A few hundred meters from the new locks, you can see the infrastructure that tells a Story that has been spread world-wide. A story whose origins go back five centuries, when Vasco Nuñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama in 1513, discovering that only a narrow strip of land separated the Atlantic from a new ocean hitherto unknown. Emperor Carlos V asked the Spanish conquerors to find a way to join both seas”.
Closer to Achieving
The idea of building a canal in the Central American area came from the head of the German scientist Alexander von Humbolt and it was in 1839 when the first step was taken to make this idea a reality, with the concession from the Republic of New Granada (now Colombia) to a French company to structure communications between Panama City and the Atlantic coast. However, the difficulty of the project caused it to fall into the disinterest of the French government. Thus, the project was in the air for several decades in which only a few studies were carried out and maps were drawn up.
French Failure
In the second half of the 19th century, Ferdinand de Lesseps, who had become famous for the construction of the Suez Canal in Egypt, led the French project to undertake the one in Panama. However, his first big mistake was to try to open the waterway at sea level as in Suez. The second, underestimating the difficulties of the terrain: torrential rains, heat, adverse geology, jungle, swamps, mountains and, in addition, endemic diseases such as malaria and yellow fever, which caused thousands of deaths.
The French canal project was a titanic effort from the groundbreaking in January 1880 until its abandonment in 1899, amid a financial scandal over the losses suffered that led the developer company to bankruptcy, ruining thousands of savers.
The American Project
After supporting the independence of Panama from Colombia, proclaimed in November 1903, both countries signed an agreement that obtained the cession of the canal in perpetuity. The United States carried out between 1904 and 1914 the construction of the Panama Canal. Unlike the French, the northern country chose to build a dam to create an artificial lake that was accessed through locks in both the Pacific and the Atlantic. Likewise, they invested in medical advances, which allowed them to discover that malaria and yellow fever, which in the French project took the lives of thousands of people, were transmitted by mosquito bites, allowing the sanitation of all areas, including the cities of Panama and Colon. Besides, they united technical advances in design and machinery never before seen in the world.
Third Set of Locks
Today the expanded Canal has a third set of locks, allowing much larger ships to cross the isthmus. The largest and most important work of the 21st century to date, it has locks the size of almost four football fields to house Post-Panamax ships, multiplying the tonnage that passes through the Canal and increasing the economic contribution to the government of Panama.
Economic Development
Since Panama took full control of the Panama Canal, it has been able to experience economic development like few other countries in the world, thanks to the contributions made by the work and that far exceed what the country received when it was in US hands, reaching deliver up to 2,889 million dollars to the Panamanian government.
It is now 107 years since the construction of the water route through our country, and it continues to be one of the greatest human achievements of all time. A dream that took 400 years to built the 80.5 kilometers extension of the project. No statistics on tonnages or tolls can convey the greatness of what was done: a road between two seas, the creation of the Panama Canal.
