In the 19th century, throughout Colombia and, in general, in Latin America, poverty, the lack of good public, educational, and sanitary infrastructure, illiteracy, superstition disguised as religion, the struggle between clerical conservatives and lay liberals, etc., predominated.
Fifth, the Republic of Panama was created on November 3, 1903. For example, the heroes of Panama's independence from Spain, first in the Heroic City of Los Santos and then in the capital in 1821, under the leadership of Colonel José de Fábrega, joined Bolívar's Gran Colombia due to the geopolitical weaknesses of the isthmus in the face of the appetites of the colonial powers, Spain and Great Britain, mainly.
The Republic of Panama was born thanks to a bipartisan concordance that appears in the first founding act on November 4, 1903, and in the election of a Constituent Assembly in January 1904, which elected the first president of the Republic, Manuel Amador Guerrero. It was also born thanks to the Isthmian Canal Convention of November 18, 1903, a product of its time and the prevailing geopolitics, which allowed for the construction of the Panama Canal and the protection of a powerful ally that helped the fragile sovereign state integrate into the international community.
The separation from Colombia and the creation of the Republic was successful because it also counted on the participation of General Esteban Huertas, the military chief, and the majority liberals from the popular masses, led by General Domingo Díaz, and, of course, the decisive support of the United States government and President Theodore Roosevelt.
The Republic of Panama was born deprived of its most valuable territory; amputated of its jurisdictional capacity in the heart of the transit passage; diminished in its condition as a sovereign state, a full member of the international community.
I mentioned at the beginning some myths about these events. First, that Panama declared independence from Spain and then joined Bolívar's Gran Colombia. The various 'independences' were temporary, while the national fabric fractured by civil wars and Colombian caudillism of the 19th century was being rebuilt. Fourth, that Colombia selectively mistreated Panama, when the treatment of the Bogotá authorities was similar for the entire national territory.
The Permanent Neutrality Treaty of the Canal, our greatest shield against external threats, remained in effect. The founders of the republic, heirs to 19th-century positivism, liberal at heart, though dressed in 'red and blue,' believed that the primary task for building a modern and functional state was the formation of a well-educated elite, capable of communicating and interacting on an equal plane with their counterparts in the concert of nations to which Panama was acceding, albeit in a diminished way, since November 1903.
In truth, on that day the capital municipal republic was proposed, as it was founded through the act of the Panama City council before the initial rulers were designated, on the 4th, the triumvirate - Arango-Arias-Boyd, 'while the new Republic is being constituted,' says the said act. To legitimize their decision, they immediately requested all other municipal councils to adhere to their proposal, which happened for the majority between November 4 and 11.
Geopolitics dominated the history of Panama. First, Panama's independence from the Spanish Crown in 1821; then, the separation from the Republic of Colombia and the creation of the Republic of Panama in 1903. The history of Panama contains unpublished chapters.
We all know that during the month of November the two paramount events of our republican political history occurred. The Canal Zone was created in 1904 as a foreign enclave, and the new Republic entered into a long diplomatic and political conflict with its American protectors, which ended with the signing of the Torrijos-Carter treaties on September 7, 1977, which came into force on October 1, 1979 when the Canal Zone was also abolished.
Afterwards, they sought support from more popular groups and in the 20th century they even invented a heroine from Los Santos for 1821, Rufina Alfaro. Third, that Panama always had a strong aspiration for independence from 1821 to 1903, when in fact the desire of its political and economic elites was autonomism, represented by Justo Arosemena and his Federal State of 1855.
In reality, it was a simultaneous act in the same declaration, although the Liberator, our first republican president, received the news later, in January 1822, and naturally accepted said union. Second, that both were events with the protagonism of the popular classes. The truth is that they were led by the municipal elites of the capital and the interior, gathered in their exclusive councils. It was natural, because that council did not represent more than 10% of the isthmic population.
The Treaty of the Panama Canal expired on December 31, 1999, when the last military bases were removed and the Canal itself was transferred to Panama.
Therefore, they granted absolute priority to education among their government plans. To the reinforced literacy effort, present since the last decades of the 19th century -suspended by the Thousand Days War- the heroes added a special scholarship program, so that the most outstanding students, regardless of their economic situation, could access the best higher education in the world, which did not exist in Panama until 1935. Achieving a massive education of true quality remains pending even today, in the 21st century.
By Dr. Omar Jaén Suárez Geographer, historian, and diplomat
