Panamanian Politics and Panama's Relationship with the United States Leading up to the Hull-Alfaro Treaty by Sheila Hamilton B
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Panamanian Politics and Panama’s Relationship with the United States Leading up To the Hull-Alfaro Treaty by Sheila Hamilton BA, University of Victoria, 2009 A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of History Sheila Hamilton, 2014 University of Victoria All rights reserved. This thesis may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without the permission of the author. ii Supervisory Committee Panamanian Politics and Panama’s Relationship with the United States Leading up To the Hull-Alfaro Treaty by Sheila Hamilton BA, University of Victoria, 2009 Supervisory Committee Dr. Jason Colby, Department of History Supervisor Dr. Gregory Blue, Department of History Departmental Member iii Abstract Supervisory Committee Dr. Jason Colby, Department of History Supervisor Dr. Gregory Blue, Department of History Departmental Member This thesis explains the origins of the 1936 Hull-Alfaro Treaty between Panama and the United States. It examines how Panamanian politics and Panama’s relationship with the United States changed over the decades leading up to this new treaty. The Panama Railway and then the Panama Canal placed Panama in a unique position within the growing American Empire as the isthmus linked the United States to the resources it needed to fuel its domestic industry and to markets for its manufactured goods. Recurrent political unrest and economic challenges within Panama forced the Panamanian government to attempt to renegotiate its relationship with the United States. This work analyzes the changes within Panamanian society, United States foreign relations, and world affairs that led to the 1936 treaty succeeding where other treaty negotiations had not. iv Table of Contents Supervisory Committee ...................................................................................................... ii Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... v Dedication .......................................................................................................................... vi Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Panama under Foreign Control: From being part of the Spanish Empire to being a United States protectorate. ..................................................................................... 6 Chapter 2: Early Operation of the Panama Canal and the Firmer Establishment of a Hierarchical Relationship between Panama and the United States .................................. 26 Chapter 3: From the failed Kellogg-Alfaro Treaty of 1926 to the Successful Hull-Alfaro Treaty: A New Era in Panamanian Politics and its Relationship with the United States 46 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 77 Epilogue ............................................................................................................................ 79 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................... 82 Primary Sources ............................................................................................................ 82 Archival Sources ....................................................................................................... 82 Newspapers ............................................................................................................... 82 Printed Primary Sources ........................................................................................... 82 Treaties ...................................................................................................................... 83 Secondary Sources ........................................................................................................ 83 v Acknowledgments I would like to thank Dr. Jason Colby for all of his support and direction throughout this process. This project would not have been possible without his sage advice. I would likewise like to thank Dr. Gregory Blue for his insightful comments and suggestions on this project. Thank you for your guidance to the many experts at the United States National Archives who helped me find the documents that shaped this project. To my parents, I cannot thank you enough for all of your love, support, and encouragement. I accomplished this because of you. Thank you to all of my family who have encouraged me through this process. To my friends in the program, thank you for you for your camaraderie. And finally, thank you to Jeff for believing in me and being there for me. I could not have done this without all of you. vi Dedication I dedicate my thesis to my Grandmama. You fostered my interest in history and politics in ways no one else could have. I will always miss you. Introduction In 1939, the United States Senate ratified the Hull-Alfaro treaty and officially redefined its relationship with the Republic of Panama. The treaty had been decades in the making, and it finally succeeded as a result of the confluence of changes in Panamanian domestic politics and a variety of international events that altered the United States’ way of dealing with Panama specifically and Latin America more generally. It was the result of a century of American interest in the Panamanian isthmus. Ultimately, Panama’s trans-isthmus railway and subsequently the Panama Canal would bring Panama into a relationship with the United States that would be unique in Latin America. The American-owned and operated Canal was an integral part of a new phase in American imperialism that saw Panama gain its independence from Columbia in 1903 only to immediately lose a significant portion of its long-sought sovereignty to the United States. The canal had great value to both countries, but its ownership, its administration, and the right to control the many benefits that it brought to the region were continually contested. This was never truer than during the treaty negotiations between Panama and the United States of the early 1930s. Throughout this period, many of the long brewing issues in Panamanian-American relations came to a head as a result of a rise in Panamanian nationalism and worldwide economic hardship. While the treaty negotiations included discussions of many traditional diplomatic concerns, including Panamanian autonomy and ownership of the canal, sales of liquor and other goods and hiring policies by the Canal Commission, these negotiations also featured racially charged discussions 2 regarding Panama’s desire to control its own immigration policies. Different understandings of race, nationalism and labor rights, as well as international politics, shaped the relationship between the two countries. During the 1920s and 1930s, issues of race evolved as working-class jobs became scarce, and as racial and ethnic groups were pitted against one another in a scramble for employment. Native Panamanians and English-speaking West Indians living and working in the republic were the two groups most visibly involved in this conflict; however, the conflict was hardly limited to a single struggle between two groups. This thesis explores how during the late 1920s and the early 1930s the United States and Panama officials understood the political and conceptual issues differently. It traces how labor and racial unrest, economic challenges, changing American foreign policy, and political instability in Panama resulted in treaty negotiations and ultimately in the Hull-Alfaro Treaty between the United States and Panama which was signed in 1936 and eventually ratified by the United States’ Senate in 1939. To accomplish this, I examined State Department correspondence and the Panama Canal records in the American National Archives in addition to contemporary newspaper articles. Memoirs as well as a wide variety of historical and sociological literature were also drawn upon. The railway and then the Panama Canal played integral roles in the international expansion of the United States as Panama became part of the new American Empire. This thesis examines how international political and economic factors such as new migration patterns, the global economic depression and the threat of World War II helped reshape the complex and changing relationship between Panama and the United States. Panama redefined its national political discourse as a new form of nationalism 3 became prominent, one in which race and ethnicity played a more important role and the elite and working class portions of Panamanian society found ways to work together to lobby for a better domestic government and a new relationship with the United States. Panama had traditionally had its own ideas of who was Panamanian and its own approach to how race was understood within its society. After Panama became a United States protectorate at the beginning of the century, American and broadly Central American conceptions of race and class combined with specifically Panamanian ideas to reshape Panamanian society and politics. This not only changed but solidified