourgeoisie disagreed and planned the privatization of the nationalized areas.

The 1989 invasion allowed the United States to reconfigure the country to its benefit with the complicity of the Panamanian bourgeoisie. In 1994 a constitutional reform was imposed that gave the canal a Board of Directors controlled by the Panamanian financial and commercial oligarchy that excluded any popular participation in decisions, although the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) was defined as a public entity.

Facilities were transferred and military bases dismantled starting in 2000, but instead of “entering the canal” as Torrijos had promised, the Panamanian people were passive witnesses to the process of appropriation and privatization of adjacent areas and ports. The two main ports, Balboa and Cristobal, were handed over to the Hong Kong-based company Hutchinson Whampoa. Other ports have been handed over to other companies with foreign and Panamanian capital.

During these years there has been a continuous outcry from Panamanian social and popular organizations regarding the way in which the canal is administered, its resources are allocated and the privatization of what was the Canal Zone. These complaints were especially strong in 2007 when a costly expansion of the locks was approved to allow the passage of huge container ships.

Despite this, the canal is managed by some 8,500 Panamanian workers and accounts for 6-8% of the country’s gross domestic product. In absolute terms, in 24 years of Panamanian administration, the Panama Canal has delivered $28,232 million to the public treasury, which, compared to the meager $1,879 million the country received from 1914 to 1999, when it was under U.S. administration, shows that the struggle for sovereignty did produce concrete results.

Therefore, despite internal differences over the administration of the canal, Donald Trump’s statements produced an almost unanimous response from the Panamanian nation, rejecting and defending the Panamanian canal. Even President José R. Mulino, a traditional right-wing ally of U.S. interests who was deputy foreign minister of the government imposed by the invasion of December 20, 1989, had to condemn Trump’s words.

The Panamanian government and the Panamanian bourgeoisie will be inconsistent in the defense of the canal.

Despite the high-sounding statements of Mulino and other politicians of the Panamanian bourgeoisie in front of Donald Trump, the Panamanian people should be wary, because historically the bourgeoisie and its politicians have acted as lackeys of Yankee imperialism. So it happened in 1903, when they betrayed and endorsed the treaty that created the colonial enclave, so they acted during the 20th  century at every critical moment of national history. Suffice it to recall the crisis of the 1980s and their collaboration with the invading troops.

While Trump did not rule out the use of military force to retake the Panama Canal, President Mulino groveled before U.S. imperialist interests, not only giving legitimacy to the losing candidate of the Venezuelan elections, the ultraright Edmundo Gonzalez, but even proposed himself as custodian of the supposed “minutes.” This was a terrible, divisive tactical move that undermines continental support for our country at a time when it needs it most.

How can we confront Trump? Unity and mobilization of the Latin American people.

One thing is what Donald Trump wants to do and another is what he will be able to do. The project of the U.S. imperialist ultraright aims to increase the chains and exploitation of the peoples of the world, in particular of this continent. That is because it is a desperate response to the crisis of the global capitalist system. For this they are ready to plunge the world into wars, blood and suffering. This has been demonstrated recently in the genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza, in the wars in the Middle East and in Ukraine.

But the other factor of reality is the people, the working class and the oppressed, who are not passive actors, but actively fighting to defend their lives against the onslaught of the system. So the final outcome remains to be seen. Trump can be defeated. In fact, in his previous, he was defeated by the Black Lives Matter movement.

Any U.S. attempt to retake the canal by force will be firmly resisted by the Panamanian people, who are inspired by the example of the martyrs of Janl 9, 1964, with the support of the peoples of the world and especially of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Faced with the re-enactment of the Monroe Doctrine, it is up to us on this continent to reenact the doctrine of Latin American unity promoted by the Liberator Simón Bolívar. In the year 2026 it will be 200 years (1826) since Bolivar convened in Panama an Amphictyonic Congress to concretize the unity of our countries in the face of the threats of the Holy Alliance and the North American Monroe Doctrine. It is time to come together again.