Cornucopia

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Cornucopia Page 95

by John Francis Kinsella

PART ELEVEN

  PANAMA

  The heads of state gathered together for the VII Summit of the Americas in Panama were the guests of President Juan Carlos Varela, at a state diner held in Panama Viejo’s historical park.

  The park was the site of the first Spanish settlement on the Pacific coast. It was founded in 1519, and became an important port for galleons arriving from Peru and Bolivia laden with gold and silver.

  At the beginning of 1671, the Welsh pirate, Henry Morgan1, attacked the city with one thousand two hundred men after marching across the jungle covered isthmus from the Caribbean coast. Morgan sacked the city, terrifying its ten thousand souls, raping, burning and killing. Many of those taken prisoner were sold into slavery.

  During the attack the Spanish defender, Captain General Don Juan Pérez de Guzmán, blew up the gunpowder magazines in the desperate hope it would frighten off the pirates, but the fires and explosion destroyed the city. It was rebuilt at a more defensible site to the west, a peninsula, around which was built a system of walls and fortifications: the present day old town of Panama City, Casco Viejo.

  Pat was fascinated by the story of Henry Morgan, who also sacked Granada, the rich colonial city founded in 1524 by Francisco Hernández, situated on the shores of Lake Nicaragua.

  In December 1663, Morgan and his men made their way up the San Juan River, crossed the lake to reach its eastern shores, where with their Indian guides trekked through dense unexplored jungle to reach their objective. After a journey fraught with dangers, Morgan launched a lightning attack on the city, hitherto reputed to be impregnable. The Spaniards were taken by surprise and after a short fight its defenders were neutralised rounded up and locked in the cathedral. The Spanish inhabitants fled whilst Morgan and his men plundering the city with its churches, monasteries and colleges, leaving loaded with gold, silver, jewellery and other valuables.

  It was the start of Morgan’s long and notoriously successful career as a privateer on the Spanish Main. Henry Morgan, the son of a Welsh farmer, was knighted by King Charles II, and became Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica where he died a rich man in 1688.

  After being shanghaied to Barbados, where he was indentured, his career as a soldier commenced when he was pressed into an army led by General Venables and Admiral Penn, sent by Cromwell in 1654, to capture Santo Domingo from the Spanish. After being repulsed the English forces found refuge on nearby Jamaica, a backwater of little interest to the Spanish, where some years later Morgan set out on his own singular career as a privateer: an adventurer licensed by the Charles II to attack and capture enemy ships, as part of cash strapped England’s attempt to pursue its plan to grab part of the action from the rich and all powerful Spanish Empire in the New World.

  Henry Morgan at Portobello

  The main event of the 2015 summit was the consecration of the reconciliation between the US and Cuba, when the American leader declared the days of US meddling in Latin American affairs relegated to history. Panama’s past had been part of a long history of Yankee skulduggery in Latin America. It was marked by the Spanish-American War with the protectorate of Cuba and its subsequent independence; and the secession of Panama from Colombia and its independence.

  In 1903, a treaty between the US and Colombia granted the use of the Isthmus of Panama to the US and was ratified by Washington, Colombia however was not satisfied by the terms and demanded the conditions be renegotiated. The US refusal signalled a Panamanian rebellion, encouraged by Washington, leading to the independence of the Isthmus from Colombia which was powerless faced with the overwhelming supremacy of the American navy.

  Just a few shots were fired with one casualty, who Pat Kennedy learned was an unlucky bystander, a certain Mr Wong, a Chinese citizen, who was killed by a shell fired from a Colombian gun boat.

  The untimely death of Mr Wong, written Wáng in standard Mandarin, seemed at first glance like a bad portent, but Pat recalled his visit to the canal museum at Miraflores, where he learnt thousands of Chinese had worked on the construction, and many of them had left their bones. He brushed the idea aside, after all Wong or Wang was a very common Chinese name.

  Following Panama’s declaration of independence, Washington moved fast and barely two weeks after, the newly created state, the República de Panamá, signed a treaty granting the US exclusive and permanent possession of the Canal Zone against a payment of ten million dollars in exchange, and an annuity of a quarter of a million dollars starting nine years after; the time deemed necessary to finish the canal commenced by Ferdinand de Lesseps ten years earlier.

  It was the start of a long and contentious presence of the US, which finally ended when the canal was ceded to the Panamanian government in 1999 by Jimmy Carter.

  Obama’s words were not lost on those present and more especially on Pat Kennedy, who saw it as a positive sign for the Nicaragua transoceanic canal. Whatever the economics on its viability or its environmental impact, the US would not intervene … at least be seen to do so directly.

  1. LIFE OF SIR HENRY MORGAN by E. A. Cruikshank 1935 The Macmillan Company of Canada Ltd 1935 See Gutenberg Project

  ANOTHER PASSAGE

  Rio Brito was a muddy stream that flowed into the Pacific at the narrowest point of the Rivas Isthmus in the south of Nicaragua. It was the spot chosen to build an ocean port at the entry to the planned transoceanic canal. From Lake Nicaragua the river disappeared into the dry savannah-like woodland areas to the west of Rivas, an unremarkable small town crossed by the Pan-American highway.

  Before the construction of the Panama Canal, the only alternative for American transcontinental transport was by sailing ship around Cape Horn, a hazardous voyage for sailing ships, and even after the arrival of early steam ships the journey was long and fraught with danger.

  Before the North American transcontinental rail-road was built there was an alternative route that had existed since the time of the Conquistadors: the overland route via the Rio San Juan in Nicaragua, which became an important passage for travellers between New York and San Francisco wishing to avoid the treacherous Cape.

  In the middle of the nineteenth century the commercial exploitation of this route was granted to the American shipping magnate, Cornelius Vanderbilt, by the Nicaraguan government. Ships from New York sailed up the San Juan River from the Caribbean to Lake Nicaragua and across to Rivas, where passengers and goods were transported overland to the Pacific, across the low hills of the narrow Istmo de Rivas, to the Pacific by mules trains, horses and stagecoaches.

  Napoleon III formed the Nicaraguan Canal Company in 1869, but his project came to nothing when he was deposed after the Franco-Prussian War that ended in the Emperor’s humiliating defeat and exile. Any further idea to build a canal in Nicaragua was abandoned due to the country’s chronic instability, which forced governments, businessmen and investors to seek an alternative route, finally choosing Panama as the site to build their transoceanic canal.

  San Juan de Nicaragua, situated at the mouth of the Rio San Juan, formerly known as San Juan del Norte or Greytown, on the Caribbean coast, was founded by the Spanish explorers who arrived in 1539.

  Later the small town fell to the English, who, with Miskitos and Zambos: descended from African slaves, controlled the Miskitos Coast on and off until the independence of Central America from Spain in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars.

  In 1848, the British took control of the town and renamed it Greytown, attaching it to the Miskito Kingdom, a British protectorate to the north.

  Soon after Cornelius Vanderbilt set up his shipping company in Greytown and the town became the eastern terminus of a booming transoceanic link, with tens of thousands of travellers passing through each year on their way to the Pacific during the California Gold Rush.

  Sailing ships and steamers from New York and New Orleans docked in Greytown where passengers and goods were transferred onto river boats that made their way up the San Juan River past dense tropical jungles to San Carlos on the shores of Lake Nicara
gua, which, almost thirty three metres above sea level, drained into the Caribbean via the Rio San Juan.

  At the time when Vanderbilt’s company transported passengers overland from the lake shore to the Pacific, a plan to build a canal had already been envisaged. However, when construction of the Panama Canal started the plan was shelved. Then, to pre-empt competition with the Panama Canal, a treaty was signed with the Nicaraguan government in 1916, giving the Americans exclusive rights to build a canal along Vanderbilt’s route. It was not until 1970 the treaty was finally rescinded, leaving the door open to other projects.

  Hernán Cortés is said to have written to the King of Spain: He who possesses the Rio San Juan could be considered the owner of the world.

 

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