Word: canal
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Spreading Fever. A secondary imminent problem for the Eisenhower committee to consider is Panama. There last week the government went gunning for Canal Zone Governor William E. Potter, U.S. Army Major General on active service, who a fortnight ago firmly put down riots aimed at raising the Panamanian flag over the 10-by 50-mile zone. The U.S. reply to a demand for Potter's removal: a flat...
...Treaty Writer. The causes are historical, emotional, economic and political. They go back to the turn of the century, when President Theodore Roosevelt became convinced that the U.S. must build a canal through the section of the isthmus then controlled by Colombia ("I do not think that the Bogotá lot of jack rabbits should be allowed permanently to bar one of the future highways of civilization"). Sounded out by Philippe Bunau-Varilla, a Frenchman and chief engineer in Ferdinand de Lesseps' unsuccessful earlier attempt to build a Panama Canal. President Roosevelt gave tacit support to a Panamanian revolution...
...economic grievances go back almost as far as the emotional. For decades a double wage standard divided U.S. and Panamanian employees of the canal into well-paid "gold" and poorly paid "silver" classifications, though in some cases they even did the same work. A 1955 agreement provided that "the basic wage for any given [job] will be the same for any employee . . . without regard to whether he is a citizen of the U.S. or of the Republic of Panama." In practice, the U.S. still divides the payroll into categories, some filled mostly by U.S. employees on U.S. pay scales...
...discontent and would like to capitalize on it politically is Aquilino Boyd, 38, a handsome lawyer from a Panamanian "best" family, who would like to be elected President next year. For months, Boyd has been whipping up feeling. "Panama, like Egypt," he said, "could not build her own canal because she is a small nation and had to accept foreign aid. Every day the idea is gaining force that eventually Panama should regain jurisdiction." What that meant precisely, he never said, but he did not want the canal itself for Panama. Instead, he would settle for a fifty-fifty split...
With all the emotional, economic and political issues involved, a vital difference remains between the demands of Boyd's unruly mobs and Egypt's once unruly Nasser. Whereas Nasser acted in his official capacity as chief of state to reach out and grab the Suez Canal, Panama's President de la Guardia shuns such ambition, and even the mob so far aspires only to seeing the Panamanian flag flying over the "sovereign" territory...