Felix E. McDaniel, M.A.
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Felix E. McDaniel completed a 20-year career with the United States Air Force in May, 1986. During his military career, he served one year in the Republic of Vietnam and three years in the Republic of Panama. After retirement, he attended Bellevue University (Nebraska) from September 1986 to June 1988, graduating cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in History. He earned his Master of Arts degree from Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas, in August, 1994. He has since taught foreign languages in the Abilene Independent School District and for one term at Cisco Junior College, Cisco, Texas. He served as a substitute instructor while attending Hardin-Simmons and taught the history of Western Civilization and of the United States for one semester at Shelton State Community College, Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He currently resides in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He is married to the former Amy K. Dill and they have no children. He is the grandfather of three.
This is the story of a small Central American nation state told from the viewpoint of a norteamericano who spent three years there and came to love both the country and its people. For almost one hundred years, the lock canal splitting the Isthmus of Panama into two parts of the same country has provided maritime vessels of all types and sizes (except for those too large to enter it) with the means of moving quickly and easily from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific and vice versa. Prior to the existence of the Panama Canal, western ships of war and commerce were forced to travel around Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope to reach the Pacific from the Atlantic and return to their respective homeports. The canal is the realization and fulfillment of a four hundred year-old dream of humankind. It was probably first proposed by a Spaniard named Alvaro de Saavedra Ceron, who was a cousin of the conqueror of the Aztecs, Hernan (or Hernando) Cortez. De Saavedra died in 1529 before he could receive permission from King Carlos I to begin such a massive undertaking.
It is doubtful that Spain, or any other nation, could have built such a canal in the 16th Century. Not for almost 400 years did the technology or expertise exist by which humanity could pull together the resources necessary to create what was called in its early days the eighth wonder of the world. The Panama Canal represents the triumph of humankind’s engineering genius, technology gained during and after the Industrial Revolution, medical and scientific knowledge gained in the last half of the Nineteenth Century, as well as dedication and hard work over an incredibly hostile natural environment.
The work on the canal was begun in 1881 by the French under the leadership of Ferdinand De Lesseps and the French Panama Canal Company. The effort ultimately collapsed for several reasons, among them the failure of the French medical team to find a solution to the problem of diseases like malaria and yellow fever. Another reason the French failed was the concept of a sea-level canal as envisioned by De Lesseps, similar to the Suez Canal, the building of which the Frenchman had brought to fruition in 1869. The third reason was the inability of the French to overcome such natural obstacles as the Rio Chagres which became a raging torrent whenever there was a rainstorm. After De Lesseps and the French Panama Canal Company went into bankruptcy under a mountain of debt, France withdrew in 1889 from any further effort toward construction of the canal. It would be fifteen years before a new beginning and then only after a relatively bloodless revolution and a heated debate in the United States over both the location and a controversial canal treaty.
In 1898, the United States went to war with Spain over the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine, a battleship visiting Cuba and riding at anchor in Havana Harbor. The U.S.S. Wisconsin was ordered to sail from her Pacific port to the East Coast to support the war effort of the United States. Because there was no canal to shorten her trip, she had to sail around Cape Horn and arrived at her assignment after the Spanish-American War was concluded. This incident raised national security concerns in Washington, D.C., and provided great impetus toward a renewed interest in a transisthmian canal in Central America. The problem lay in whether it would be in Nicaragua or Panama, both with strong proponents in the United States and Colombia.
The Panama Canal was eventually completed by the United States and the Republic of Panama. It opened for maritime transit on August 15, 1914. Although the intent of the canal on the part of the United States was to provide better hemispheric and national security in the event of war, ever mindful of the U.S.S. Wisconsin incident, it turned out to be of greater benefit to humanity by shortening the distance and sailing time for commercial vessels from many seagoing nations, thus decreasing transportation costs and, conversely, increasing profits. Oddly enough, the first warship to transit the canal was a Peruvian destroyer, not an American naval vessel.
Then again, the canal may not have been completed at all, had it not been for political and military events that occurred on the Isthmus of Panama, in Colombia, and in the United States during the years between 1899 and 1903 and for the characters involved in those events. The Panamanian Revolution of 1903, aided in part by the United States, which made possible the final and complete separation of Panama from Colombia has been the subject of often heated historical debate. The United States is usually typecast as the chief perpetrator of what one early critic called “the Rape of Panama”. Other “villains” often held responsible for the revolution are William Nelson Cromwell, a New York corporation attorney; Philippe Bunau-Varilla, vain and verbose, the last French chief engineer whose aim was to recover the lost glory of France; and the then-President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. It must be respectfully acknowledged that their actions and attitudes did contribute substantially and ultimately to Panamanian sovereignty and independence on November 3, 1903.
Yet there were other actors and factors involved in the Revolution of 1903 being accorded little acknowledgement or credit for a role in Panama’s final victory over Colombian despotism and repression. The story of the revolt has not often been conveyed from the contemporary Panamanian point of view. This is a sad situation made worse by literary condescension although the majority of the participants in the successful secession movement were Panamanians and sympathetic Colombians, rather than outsiders.
