It Could Happen Here - Panama 1989 to Venezuela 2026: What History Can Teach Us feat. Andrew

Episode Date: February 3, 2026

Andrew and James discuss what happened in Panama in 1989 and why people are comparing these events to what is happening in Venezuela. Sources: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/venezuelas-interior-minister-says-100-people-died-us-attack-2026-01-08/ Emperors In the Jungle: The Hidden History of the U.S. in Panama by John Lindsay-PolandSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. 1969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. At a Morehouse college, the students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr.

It's the true story of protests and rebellion in black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Manilic Lamouba. Listen to the A building on the I-Hearton. Cart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. In 1995, my neighbor and a trainer disappeared from a commune.

It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. So no, I am not your guru. Back then, I lied to everybody. They have had this case for 30 years. I'm going back to my hometown to uncover the truth. Listen to the Red Weather on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know Roll Doll. He thought up Willie Wonka and the BFG.

But did you know he was a spy? In the new podcast, The Secret World of Roll Doll, I'll tell you that story, and much, much more. What? You probably won't believe it either. Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you.

I was a spy. Listen to the secret world of Roll Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I actually drop better when I'm high. It heightens my senses, calms me down. If anything, I'm more careful. Honestly, it just helps me focus. That's probably what the driver who killed a four-year-old told himself. And now, he's in prison.

You see, no matter what you tell yourself, if you feel different, you drive different. So if you're high, just don't drive. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. So, in case you've been living under a rock, to ring in the new year, the United States regime decided to invade Venezuela and kidnap President Maduro and his wife, Siliaflores, to put them on trial in the United States. Thus far the time of recording, there are 100 reported killed by America's invasion,

and Maduro's vice president, Del Zerogriguez, is now acting president of Venezuela while Maduro has been arraigned in New York. There's not a lot yet known about how things played out precisely, so I don't plan on tell them too deeply into my speculations. But many have been drawn attention to the similarities between this recent historical moment and another notorious US invasion of a nearby Latin American country,

Panama, back in 1989. Hello and welcome to Grapin here. I'm Andrew Sage. And I'm here with... Speak James, a person who's been to Panama. I'm excited about this one. I saw some good museums when I was in Panama. As I've I, though, I haven't been to any museums.

I did visit Panama at one point. Nice. 10 years ago. Yeah. This is before I was politically conscious. Yeah. Yeah. I was even more politically conscious after spending some time in Panama.

Yeah, I could imagine. After reading about what happened, yeah. I could see why you would be. Yeah. Right. Like, obviously, we were people, we will inform people. They're not aware of the history of the US and Panama over two episodes. But having just come from watching people who across the Darien Gap being detained, imprisoned, and deported from Panama with US funding,

and then going and seeing at the museum with all this history, the idea that they come back to full circle to, like, the US effectively using Panama as an externalization of, of its own border. Like, the US sent its Homeland Security Secretary to the inauguration of the current Panamanian president. Like, it was really just, uh, I don't know, not great. Like, it didn't make me happy. Yeah.

I mean, there's a long history of that kind of collaboration between those governments. Yeah. For better and for worse. And so that's really we're going to look into today, you know, the history of US intervention in Panama. So we can hopefully understand why comparisons are being drawn. to the US invasion of Venezuela here in 26. Yeah.

So, in case you didn't know, just some basic facts about Panama, it's a country on the isthmus connecting Central America to South America, border in Costa Rica, and Colombia. It has a population of just over 4 million people, and it is best known, of course, for its canal, which is a real feat of human engineering with an unfortunate tragedy behind it that links the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean via the Caribbean. This canal is one of the principal reasons why the U.S. has so long been invested in the fate of this still Spanish-speaking country. So you see, we have to go all the way back to 1821, where as a member of the newly minted Republic of Grand Columbia, the country gained independence

from the crumbling Spanish Empire. But after that Republic of Grand Columbia dissolved in 1831, Panama remained part of Colombia until with the U.S. back in, it seceded in 1903. Now, Panama had actually tried to gain its independence from Colombia before then, in 1830, 1831 and 1840. But among many other reasons, despite being part of Colombia, it didn't have any roads connecting it to the rest of Colombia due to the Darien gap. Could you tell me a bit more about that part of the world?

Because I know you have a lot of intimate knowledge of it. Yeah, absolutely. There's still no roads go through the Darien, actually. it's extremely mountainous and extremely jungly and it has some very large and powerful rivers right you know I've spent time in the Darien myself when you talk to indigenous people who live in Dalian now I remember speaking to a guy Senor Bonil was his name

and he said to me like how could we be unkind to immigrants many of us are migrants too we go to Panama for education I mean centerfront the Panamanian Border Patrol slash military are there in small numbers but like essentially you are outside of the state in this area, right? Certainly in terms of provision of services, there's very little. And that's because largely it is geographically very difficult to access to get there just to sort of paint people a picture.

I took a plane, then I drove all the way to the paved road until that ended, and then I hitched a ride on a truck all the way on the unpaved road until that ended, and then I hit to ride in a dugout canoe. It was literally a log that someone hollowed out, And I took that for about five hours and then I walked for a while. And like that, that was how I got to where I stayed. It's still extremely difficult for people to cross. And I guess like, you know, I like to read James Scott,

I think about the way he thought about the art of not being governed. Right. And it's still one of those areas that it's hard for the state to extract tribute from. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, it's impressive to me that despite these challenges, thousands of people managed to traverse through the Darren Gap. every year. Yeah. I mean, people wouldn't do it if they didn't think that what they were going to leave behind was worse, but it is one of the most harrowing journeys, one of the most difficult

journeys a person can make. Like, you're shimming along cliff edges on, you know, a few inches of rock. And if you fall, you will die. You're crossing a river, a river that was chest high for me. I'm six foot three. And people are carrying toddlers, babies. Someone gave birth in the jungle while I was there, it's unimaginable. And people die every day. I saw that myself. It's an incredibly dangerous and difficult journey, but people take it because they want a better chance at life, right? Yeah. Yeah. And so you could imagine if it's so difficult to traverse even now, how much more difficult it would have been back then with even less infrastructure between the regions of Panama and Columbia.

Yeah. So at that point in time, Panama was mainly conducting trade, which was a state at the time, was meaning conducting trade with its Caribbean neighbors rather than Colombia's capital. You know, they were very geographically isolated from the rest of Colombia. But despite that fact, Panama only succeeded in gaining its independence with the help of the U.S. as American ambitions and local elite ambitions aligned for development of the country. canal. Now, all of this in what follows was recounted in Emperors in the Jungle, the hidden history of the US in Panama by John Lindsay Poulon, which I picked up to my library, and it was really a

fantastic book that served as my main resource for this research. In Lindsay Poulon's words, Panama was a long-standing laboratory of US imperial power. And some of the things I found out about in this book I never heard of anywhere. And it really shook me. that these kinds of things were happening, you know, at this crossroads of continents. Yeah. So I've been saying the U.S. involvement in the country even preceded its independence, with 11 American interventions taken place in just the pre-independent state of Panama between 1856 and 1902. And their rationale for bringing in the military usually involved, you know,

claims of protecting American interests, particularly during interruption. or revolutionary activity in the country. And of course, because it's America, they always had a heavily racialized approach to the region. You know, they saw the Colombian army as ignorant mongrels, and they saw the Panama isthmus civilians as savage and animal-like. Especially as Americans and American capital were involved in the construction of the Panama Canal Railway, which was built between 1850 and 1855 to facilitate the Californian gold rush.

You see, America was eye on Panama for a long time because they saw it as an appealing side for a trans-ismos canal, the next big project in international trade. And aside from their direct interventions, they were signing treaties concerning Panama even before Panama was independent. While I was expanding its territory through the conquest of Mexico, the U.S. signed the Bidlac Treaty with Colombia in 1846 to guarantee Colombian control over Panama in exchange for free access to any future canal. As we all know,

America always keeps its promises. So, only four years later, in 1850, the U.S. and England signed the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, which ensured their joint cooperation in any future canal. You notice I said the U.S. and England signed that treaty because Colombia was not involved at all. Yeah.

Are you familiar with the Scottish attempt to colonise a Dalian? No, that didn't come up. I may have missed that. I think it's previous to the dates you're covering, but Scotland attempted to colonize Adrian and the thing called the Darien scheme. Basically, much of the Scottish bourgeoisie pulled their capital to do this, right? And the idea that it would be a Scottish colony. Obviously, at that time, colonialism was seen as the route to national,

like security and independence. Prestige. Yeah. And they wanted to keep up with the English, who were busy colonizing and pillaging much of the world. So they attempted to set up a colony in one of the least hospitable places on the planet. Unsuccessfully, you know, people got malaria.

When I was there, I was told that every type of malaria is present in the gap just because you have such a global population of people, right, that the mosquitoes are biting someone from East Africa, then they're buying you, then they're buying someone from West Africa, South America, Nepal. You know, their mosquitoes is getting a global buffet.

So back then, obviously, still malaria. It's like a mosquito convention. Yeah, yeah. It's like a mosquito-vector disease, gold mine. The Scottish bourgeoisie significantly lost to such an extent that, like, we can point to this scheme of one of the reasons that Scotland continues to be colonized by England, right?

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's wild. I think you would probably learn about it now if you're going to school in Scotland or you've been to school in Scotland and you learned about it. I'd love to hear from you. But yeah, the Darien scheme

was this kind of idea of a Scottish empire that ended up completely backfiring. Yeah, I just looked it up as the late 1690s to set up a colony called New Caledonia. Yeah. I mean, and that was their first attempt at setting up a colony. I mean, way to pick them.

Yeah, yeah, right. Like throw a door at the map and you couldn't land at a place that is less like Scotland. It does rain a lot other than that. Yeah, I mean, that's like trying to set up your first colony in like Antarctica or something. Yeah. Yeah. Like I don't know how, whether they just felt like it looks like no one else is hanging around there. And obviously at that point in time, they weren't concerned with indigenous people, right?

Like, yeah. They felt like there was no other state projecting its force there or like what. I don't understand how they, or because they, I think, I read somewhere that there have been several attempts to build a canal through the Dallian. I think it's actually slightly narrower there. So whether they were early on in that and just thought, all right, well, we'll establish ourselves here and then as we'll build a canal a bit later. Yeah, and well, because it didn't quite work out.

Yeah, it didn't go that way for them, sadly. 1969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. And at Morehouse College, the students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King's senior. It's the true story of protests and rebellion in black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles.

I'm Minnick Lamouba. Listen to the A building on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea. In 1995, my neighbor and a trainer disappeared from a commune. It was hard to wrap your head around. It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. So no, I am not your guru.

And back then, I lied to my parents. I lied to police. I lied to everybody. There were years right where I could not say your name. I've decided to go back to my hometown in Northern California, interview my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can to try to find out what actually happened. Isn't it a little bit weird that they obsess over hippies in the woods and not the obvious boyfriend?

They have had this case for 30 years. I'll teach you sons of a bitch to come around her in my wife. Boom, boom, this is The Red Weather. Listen to The Red Weather on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I actually drop better when I'm high. It heightens my senses, calms me down. If anything, I'm more careful. Honestly, it just helps me focus.

That's probably what the driver who killed a four-year-old told himself. And now he's in prison. You see, no matter what you tell yourself, if you feel different, you drive different. So if you're high, just don't drive. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. You know, Roldahl, the writer who thought up Willie Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy? Was this before he wrote his stories?

It must have been. Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roll Doll, is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans. What?

And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. I was a spy. Did you know Doll got cozy with the Roosevelt's? Played poker with Harry Truman and had a long affair with a congresswoman.

And then he took his talent to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock, before writing a hit James Bond film. How did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? And what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids. The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to the secret world of Roll Dahl on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. So, the U.S. and England, they signed this treaty to ensure joint cooperation in the future.

canal. And then during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln advanced a proposal to establish a colony of emancipated and deported Black Americans in southwestern Panama, because, you know, he didn't believe Black and white people could live together. Right, yeah. This proposal was scrapped due to Colombian, Central American, and Black American opposition, but it's interesting to think about there being almost a Liberia in the Western Hemisphere, you know, because the Liberian project was an attempt at doing similarly. Yeah, that is wild to think about.

And so after quite a few of their pre-Panamanian independence military interventions, it's quite a mouthful, thank you, past Andrew, the US was itching to build the canal that they always wanted. They were fiend in for a gateway to the Pacific, and they did not like that when France tried to build their own canal through Panama from 1879 to 1889 that they didn't have, you know, enough of us saying it. Because why the hell is France and America's backyard, as far as they're concerned? Yeah, right.

The Monroe Doctrine was established in 1823, so it had to be activated then and there. And of course, they didn't just want a canal for Mukentile or geopolitical reasons. Remember, they had just conquered several states in Mexico and reached the Pacific, sea to shining sea, as I like to say. And luckily for them, there were still quite a lot of Native Americans and Mexicans still living in the Western plains and West Coast. Plus, you had a lot of Asian immigration to the West Coast as well. And the leaders of Americas didn't exactly appreciate that. You know, they wanted Northern European stock to populate the Western Coast, unpolluted by having to share a railroad with black and brown Panamanians.

So you have to get a canal So the whites don't have to step foot off their boats And mingle with the locals You know, because then they could stay on their boats They could go through, they never have to breathe the same air As a local inhabitants of Panama And so after wrapping up their war with Spain Having newly minted colonies in the Philippines, Guam and Hawaii

They really, really wanted a maritime shortcut To continue their great empire building ambitions because you see having to spend 67 days to reach from San Francisco to Cuba, they didn't like that. You know, going all the way around the Patagonian Horn and all that. That's not fun. So, the US created an opportunity for itself after Columbia's civil war between the liberals and the conservatives that, you know, rage between 1890 to 1902. Here's what happened.

In Panama City, most of the white elites try to stay out of the conflict. But in the rural interior, there was a different story, as the liberals found support among the mestizo peasants. In Panama, the Civil War was less focused on parties, whether a liberal or conservative. It started off like that, but became a mass uprising against the distant conservative government in Bogota. So after several major battles, liberal forces had taken control of almost all of Panama's interior. And that's when the U.S. decided to step in. They used the Bidlach Treaty of 1846 as justification to bring in their military to protect transit across Panama, in particular the real way. Thus, the Liberals were unable to finish their victory and had to sign a peace agreement.

And in the following months, liberal forces regrouped and once again took control of nearly all of Panama, except Cologne and Panama City. And once again, the U.S. got involved and blocked liberal entry into those cities. the U.S. made it impossible for the liberals to win, so they surrendered and signed one last speech treaty in November 1902, ending the Civil War. And all that for what? Because more than 60% of Panama's cattle was wiped out, agriculture had collapsed, the armies on both sides committed atrocities, you know, thousands of civilians fled into the mountains, entire towns were emptied as people were escaping, conscription and violence.

Have you ever read the book 100 years of solitude? When I was like in or just out of high school I did, yeah. Okay, I read it last year. So when I was doing this research, it was like top of my mind. Yeah, yeah. Because you know, part of that book covers that Colombian Civil War. Yeah, I should read it again.

It was pretty good. I had some very weird stuff. It was pretty good. Yeah, yeah. It's good to read. I'm trying to read more fiction right now. It helps me. Yeah.

Even though it was fiction, I think it paints a really grim picture of that Civil War. Yeah. And so I could have, in reading this, I could have pictured what was taking place because the book was so vivid. Yeah, yeah. You know, rural Panama was absolutely devastated. And yet, the transit zone was, of course, untouched. The railroad and the ports, the commerce kept on going. And with the liberal peasantry, defeated by the conservative,

in the US, the conservative elites in Panama City were best positioned to negotiate for their own ambitions. With the war over, President Roosevelt was looking to finally negotiate for Panama Canal rights. And if he couldn't get a deal with the French Canal Company that was ready to sell or the government of Columbia, he had permission from Congress to pursue a canal in Nicaragua instead. The French company was definitely ready to offload their investment because, you know, there were multiple attempts to set up a canal. The French had their attempt and they were ready to get it off of their hands, right? But the Colombian government rejected America's Heheran Treaty, which offered what they

considered an inadequate $10 million in exchange for sweeping canal rights. So America made them an offer they couldn't refuse. What happened next was that Roosevelt and a French shareholder named Felipe Puneauverria struck up a little side deal of their own, and the U.S. Navy got orders to prevent Colombia from crushing any uprising on the Isthmus. And with their circumstances being what they were on the ground in Panama, without Colombian intervention due to the U.S. blockade,

it didn't take long for Panamanian forces to declare independence, finally in 1903. The Bidlac Treaty of the U.S. had signed with Colombia was supposed to protect Colombia's control over Panama and ensure free transit throughout the isthmus. And the U.S. did basically the complete opposite. You know, that's what makes them such an excellent partner on the global stage. You can always count on them to uphold, you know, the highest standards of moral and diplomatic decency.

So before you know it, America was recognizing a newly independent Panama and drafting up a treaty with Bunal Veria, who the new Panama government had given permission to negotiate a deal. but I'm thinking that they may not have known that Bunavaria had already practically signed them away. They didn't like the fact that they would behold onto a treaty that no Panamanian had signed, but the US made sure that the Panamanian government understood that if they didn't like the treaty,

the Navy could always just let the Colombian army come in to nip their independence in the butt. You know, it's like, oh, you don't like working with us? Well, you know, it'd be a real shame if the Columbia Navy came back in. to the picture. So the new canal treaty gave the US far more

than they had even expected to get from the deal. They claimed permanent control over a 10 mile wide canal zone, inherited the French canal works and the railroad, and secured the right to seize land anywhere in Panama

if they deemed it necessary for the canal's defense, operation or sanitation. And trust and believe they would use our privilege to seize land 19 different times between 1908 to 1931. Cumulatively, hundreds of square miles, thousands of acres, often without notice or compensation,

and always justified as necessary for canal defense. The canal zone was removed from Panamanian courts altogether, and the U.S. was authorized to police Panama City and Cologne and build military garrisons. Panama's new constitution made it an effective U.S. protectorate. Article 136 explicitly allowed the United States to intervene militarily anywhere in Panama to restore public peace and constitutional order. Civilization, as Roosevelt argued, was the urgent mandate for all these actions toward building the canal.

Jesus. Construction officially began in 1904 in a Panama exhausted by civil war, haunted by the French failure and politically dependent on Washington. So you said you had been to the canal zone and the museums and stuff. Yeah. Can you tell me a bit about what you know about the canal's construction? They were very good at this part. I remember this part very well.

They had accounts from the workers, you know, the people who were in some cases, like essentially forced labor, right? They had accounts of what their lives were like. They had like sort of the ephemera of their life. lives, which is always in, like, in museums, it helps to create a picture, right? They're like the sort of the things that they were fed, the shitty shoes that they got given, pictures of the like sleeping situations and accounts from doctors, right? Because a lot of people became unwell because they were exposed to all these conditions and diseases that they hadn't been

exposed to before. So they did a good job, I felt, of like painting how horrendous life was for people who were digging out the Panama Canal. Yeah. I think they had a two-tier system. I think it was the gold ticket. Yes. Yep. They were explaining how life was so much more difficult, the lower down that system you found yourself. Yeah, yeah. The whole construction of this feat of engineering was, you know, rife with suffering.

Yeah. And that suffering often came like in a very racialized way. Yes. As you mentioned, there was a gold role and a silver rule. That's it, yeah. So even prior to canal construction, Panama is already a very racially divided society. You had the white elite elite. in the capital, you had the mestizo peasants, you had poor, black, and mulatto communities,

and you also had the indigenous peoples who were not even counted in official census counts. Oh, wow. And among the canal workforce in particular, it was quite a lot of black laborers who were either descendants of people emancipated from slavery in 1852 or migrants from the British Caribbean who were drawn to Panama during the railroad construction project and the French Canal construction project. And so the U.S. took the social landscape and made it worse by introducing racial hierarchy with the gold role and the silver rule. That determined your pay, your housing, your medical care, and even how you were buried. You know, the American workers, the white American workers in the canals construction occupied the gold role and the Caribbean laborers were pushed

onto the silver row. They had to perform the most dangerous work under the worst conditions. And so During the U.S. construction phase alone, roughly 5,600 workers died from disease and accidents, and the overwhelming majority were the Caribbean laborers. Sadly, their deaths were treated as expendable losses, is an engineering project framed as a triumph of civilization. The canal construction finally concluded in 1914. In 1969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis.

In a Morehouse College, the students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King's senior. It's the true story of protests and rebellion in black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Minnick Lamouber. Listen to the A building on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by.

the sea. In 1995, my neighbor and a trainer disappeared from a commune. It was hard to wrap your head around. It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. So no, I am not your guru. And back then, I lied to my parents. I lied to police. I lied to everybody. There were years right at where I could not say your name. I've decided to go back to my hometown in Northern California, interview my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can to try to find out what actually happened. Isn't it a little bit weird that they obsess over hippies in the woods and not the obvious boyfriend? They have had this case for 30 years. I'll teach you sons of a bitch to come around or in my wife. Boom, boom, this is the red weather. Listen to the red weather on the Iheart radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I actually drop better when I'm high. It heightens my senses, calms me down. If anything, I'm more careful. Honestly, it just helps me focus. That's probably what the driver who killed a four-year-old told himself. And now he's in prison. You see, no matter what you tell yourself, if you feel different, you drive different. So if you're high, just don't drive. Brought to you by Nica and the Ad Council. You know, Real Doll. The writer who thought up Willie Wonka, Matilda. and the BFG.

But did you know he was also a spy? Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roll Doll, is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives

of powerful Americans. What? And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. I was a spy. Did you know Doll got cozy with the Roosevelt's?

Played poker with Harry Truman. and had a long affair with a congresswoman. And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock, before writing a hit James Bond film. How did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? And what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids.

The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to the secret world of Roll Dahl on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And so after its independence, during the connection, construction and afterwards, Panama faced eight further U.S. military interventions, including the famous 1989 invasion, which we'll get to in the next episode. But take a guess as to what their rationale was for these interventions. Are they protecting a business interest, U.S. capital?

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Protecting U.S. citizens and property. Maintaining control and stability. Preserving U.S. strategic and political interests. all that usual stuff. Yeah. Particularly whenever Panamanians were struggling for their rights against the elites,

the US would get involved. Yeah. The US supervised elections. They oversaw the police force. They vetoed public spending whenever it wanted. And the US bases lined the canal with thousands of troops explicitly for the purpose of maintaining quiet and protecting property in Panama. Panama's whole political history in the 20th century

was basically shaped and dictated by U.S. interests. In 1904, when General Istiban Huerta threatened revolt, the U.S. officials pressured Panama's president to fire him and dissolve the army entirely. In 1910, when Vice President Carlos Mendoza, a liberal mulatto married to a black woman, seemed likely to win the presidency, the U.S. chief of mission Richard Marsh threatened occupation if he were elected, so Mendoza withdrews, candidacy. During World War I, the garrison commander used occupation to impose moral reforms

by shutting down saloons and prostitution and publicly denouncing Panamanian cities as dens of vice. And in the countryside, ostensibly to protect American landowners, U.S. troops drunkenly abused, stole and burned homes for two whole years until they finally withdrew. And in 1925, the U.S. came into Panama City to crush a renter strike. Panama also became a regional launch pad for the U.S. Empire. The Marines that were stationed there were repeatedly deployed in Nicaragua, Mexico, and beyond. For the U.S. empire, the costs could always be externalized to Panama. Panama was an imperial laboratory for the U.S. to test ideas and weapons.

They felt were risky to test at home. During World War II, they tested various chemical weapons in Panama on nature and people with minimal disclosure and almost no regard for long-to-environmental and human consequences. Jesus. They also left behind unexploded munitions. That is horrible. Yeah, it gets worse. Okay, great. In the 1950s and 60s, U.S. officials seriously proposed using nuclear explosions to carve a new sea-level canal.

through Panama. So you've heard of all this. Yeah, and you king, the Darien was there, one of their little strategies that they thought about. And I think they thought about again, when the bicentennial of the United States had up been 1976, one of the things they wanted to do is complete the Pan American Highway. Have it run all the way up from the northern tip of Alaska, I guess, or I think goes from Canada actually, all the way down to Argentina. I think they were like, yeah, can we just nuke the Darian and we'll just join them up it'll be fine. Yeah, yeah.

But they were really gung-ho about nukes. Yeah. At that point in time, in history, you know. Yeah. The Panama Canal, in case you don't know, those of you listeners at home, the Panama Canal is not a sea level canal. Actually, it climbs a mountain, Loki, you know, so it has several steps where it's like the water is released

and there's like a floating mechanism and it's kind of inconvenient. Yeah. You should just, there's traffic backed up of boats waiting for their chance to get into the canal. And so the idea of sea level canal is, you know, it would be so much more convenient if you didn't have to wait for all those mechanisms to, you know, drain and fill and all those different things. Yeah. But nuking the canal to create a new sea level canals, probably not the best idea. No, it's, yeah, it's wild to think of it. Back then, I guess they'd get nukes relatively recently.

They were like, okay, what can we do with these? Like, yeah, yeah. What else can we, now you'll see when you're in Panama City, you see boats like sort of hanging out around the canal. Yeah. It's waiting to enter those, those locks. And I mean, obviously the consequences of a nuclear area can now be disastrous. Entire regions would have been irradiated, populations would have been displaced, ecosystems pulling up de-watered, and yet they seriously with a straight face considered this plan. Right.

Because, you know, who cares about the people outside the Imperial Center? Sure, yeah. Like, what are the Embara people and the Guna people who live down there? Like, what do they matter to them, right? Yeah. And this is after they've dropped a nuke. It's not like they're, like, postulating here. Yeah, it's not like they don't know what nukes do.

Yeah, like they've seen this happen in Japan, right? We're like a decade since. They know that it's still killing people. Yeah. There are places and canals and structures that have been irrigated, stahull and stuff using dynamite, you know, T&T, you know, basic munitions and explosive devices. And that's one thing, right? I don't know, it's like more of that.

It's like, let's just go as big as we can go. Right. It's not understanding the fundamental difference, right? Like, yeah, a nuclear blast is of an entirely different nature to. I mean, it could have very easily end up effect in the US as well. Right, yeah. You know, the air currents could have carried the fallout into the southern U.S., into the west coast, you know, into other countries in the region as well.

Yeah, I visited one of the places that the United States nuked after World War II, right, in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. And, yeah, they completely failed to account for even prevailing winds, right? Like, the fallout directly engulfed small Japanese fishing vessel. that was just happened to be up because they didn't tell anyone, right? And then they just dropped a nuclear, or they told some people, obviously

they evacuated people are living on the island, but they dropped a nuclear bomb and then were just like, oh wow, it's blown off over there. Did the result of people being severely irradiated? You know, it's like a bunch of scientists, you know, Ben, Ben, in Exum, furiously scribble on some notes.

Fascinating. People have attempted to go back to their island because at one point they were told that they could, and they absolutely, like, it wasn't safe for them, but like the coconuts and the crabs and the fish and the reefs are still irradiated. They're still not safe for them. People still have one of the highest rates of stillbirth in the world. The stories they tell about miscarrying pregnancies are heartbreaking.

Yeah. Because they didn't know what was going on, right? The human and environmental impact is awful. Yeah, it's terrible. And so it took resistance from Panamanians, from scientists, and from a growing global environmental movement to put an end to this proposal. Now, as is the nature of interventions, after a certain point, they start away in because, you know, the intervening power has created the setup that they find preferential,

you know, so while they're setting up, they may have to intervene on repeated occasions, but once they get to a certain point where their control over that area is crystal, they don't have to intervene as explicitly as often. So direct US interventions waned as time went on, but the tensions continue to build in Panama for independence from the US. And these tensions flared in January 1964, which would get the ball rolling for a new treaty between the countries that would replace the previous He-Banau-Farria Treaty.

So since that 1903 treaty, Panamanians wanted it revisited and revised. Remember, they didn't want to do. agreed it in the first place, they were kind of coerced into its terms. Both the US's proposal to create a new sea level canal with or without nukes, which would require cooperation with the Panamanians. They would be forced to take those Panamanian demands into consideration. And so as a concession to Panamanian nationalism, U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson developed a policy that would fly the Panamanian flag alongside the American

flag, oh la la, in certain parts of the canal zone. And then JFK was assassinated in November 1963.

And then in January of the following year, Balboa High School, which was an American school in the canal zone, refused to fly

either flag. So on January 9th, 1964, American students decided to raise the American flag for freedom or whatever. And Panamanian

students from Panama's National Institute, March to the school to raise their own flag. And then there's a scuffle, and then the Panamanian flag is torn. And then that scuffle becomes a riot where 24 Panamanian civilians and four U.S. soldiers were killed in the fighting. Yeah.

And hundreds of Panamanian civilians were injured by the American crackdown. That Panamanian flag is in the museum, the Panama Canal Museum. The one that got torn? Yeah. Oh, that's impressive. I have to go and see that then. Yeah, yeah. it's really, it's a good museum.

So that's a real big piece of history, because that whole riot led to everything else. Yeah, no, that is like it's a pivotal, like, artifact of their national history. Yeah, it's like for want of a nail, the horse was lost. It's like for want of a ripped flag. Yeah. Pan Aminian independence was lost. Yeah. Yeah, obviously, there's no oil boil on to that, but it's such a unique artifact of history.

Yeah, I know. It's cool to be like this pivotal moment, like this thing was present. Yeah. Sometimes when I'm in Spain, I'll kick around antiques markets and find, like, like a newspaper, just seeing that this newspaper was on the street the same day, right, that the Spanish military was defeated in Barcelona. You can see sometimes people like sheltering behind newspaper stands, right? It's an exchange fire with the soldiers and things. Like, oh, this thing was present at this pivotal moment. Yeah, yeah.

It was there for that piece of history, that moment's in time. Yeah, I like to acquire those things when I can. Something I would like to acquire, though, is a bit of rubble or something from one of their other actions that day. The protesters also burned several American buildings, including tire plans, airlines, and the US Information Agency. I'm wondering if that piece of history is also in the museum. Yeah, I think those buildings are still around, or some of those canals, some of the canal company buildings are still around because you can see them when you're driving around. And so in response to that whole riot situation, the Panamanian president, Roberto Chiari, cut diplomatic relations with the U.S. and demanded a renegotiation of the treaty.

A few months later in April, 1964, diplomatic ties were reestablished in an effort to resolve the conflict between the countries. These negotiations would be ongoing for years afterwards. In fact, one of the reasons the idea of the nuclear excavation was considered in the first place was that it didn't require as much Panamanian labor cooperation as a typical canal project would. And because tensions were so tense with Panama, they were like, let's circumvent them and just open it up ourselves. But when the nuclear canal project collapsed and with mounting pressure from the Panamanians, the stage was set for the US to pull back its more direct and open meddling in the country at least for the while. JFK's vice president, Lyndon Johnson,

won the presidency in November 1964, and as the anniversary of the riots approached, he resolved to figure out that new treaty explores sea-nevel canal preparations and settle things with the contingency of Americans in office who sought to preserve America's perpetual ownership of the canal zone, including the famous white supremacist, arch-conservative, Strom Thurman.

If you know anything about Strom Thurman, you know that pork-founding kitchen, you know, the fact that this guy was against Panamanians, and control over the canal, it's not surprised. And this is the guy who set a country record for filibustering against the Civil Rights Act. Yeah, yeah. I think it was beaten recently by Cory Booker, who's set a world record for filibustering about not very much.

Yeah, I think I heard about that. Yeah, he talked about Donald Trump for well, and then he finished up and went and voted for a bunch of Trump appointees. It's like the Democratic Party response is like, you stop that, you meanie, and then they just do whatever. Whatever, Trump wants anyway. Yeah, you're not allowed to. Do you know you're not allowed to do that?

You're breaking the rules. That's against the rules. Yeah, they summoned the Reddit moderators, is the democratic response. But yeah, if there was a cause during the time he was in office and it would have made the world better, you can probably count on Strome being against it. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Yeah. And so the Americans, they managed to script together a treaty in 1967, but the power. Panamanians didn't ratify it.

And in the following year, 1968, Panama was overtaken by a military coup. Dun, dun, done. So if you want to know what will happen with the treaty, with Panama's political future, and how all of this does or does not relate to current conditions in Venezuela, because I know I have that thread still dangling. Yeah.

Stay tuned for the next episode. This has been it could happen here. I'm Andrew Sage. I'm here with James Stout. And as always, all power to all the people. Peace. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website,

coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. 1969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. And at Morehouse College, the students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson,

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