Word: panama
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Mardi Gras is being celebrated this week on the small island of Contadora off the coast of Panama, and revelers move from one party to the next to the din of drumbeats. The mood seems auspicious for the resumption of negotiations on the Panama Canal. Never before in twelve years of off-again, on-again talks have U.S. and Panamanian negotiators been more confident of success. In their bungalow, overlooking a white sand beach where they occasionally swim and sun themselves, they are quickly getting down to basics. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance has been described as "eupeptic" over...
...narrow Panama isthmus has become a potentially explosive issue between the U.S. and its neighbors to the south. Almost every Latin American nation supports Panama's demand for control of the canal. The U.S. has gradually recognized that the canal is a colonial acquisition of another age and has conceded the principle of sovereignty. During the life of the treaty, the U.S. and Panama would share control of the canal. At the expiration of the treaty, around the year 2000, Panama would take over. Within three years of signing the treaty, Panama would also acquire legal jurisdiction over...
...what he calls a "charisma of desperation." It communicates an impatience with the inert diplomacy over the Canal issue, but also a desire to leave a mark on history. If he doesn't do so on the dotted line on the document that restores sovereignty over the waterway to Panama, Greene hints he plans to leave it in blood...
Morale is sometimes high in Panama, Greene concludes--at least when the jungle inhabitants sing of driving the Zonians into the Atlantic, "Where the sharks can eat mucho Yanqui, much Yanqui." Yet underneath Greene touches a nausea, a festering need to strike out--if nothing more, just to keep alive a glimmer of Latin pride...
Everyone in Greene's Panama is sick of the Canal situation: the businessman because it gives Torrijo too much leverage; Torrijo because he doesn't quite know how to use it; the peasants for a century worth of reasons. To revolt is not always to fulfill a class or national destiny, Greene suggests--perhaps a people may just get bored with peace...