The idea of \u200b\u200bbuilding a canal in the Central American\narea came from the head of the German scientist Alexander von Humbolt and it\nwas in 1839 when the first step was taken to make this idea a reality, with the\nconcession from the Republic of New Granada (now Colombia) to a French company\nto structure communications between Panama City and the Atlantic coast.\nHowever, the difficulty of the project caused it to fall into the disinterest\nof the French government. Thus, the project was in the air for several decades\nin which only a few studies were carried out and maps were drawn up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
French Failure<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In the second half of the 19th century, Ferdinand de\nLesseps, who had become famous for the construction of the Suez Canal in Egypt,\nled the French project to undertake the one in Panama. However, his first big\nmistake was to try to open the waterway at sea level as in Suez. The second,\nunderestimating the difficulties of the terrain: torrential rains, heat,\nadverse geology, jungle, swamps, mountains and, in addition, endemic diseases\nsuch as malaria and yellow fever, which caused thousands of deaths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The French canal project was a titanic effort from the\ngroundbreaking in January 1880 until its abandonment in 1899, amid a financial\nscandal over the losses suffered that led the developer company to bankruptcy,\nruining thousands of savers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The American Project<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n After supporting the independence of Panama from\nColombia, proclaimed in November 1903, both countries signed an agreement that\nobtained the cession of the canal in perpetuity. The United States carried out\nbetween 1904 and 1914 the construction of the Panama Canal. Unlike the French,\nthe northern country chose to build a dam to create an artificial lake that was\naccessed through locks in both the Pacific and the Atlantic. Likewise, they\ninvested in medical advances, which allowed them to discover that malaria and\nyellow fever, which in the French project took the lives of thousands of\npeople, were transmitted by mosquito bites, allowing the sanitation of all\nareas, including the cities of Panama and Colon. Besides, they united technical advances in design\nand machinery never before seen in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Third Set of Locks<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Today the expanded Canal has a third set of locks,\nallowing much larger ships to cross the isthmus. The largest and most important\nwork of the 21st century to date, it has locks the size of almost four football\nfields to house Post-Panamax ships, multiplying the tonnage that passes through\nthe Canal and increasing the economic contribution to the government of Panama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Economic Development<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Since Panama took full control of the Panama Canal, it\nhas been able to experience economic development like few other countries in\nthe world, thanks to the contributions made by the work and that far exceed\nwhat the country received when it was in US hands, reaching deliver up to 2,889\nmillion dollars to the Panamanian government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is now 107 years since the construction of the\nwater route through our country, and it continues to be one of the greatest\nhuman achievements of all time. A dream that took 400 years to built the 80.5\nkilometers extension of the project. No statistics on tonnages or tolls can\nconvey the greatness of what was done: a road between two seas, the creation of the Panama Canal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 Nu\u00f1ez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama in 1513, discovering that only a narrow strip of land separated the Atlantic from a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[42],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevisitorpanama.info\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2958"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevisitorpanama.info\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevisitorpanama.info\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevisitorpanama.info\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevisitorpanama.info\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2958"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevisitorpanama.info\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3609,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevisitorpanama.info\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2958\/revisions\/3609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevisitorpanama.info\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevisitorpanama.info\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevisitorpanama.info\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevisitorpanama.info\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.thevisitorpanama.info\/esp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/panama-canal-823221_opt.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.thevisitorpanama.info\/esp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Esclusas-Miraflores_opt.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n