Donald Trump and Panama: Back to 1903?

April 17, 2025
By Olmedo Beluche

Beluche is a Panamanian Marxist, author and political leader. This article was published on April 12, 2025. Translation: John Catalinotto.

According to Yankee imperialist ideology, the United States is the modern equivalent of the Roman Empire, and all U.S. presidents must present themselves, like the ancient Caesars, as the conquerors of some territory and slaughterers of some “barbarian” people. With no intention of falling short of this challenge, since his inauguration speech Donald Trump has set as his goal the “conquest” of Panamá. In his mind, it’s the equivalent of Julius Caesar’s Gaul.

To puff his claim up further, Trump tried to convince the U.S. public that the tiny isthmus of Panamá and its canal had been taken over by the malign military might of a rival power — China. He argued that the corrupt Panamanian rulers (this part is true) had received as a gift the Panamá Canal built by them in exchange for a dollar (false), and its management had been handed over to the Chinese empire. (It sounds like a joke – in Panamá, people smiled.)

As a good publicist, more than a warrior, Donald Trump needed to strike a few chords to make it look as if he had achieved a great victory. In reality, he had picked an easy target. Instead of behaving like Julius Caesar when he seized Gaul, Trump has acted like Caligula, who claimed to be conquering Britain, but limited himself to collecting seashells off the French coast to present as evidence of his triumph.

So, knowing the corruption, docility and cowardice of the Panamanian government, headed by José Raúl Mulino, a president with questionable legitimacy, Trump first sent his advance guard with Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Just by showing his teeth, Rubio got the Panamanian president to break the Silk Road agreement with China and declare that Panamá’s relations with that country were frozen. He also agreed to receive migrants the U.S. expelled and allowed Washington a military base in Darien.

Hegseth, centurion

Having softened the ground, Donald Trump sent his centurion, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, during the second week of April. Hegseth proudly brought a Memorandum of Understanding back to Washington.

This Memorandum of Understanding cedes to the United States three military bases on the banks of the Panamá Canal, reviving military sites extinct in 1999, thanks to the generational struggle of the Panamanian people that was embodied in the Torrijos-Carter Treaties of 1977. The military bases ceded by the government of Mulino and his Minister of Security Frank Ábrego are:

1. The “Howard” Air Force Base, which had been baptized as “Lieutenant Octavio Rodriguez,” a Panamanian hero killed by U.S. troops during the invasion of Dec. 20, 1989. Ceding the base is an offense to the memory of the fallen in that aggression of the U.S. Army against Panamá in which more than 500 people were killed, according to official data.
2. The “Rodman” Naval Station, renamed “Vasco Núñez de Balboa” and “Captain Noel A. Rodríguez,” located in the western sector of the entrance of the canal, right in front of the port of Balboa, administered (until now) by the Chinese company Panamá Ports.
3. The naval air base “Sherman,” which had been renamed “Cristobal Colon,” in which they were given an airport, port and a firing range, located in the western sector of the Caribbean side of the canal, in front of the city of Colon and the port of Cristobal (also administered by a Chinese company, Panamá Ports).
4. Additionally, through a Joint Declaration (the text of which has not yet been made public), signed by Canal Minister Jose Icaza and Hegseth, Trump obtained free passage of U.S. Navy vessels through the Panamá Canal, at a “neutral cost” to Panamá (no one knows what it means).
5. An additional gift for Trump was the audit carried out by the Comptroller General of the Republic of Panamá to the contract with the Chinese company Hutchinson, administrator of the ports of Balboa and Cristobal, made public on the day of the arrival of Pete Hegseth, which showed evidence of economic abuses against Panamá (like those committed in other ports and transnational companies operating here) and that could lead to the annulment of the concession.

Mulino and his ministers believe they are deceiving the Panamanian people by saying that the Memorandum speaks of respect for Panamanian “sovereignty” and does not mention the concept of a “military base.” But a military base is a military base if, as it says in paragraph 1 of the Memorandum: “U.S. personnel and U.S. contractors … may be authorized to use locations, facilities and designated areas for training, humanitarian activities, exercises, visits, storage or installation of U.S. property and any other activities, as mutually established by the Participants.” All are at no cost to the United States (section 5).

Paragraph 2 speaks of deepening the “security relationship” to “address shared security challenges,” without defining which ones, but which Hegseth repeatedly stated in his statements was China.

And, although paragraph 6 states that primary security in those areas is Panama’s responsibility, paragraph 7 states that “certain sections of the facilities and areas designated for use by U.S. personnel” will only be entered by Panamanian security with “prior notification.”

Paragraph 11 of the memorandum states that U.S. personnel and “property,” “including vehicles, vessels and aircraft, are to remain under U.S. control,” … “including those concerning waste generated by an incident or accident.”

It is worth noting that, in its heading, the Memorandum alludes as a legal basis to the Exchange of Notes, called “Agreement between the Government of the Republic of Panamá and the Government of the United States of America concerning the status of U.S. personnel who may be temporarily present in Panama,” signed on September 15 and 20, 2022; and to the “Agreement for the Acquisition and Reciprocal Provision of Services (US-PA-01) between the Ministry of Public Security of the Republic of Panamá and the Department of Defense of the United States of America,” made on June 28, 2019 (the ACSA).

Betrayal of the Martyrs of 1964

This shows that the betrayal of the Martyrs of January 9, 1964, who fought under the slogan “Bases No,” had already begun with the governments of Juan Carlos Varela (Panameñista) and Laurentino Cortizo (PRD) and that this policy of return of the U.S. military presence in the canal began to be executed by the Democratic government of Joseph Biden and is not exclusive to Donald Trump.

Trump scored a first apparent easy victory, with the help of a genuflecting government like that of Mulino. Thus Donald Trump may believe he is emulating President William McKinley, whom he alluded to in his inauguration speech last Jan. 20. McKinley was the one who declared war against Spain in 1898, seizing its last colonies — Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam — passing them to U.S. control and turning that country into an extracontinental power.

This made Panamá a target for the U.S. to take control of in order to build a canal that would allow its navy to “defend” its imperialist interests in both oceans. But McKinley was assassinated, so it fell to his successor, Theodore Roosevelt, to complete the imperialist expansion in the Isthmus of Panamá.
Many Panamanians are unaware that Roosevelt forced the separation of Panamá from Colombia, on November 3, 1903, with a military invasion of more than 10 battleships and thousands of soldiers. They imposed the Hay Bunau Varilla Treaty. And then Roosevelt boasted saying, “I took Panamá.”

For the time being, Donald Trump is boasting about his small victory, but the Panamanian people are beginning to become aware of the betrayal that Mulino has just consummated. The mobilization in defense of national sovereignty, trampled on by Yankee imperialism and the Creole sellouts, has begun. In it our people will find inspiration in the generations that preceded us, such as the Martyrs of January 1964, who faced the Yankee bullets, shouting BASES NO!