Colombia's borders and the Americanisation of the Western Hemisphere

Darién is now a province in Panama, whose capital city is La Palma, located at the eastern end of the country and bordered to the north by the province of Panamá and the region of Kuna Yala. To the south, it is bordered by the Pacific Ocean and Colombia. To the east, it borders Colombia; to the west, it borders the Pacific Ocean and the province of Panama.

The name originates from the language spoken by the indigenous Cueva, an indigenous people who lived in the Darién region of eastern Panama. They were completely exterminated between 1510 and 1535 by the effects of Spanish colonization. Following the massacre of the Cueva, the island of Isla Chuche (later changed to Isla Pedro Gonzalez and now known as Pearl Island) was populated by African slaves, imported there by the Spaniards to search for pearls. 

It was the name of the Tanela River, which flows toward Atrato, that was Hispanicized to Darién, and it was this name that was then used for the region, now devoid of those who had used the Cueva language.

The area surrounding the border with Colombia is known as the Darién Gap, a large swath of undeveloped swampland and forest. With no roads, it is the missing link of the Pan-American Highway. Long may these lands remain undeveloped and the missing link itself, be seen, perhaps through politics, art and poetry, as a blessing in disguise. 

The Darién region formerly occupied by the Cueva became populated by the Guna after their westward expansion during the 17th and 18th centuries. The Gunas were living in what is now Northern Colombia and the Darién Province of Panama at the time of the Spanish invasion, and only later began to move westward towards what is now Guna Yala due to a conflict with the Spanish and other indigenous groups. Centuries before the conquest, the Gunas arrived in South America as part of a Chibchan migration moving east from Central America. At the time of the Spanish invasion, they were living in the region of Uraba and near the borders of what are now Antioquia and Caldas. Alonso de Ojeda and Vasco Núñez de Balboa explored the coast of Colombia in 1500 and 1501. They spent the most time in the Gulf of Urabá, where they made contact with the Gunas.

A Guna man, fishing in a hand-built dugout canoe.

In far-eastern Guna Yala, the community of New Caledonia is near the site where Scottish explorers tried, unsuccessfully, to establish a colony in the "New World". The bankruptcy of the expedition has been cited as one of the motivations of the 1707 Acts of Union. The article on the Darien Scheme for the Re:LODE section on Methods and Purposes:
. . . to every place there belongs a story, to every story there belongs another . . .

is called:

The Darien Scheme - A New Caledonia?

The border between modern Panama and Colombia lies to the west of this swampland and forests, and in terms of land-based communication forms a "natural" border between the two countries. 

After it achieved independence from Spain on November 28, 1821, Panama became a part of the Republic of Gran Colombia which consisted of today's Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, and most of Ecuador.

The political struggle between federalists and centralists that followed independence from Spain resulted in a changing administrative and jurisdictional status for Panama. Under centralism Panama was established as the Department of the Isthmus and during federalism as the Sovereign State of Panama.  

The history of the border in Darién

United States foreign policy in the region had been shaped by the Monroe Doctrine. This Doctrine was a United States policy of opposing European colonialism in the Americas beginning in 1823. It stated that further efforts by European nations to take control of any independent state in North or South America would be viewed as "the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States." At the same time, the doctrine noted that the U.S. would recognize and not interfere with existing European colonies nor meddle in the internal concerns of European countries. The Doctrine was issued on December 2, 1823 at a time when nearly all Latin American colonies of Spain and Portugal had achieved, or were at the point of gaining, independence from the Portuguese and Spanish Empires. 

The reaction in Latin America to the Monroe Doctrine was generally favorable but on some occasions suspicious. John A. Crow, author of The Epic of Latin America, states:

"Simón Bolívar himself, still in the midst of his last campaign against the Spaniards, Santander in Colombia, Rivadavia in Argentina, Victoria in Mexico - leaders of the emancipation movement everywhere - received Monroe's words with sincerest gratitude".

Crow, John A. (1992). "Ariel and Caliban". The Epic of Latin America (4th ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 676.

Maya Jasanoff's book The Dawn Watch, Joseph Conrad in a Global World. Conrad, a pioneer of understanding the forces that shape the modern world

See also > Where Do We Come From - What Are We - Where Are We Going

Conrad wouldn't have known the word "globalization", but with his journey from the provinces of imperial Russia across the high seas to the British home counties, he embodied it. He channeled his global perspective into fiction based overwhelmingly on personal experience and real incidents. Henry James perfectly described Conrad's gift: "No-one has known - for intellectual use - the things you know, and you have, as the artist of the whole matter, an authority that no one has approached." That's why a map of Conrad's written world looks so different from that of his contemporaries. Conrad has often been compared to Rudyard Kipling, the informal poet laureate of the British Empire, whose fiction took place in the parts of the world that were colored red on maps, to show British rule. But Conrad didn't set a single novel in a British colony, and even the fiction he placed in Britain or on British ships generally featured non-British characters. Conrad cast his net across Europe, Africa, South America and the Indian Ocean. Then he wandered through the holes. He took his readers to the places "beyond the end of telegraph cables and mail-boat lines," onto the sailing ships that crept alongside the swift steamers, and among the "human outcasts such as one finds in the lost corners of the world."

Page 7, The Dawn Watch by Maya Jasanoff

In 1903 Joseph Conrad was working on the novel Nostromo.

Jasanoff begins in the fourth section of the book: Empire, in Chapter Eleven: Material Interests:  

The novel had grown bigger and more involved than any of his previous meditations on nationalism, imperialism, and capitalism. It had outgrown Conrad's personal travels and observations, something he'd recognized when he chose to write about South America in the first place. By introducing the United States as a player, it had outgrown all the reading he had done on Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Venezuela . . .

Conrad certainly hadn't intended such complexity at the outset.

But for better or worse, events unfolding in Latin America that year offered Conrad a real-time, real-world example of precisely the type of story he was now trying to tell. It was a tale of U.S. intervention on behalf of a valuable asset: long-dreamed- of project to build a canal in Panama.

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Potosi

At the heart of Conrad's Nostromo there is the San Tomé Silver Mine. It was South American silver that became global currency, and it was the mine at Potosi in Bolivia (a country named after the great South American "Liberator" Simon Bolivar) that, for centuries. was the location of the Spanish colonial mint.

"Gold, not silver, kicked the whole thing off." she writes, referring to the California Gold rush of 1849, when prospectors had the option of choosing a long overland trek, or a long sea voyage around South America, or the "package put together by the transport magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt - a steamer to Nicaragua, then overland across the isthmus to join a steamer to take them to San Francisco in a matter of days." Soon Vanderbilt and other entrepreneurs plotted a permanent shipping canal across Central America, consummating the relationship of Atlantic and Pacific.

The narrowest point of the isthmus is where in 1881 a French consortium had already begun work on digging a canal in the Colombian province of Panama. The engineering and difficulties involved, and thousands of labourers dying of tropical disease, resulted in the French Panama Canal Company going bust in 1888, "taking the fortunes of millions of French citizens with it."

The historical circumstances that led to this province becoming part of Colombia are complicated, especially as communication across the Darién Gap, was always going to be problematic. Colombia, or Gran Colombia, included the territories of present-day Colombia, Ecuador, Panama and Venezuela, and parts of northern Peru, western Guyana and northwestern Brazil. The term Gran Colombia is used historiographically to distinguish it from the current Republic of Colombia, which is also the official name of the former state, an area more or less equivalent to the original jurisdiction of the former Viceroyalty of New Granada. 

The historical paths to self-determination and independence from Spain for the countries that emerge from the territory of New Granada begin with the Napoleonic wars centred in Europe. These wars had their impact upon the far flung colonies of the European powers across the globe. 

However, it is also important to recognise how various independence movements in South America can be traced back to slave revolts in plantations in the northernmost part of the continent and Caribbean. In 1791, a massive slave revolt sparked a general insurrection against the plantation system and French colonial power. These events were followed by a violent uprising led by José Leonardo Chirino and José Caridad González that sprung up in 1795 Venezuela, allegedly inspired by the revolution in Haiti.

In the case of Spain and its colonies, in May 1808, Napoleon captured Carlos IV and King Fernando VII and installed his own brother, Joseph Bonaparte on the Spanish Throne because he didn't want anyone outside of his own bloodline to rule Spain. This event disrupted the political stability of Spain and broke the link with some of the colonies which were loyal to the Bourbon Dynasty. 

The local elites, the creoles, took matters into their own hands organizing themselves into juntas to take "in absence of the king, Fernando VII, their sovereignty devolved temporarily back to the community." The juntas swore loyalty to the captive Fernando VII and each ruled different and diverse parts of the colony. Most of Fernando's subjects were loyal to him in 1808, but after he was restored to the Spanish crown in 1814, his policy of restoring absolute power alienated both the juntas and his subjects.

Except for royalist areas in the northeast and south, the provinces of New Granada had maintained independence from Spain since 1810, unlike neighboring Venezuela, where royalists and pro-independence forces had exchanged control of the region several times. To pacify Venezuela and to retake New Granada, Spain organized in 1815 the largest armed force it ever sent to the New World, consisting of 10,500 troops and nearly sixty ships.

As a result of the internal conflicts in New Granada, Simón Bolívar, who had been acting under the authority of the United Provinces, left his command on May 8, 1815, after failing to subdue Cartagena in March in retaliation for its refusal to give him arms and men. Bolívar traveled to Jamaica and later Haiti, a small republic that had freed itself from French rule, where he and other independence leaders were given a friendly reception. Eventually, the growing exile community received money, volunteers and weapons from Haitian president Alexandre Pétion, and resumed the struggle for independence in the remote border areas of both New Granada and Venezuela, where they established irregular guerrilla bands with the locals. This formed the basis from which the struggle to establish republics successfully spread towards the other areas of South America under Spanish control.

After several failed campaigns to take Caracas and other urban centers of Venezuela, Simón Bolívar devised a plan in 1819 to cross the Andes and liberate New Granada from the royalists. Bolívar personally undertook the efforts to create an army to invade a neighboring country, collaborated with pro-independence exiles from that region, and lacked the approval of the Venezuelan congress. Bolívar did not have a professionally trained army, but rather a quickly assembled mix of Llanero guerrillas, New Granadan exiles led by Santander and British recruits. 

From June to July 1819, using the rainy season as cover, Bolívar led his army across the flooded plains and over the cold, forbidding passes of the Andes, with heavy losses—a quarter of the British Legion perished, as well as many of his Llanero soldiers, who were not prepared for the nearly 4,000-meter altitudes—but the gamble paid off. 

By August Bolívar was in control of Bogotá and its treasury, and gained the support of many in New Granada, which still resented the harsh reconquest carried out under Morillo. Nevertheless, Santander found it necessary to continue the policy of the "war to the death" and carried out the execution of thirty-eight royalist officers who had surrendered. With the resources of New Granada, Bolívar became the undisputed leader of the patriots in Venezuela and orchestrated the union of the two regions in a new state called Colombia (Gran Colombia).

The campaign for the independence of New Granada was consolidated with the victory at the Battle of Boyacá on 7 August 1819. Later he established an organized national congress within three years. Despite a number of hindrances, including the arrival of an unprecedentedly large Spanish expeditionary force, the revolutionaries eventually prevailed, culminating in the patriot victory at the Battle of Carabobo in 1821, which effectively made Venezuela an independent country.  

Following this triumph over the Spanish monarchy, Bolívar participated in the foundation of the first union of independent nations in Latin America, Gran Colombia, of which he was president from 1819 to 1830. 

For Bolívar, Hispanic America was the fatherland. He dreamed of a united Spanish America and in the pursuit of that purpose he not only created Gran Colombia but also the Confederation of the Andes whose aim was to unite the aforementioned with Peru and Bolivia. Moreover, he promoted a network of treaties keeping the newly liberated South American countries together. Nonetheless, he was unable to control the centrifugal process which pushed outwards all directions. 

Bolívar aimed at a strong and united Spanish America able to cope not only with the threats emanating from Spain and the European Holy Alliance but also with the emerging power of the United States. While Bolivar and other  appreciated and praised their support in the north, the United States, they knew that the future of their independence was in the hands of the British and their powerful navy. In 1826, Bolivar called upon his Congress of Panama to host the first "Pan-American" meeting. The Congress of Panama (often referred to as the Amphictyonic Congress, in homage to the Amphictyonic League of Ancient Greece, "a league of nieighbours") was a congress organized by Simón Bolívar in 1826 with the goal of bringing together the new republics of Latin America to develop a unified policy towards Spain. Held in Panama City from 22 June to 15 July of that year, the meeting proposed creating a league of American republics, with a common military, a mutual defense pact, and a supranational parliamentary assembly. 

In the eyes of Bolivar and his men, the Monroe Doctrine was to become nothing more than a tool of national policy. According to Crow, "It was not meant to be, and was never intended to be a charter for concerted hemispheric action". 

Some questioned the intentions behind the Monroe Doctrine. Diego Portales, a Chilean businessman and minister, wrote to a friend: 

"But we have to be very careful: for the Americans of the north [from the United States], the only Americans are themselves".

Bolívar ultimately failed in his attempt to prevent the collapse of the union, and Gran Colombia itself was dissolved in 1830 and was replaced by the republics of Venezuela, New Granada, and Ecuador. Ironically, these countries were established as centralist nations, and would be governed for decades this way by leaders who, during Bolívar's last years, had accused him of betraying republican principles and of wanting to establish a permanent dictatorship. 

The Republic of New Granada was a centralist republic consisting primarily of present-day Colombia and Panama with smaller portions of today's Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru, and Brazil. It was created after the dissolution in 1830 of Gran Colombia, and was formed by the departments of Boyaca, Cauca, Cundinamarca, Magdalena, and Istmo. 

Istmo (meaning Isthmus) was bordered in the west by Costa Rica, that had been part of the The Federal Republic of Central America. It was a sovereign state in Central America consisting of the territories of the former Captaincy General of Guatemala of New Spain. It existed from 1823 to 1841, and was a republican democracy.

The republic consisted of the present-day Central American countries of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. In the 1830s, a sixth state was added – Los Altos, with its capital in Quetzaltenango – occupying parts of what are now the western highlands of Guatemala and Chiapas state in southern Mexico.

Shortly after Central America declared independence from the Spanish Empire in 1821, some of its countries were annexed by the First Mexican Empire in 1822 and then Central America formed the Federal Republic in 1823. From 1838 to 1840, the federation descended into civil war, with conservatives (centrists) fighting against liberals (federalists) and separatists fighting to secede. These factions were unable to overcome their ideological differences and the federation was dissolved after a series of bloody conflicts. The union effectively ended in 1840, by which time four of its five states had declared independence. The official end came only upon El Salvador's self-proclamation of the establishment of an independent republic in February 1841.

In 1842, U.S. President John Tyler applied the Monroe Doctrine to Hawaii and warned Britain not to interfere there. This began the process of annexing Hawaii to the U.S. and establishing an hemispheric zone of of United States hegemony. On December 2, 1845, U.S. President James Polk announced that the principle of the Monroe Doctrine should be strictly enforced, reinterpreting it to argue that no European nation should interfere with the American western expansion. This announcement foregrounds the developing exceptionalist notion of the United States.

"Manifest Destiny". 

This painting represents "Manifest Destiny", the belief that the United States should expand from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. In 1872 artist John Gast painted a popular scene of people moving west that captured the view of Americans at the time. Called "Spirit of the Frontier" and widely distributed as an engraving portrayed settlers moving west, guided and protected by Columbia (who represents America and is dressed in a Roman toga to represent classical republicanism) and aided by technology (railways, telegraph), driving Native Americans and bison into obscurity. It is also important to note that Columbia is bringing the "light" as witnessed on the eastern side of the painting as she travels towards the "darkened" west.

See > The Enlightenment is NOT a sleepover!

The first use of the phrase, or couplet, "manifest destiny" appears in the journalism of John L. O'Sullivan when in 1845, O'Sullivan wrote an essay titled Annexation in the Democratic Review. In this article he urged the U.S. to annex the Republic of Texas, not only because Texas desired this, but because it was "our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions". Overcoming Whig opposition, Democrats annexed Texas in 1845. However, O'Sullivan's first usage of the phrase "manifest destiny" attracted little attention until O'Sullivan's second use of the phrase when it subsequently became extremely influential. 

On December 27, 1845, in his newspaper the New York Morning News, O'Sullivan addressed the ongoing boundary dispute with Britain. O'Sullivan argued that the United States had the right to claim "the whole of Oregon":

And that claim is by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.

That is, O'Sullivan believed that Providence had given the United States a mission to spread republican democracy ("the great experiment of liberty"). Because Britain would not spread democracy, thought O'Sullivan, British claims to the territory should be overruled. O'Sullivan believed that manifest destiny was a moral ideal (a "higher law") that superseded other considerations. 

Ironically, O'Sullivan's term became popular only after it was criticized by Whig opponents of the Polk administration. Whigs denounced manifest destiny, arguing: 

"that the designers and supporters of schemes of conquest, to be carried on by this government, are engaged in treason to our Constitution and Declaration of Rights, giving aid and comfort to the enemies of republicanism, in that they are advocating and preaching the doctrine of the right of conquest". 

On January 3, 1846, Representative Robert Winthrop ridiculed the concept in Congress, saying:

"I suppose the right of a manifest destiny to spread will not be admitted to exist in any nation except the universal Yankee nation". 

Winthrop was the first in a long line of critics who suggested that advocates of manifest destiny were citing "Divine Providence" for justification of actions that were motivated by chauvinism and self-interest. Despite this criticism, expansionists embraced the phrase, which caught on so quickly that its origin was soon forgotten.  

In the 1870s, President Ulysses S. Grant and his Secretary of State Hamilton Fish endeavored to supplant European influence in Latin America with that of the U.S. In 1870, the Monroe Doctrine was expanded under the proclamation "hereafter no territory on this continent [referring to Central and South America] shall be regarded as subject to transfer to a European power.": Grant invoked the Monroe Doctrine in his failed attempt to annex the Dominican Republic in 1870. 

The Venezuela Crisis of 1895 became "one of the most momentous episodes in the history of Anglo-American relations in general and of Anglo-American rivalries in Latin America in particular." Venezuela sought to involve the U.S. in a territorial dispute with Britain over Guayana Esequiba, and hired former US ambassador William L. Scruggs to argue that British behaviour over the issue violated the Monroe Doctrine. President Grover Cleveland through his Secretary of State, Richard Olney, cited the Doctrine in 1895, threatening strong action against Great Britain if the British failed to arbitrate their dispute with Venezuela. In a July 20, 1895 note to Britain, Olney stated, "The United States is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition." British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury took strong exception to the American language. The U.S. objected to a British proposal for a joint meeting to clarify the scope of the Monroe Doctrine. 

President Cleveland twisting the tail of the British Lion; cartoon in Puck by J.S. Pughe, 1895. 

Historian George Herring wrote that by failing to pursue the issue further the British "tacitly conceded the U.S. definition of the Monroe Doctrine and its hegemony in the hemisphere." Otto von Bismarck, did not agree and in October 1897 called the Doctrine an "uncommon insolence". Sitting in Paris, the Tribunal of Arbitration finalized its decision on October 3, 1899. The award was unanimous, but gave no reasons for the decision, merely describing the resulting boundary, which gave Britain almost 90% of the disputed territory and all of the gold mines.

The reaction to the award was surprise, with the award's lack of reasoning a particular concern. The Venezuelans were keenly disappointed with the outcome, though they honored their counsel for their efforts (their delegation's Secretary, Severo Mallet-Prevost, received the Order of the Liberator in 1944), and abided by the award.

The Anglo-Venezuelan boundary dispute asserted for the first time a more outward-looking American foreign policy, particularly in the Americas, marking the U.S. as a world power. This was the earliest example of modern interventionism under the Monroe Doctrine in which the USA exercised its claimed prerogatives in the Americas.

The "Big Brother" policy was an extension of the Monroe Doctrine formulated by James G. Blaine in the 1880s that aimed to rally Latin American nations behind US leadership and open their markets to US traders. As a part of the policy, Blaine arranged and led the First International Conference of American States in 1889. 

The "Olney Corollary", also known as the Olney interpretation or Olney declaration was United States Secretary of State Richard Olney's interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine when a border dispute for Guayana Esequiba occurred between Britain and Venezuela governments in 1895. Olney claimed that the Monroe Doctrine gave the U.S. authority to mediate border disputes in the Western Hemisphere. Olney extended the meaning of the Monroe Doctrine, which had previously stated merely that the Western Hemisphere was closed to additional European colonisation. 

The statement reinforced the original purpose of the Monroe Doctrine, that the U.S. had the right to intervene in its own hemisphere and foreshadowed the events of the Spanish–American War three years later.
 
In 1898, the U.S. intervened in support of Cuba during its war for independence from Spain. The U.S. won what is known in the U.S. as the Spanish–American War and in Cuba as the Cuban War for Independence. 

Under the terms of the peace treaty from which Cuba was excluded, Spain ceded Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam to the U.S. in exchange for $20 million. 

Cuba came under U.S. control and remained so until it was granted formal independence in 1902.

Returning to the Dawn Watch, Jasanoff picks up on the events that would contribute to the developing backstory for the fictitious South American country that Joseph Conrad would create in order to tell his story of modern imperial capitalism in Nostromo, a country he calls Costaguana, a country that, geographically, has coastlines on both the Pacific and the Caribbean seas. It is Colombia!

This was a situation of political and national geography, from the global and hemispheric, down to the local, the isthmus in Darién.  

At the turn of the twentieth century in Central America, the department of Istmo in the Republic of New Granada was to soon be in the news.

At the turn of the twentieth century Colombia would need to contend with the fact that the Monroe doctrine had evolved from the "America for the Americans" to a new species of American! It was the case that the Americans of the United States were for Americans, that is as long as they were Americans of the United States.  Meanwhile, as Jasanoff points out, the balance of power in the region had realigned:

Colombia dissolved into a bitter civil war. The succession to the U.S. presidency in 1901 of a new man with ambitious plans, Theodore Roosevelt, put a canal in Central America at the top of America's foreign policy wish list. Britain, already stretched beyond expectation in South Africa and worried about rising Germany, agreed to repeal the earlier treaty and concede ascendancy in Central America to the United States.

p. 266  The Dawn Watch by Maya Jasanoff

This earlier treaty, referred to above, reflected the anxiety that neither Britain or the United States would have "exclusive control" of any future canal "nor use undue influence to try to obtain it."

Jasanoff contextualises the "complexity" of the Nostromo narrative against the timeline of the United States foreign policy and behaviours, essential to realising the "American" interest.

In January 1903, just as Conrad started writing Nostromo, the U.S. and Colombian secretaries of state signed a treaty granting the United States a one-hundred-year renewable lease on a six-mile strip flanking the canal. Colombia would get a $10 million lump sum plus a $250,000 annuity in return. "The United States disavows any intention of impairing the sovereignty of Colombia." the treaty insisted, "or of increasing her territory at the expense of Colombia." The Times in London congratulated "our kinsmen of the great English-speaking Republic . . . on this decisive step towards the realization of a project they have long had very earnestly to heart."

In the spring of 1903, as Conrad sketched out the backstory for Costaguana, President Roosevelt set off on a national lecture tour promoting a version of the Monroe Doctrine updated for the twentieth century. "We have no choice as to whether or not we shall play a great part in the world," Roosevelt told his audiences. "There is a holmly old adage which runs, 'Speak softly, but carry a big stick, and you will go far,'" he continued. "If the American nation will speak softly, and yet build and keep at a pitch of the highest training a thoroughly efficient navy, the Monroe doctrine will go far." This interventionist stance came to be called the "Roosevelt Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine. In essence it was the same as Holroyd's assertion in Nostromo: 

"We shall run the world's business whether the world likes it or not."

pp 266-7 The Dawn Watch by Maya Jasanoff

Before becoming president, Theodore Roosevelt had proclaimed the rationale of the Monroe Doctrine in supporting intervention in the Spanish colony of Cuba in 1898. The Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903 showed the world that the US was willing to use its naval strength to force an American viewpoint in world politics.

In Argentine foreign policy, the Drago Doctrine was announced on December 29, 1902 by the Foreign Minister of Argentina, Luis María Drago. This was a response to the actions of Britain, Germany, and Italy during the Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903, in which they had blockaded and shelled Venezuela's ports in an attempt to collect money owed as part of its national debt, accrued under regimes preceding that of president Cipriano Castro. Drago set forth the policy that no European power could use force against an American nation to collect debt. President Theodore Roosevelt rejected this policy as an extension of the Monroe Doctrine, declaring, "We do not guarantee any state against punishment if it misconducts itself".

Instead, Roosevelt added the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine in 1904, asserting the right of the U.S. to intervene in Latin America in cases of "flagrant and chronic wrongdoing by a Latin American Nation" to preempt intervention by European creditors. This re-interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine went on to be a useful tool to take economic benefits by force when Latin nations failed to pay their debts to European and US banks and business interests. 

In Colombia, following the so-called Thousand Days' War (1899–1902), one of the many armed struggles between the Liberal and Conservative Parties which have devastated Colombia, including Panama, and the signing of the Treaty of Wisconsin to end this new civil war, the Liberal leader Victoriano Lorenzo refused to accept the terms of the agreement and was executed on May 15, 1903.

On July 25, 1903, the headquarters of the Panamanian newspaper El Lápiz were assaulted by orders of the military commander for Panama, General José Vásquez Cobo, brother of the then Colombian Minister of War, as a retaliation for the publication of a detailed article narrating the execution and protests in Panama. This event damaged the trust of Panamanian liberals in the Conservative government based in Bogotá, and they later joined the separatist movement.
 
The United States and Colombia, having signed the Hay–Herrán Treaty to finalize the construction of the Panama Canal found that the process could not be completed because on August 12, 1903 a majority in the Congress of Colombia rejected the terms of the treaty as unacceptable. And who could blame them? As Jasanoff says:

However eager or wary European imperial powers felt about American interventionism, the Roosevelt Corollary didn't look so great to those on the receiving end. in the summer of 1903, as Conrad expanded the story of the mine and its American investor, the Colombian Senate voted to reject the canal treaty, which had been negotiated under duress during Colombia's civil war, by a government no longer in power. The senators considered the treaty downright unconstitutional - no government had the right to give away territory like that - to say nothing of too cheap. "Panama is bone of the bone and blood of the blood of Colombia, . . . the patrimony of all future generations of Colombians," declared the treaty's opponents. "It seems more patriotic to feel that no compensation at all would be preferable " than "to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs." The deal was off. No canal in Panama, at least not according to Bogota.

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1903 cartoon: "Go Away, Little Man, and Don't Bother Me". President Roosevelt intimidating Colombia to acquire the Panama Canal Zone.

The United States then moved to support the separatist movement in Panama to gain control over the remnants of the French attempt at building a canal. Jasanoff continues:

In September 1903 rumors reached the pages of The Times that, "disgusted with the attitude of the Colombian Congress in the matter of the Canal Treaty, the people of the isthmus are likely to start an insurrection in the hope of forming a separate State of Panama." If Panama could break free and become an independent country, then it could strike a fresh deal with the United States, granting the Americans rights to the canal zone and letting the Panamanians pocket the payout for themselves - a win-win. Pundits in Washington foresaw Panama's "secession from Colombia" as "inevitable sooner or later."

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Update 2019 . . .

Q. History repeating fiction as farce?

A. No. History repeating itself as tragedy! 

Double-take? A government supporter holds up a framed image of President Nicolas Maduro during an anti-imperialist rally in Caracas, Venezuela.

Jasanoff continues: 

In Conrad's parallel world, Costaguana, things were proceeding in the direction of dissent, opposition to dictatorship, reaction and revolution. Montero, a pantomime villain, and his brother lead a successful coup in Costaguana's capital "with secret promises of support given by 'our sister Republic of the North' against the sinister land-grabbing designs of European powers."

"They set their sights next on Sulaco and the San Tomé treasure."

Meanwhile in Panama, a conspiracy was fully under way. It was hatched over lunch one summer Sunday by a group of Panama City businessmen and civic leaders, under the auspices of the U.S. consul general. "Plans for the revolution were freely discussed," the consul said. The secessionists dispatched a representative to New York to secure money, weapons, and the backing of the U.S. federal government. they were right to expect it. President Roosevelt had already told his secretary of state "that the Bogota lot of jack rabbits should [not] be allowed permanently to bar one of the future highways of civilization." What they didn't expect was that one of the conspirators would turn around and reveal the plot to the Colombian ambassador. Thus both the U.S. and Colombian governments knew a revolution in Panama was in the works.

Back in Costaguana, Conrad plotted a revolution in the fictional Sulaco that mirrored the real-life secessionist movement brewing in Panama . . .

p. 268  The Dawn Watch by Maya Jasanoff 

The separatist movement set November 1903 as the time for the separation. However, rumors in Colombia spread but the information managed by the government of Colombia indicated that Nicaragua was planning to invade a region of northern Panama known as the Calovébora. The Government deployed troops from the Tiradores Battalion from Barranquilla, and instructed the commander to take over the functions of the Governor of Panama José Domingo de Obaldía and General Esteban Huertas, whom the government did not trust.

The Tiradores Battalion was led by Generals Juan Tovar and Ramón Amaya and arrived in the Panamanian city of Colón the morning of November 3, 1903. It suffered delays on its way to Panama City caused by the complicity of the Panama Railway authorities who sympathized with the separatist movement. On arrival in Panama City, the troops were put under the command of Col. Eliseo Torres. General Huertas commander of the Colombia Battalion in Panama ordered the arrest of Tovar and his other officials.

Conrad had scarcely finished sketching these episodes in Nostromo when the real-life plot in Panama kicked into action. As Panama City awoke from its siesta on the afternoon of November 3, 1903, a brigade of secessionist national guardsmen turned their rifles on a party of Colombian generals and marched them off to prison. A crowd gathered in the plaza shouting, "Viva el Istmo Libre!" A colombian battleship lobbed a few shells at the city to try to restore order, but got chased away by a barrage of return fire. Meanwhile, a U.S. warship had arrived at Colón, on the Caribbean coast, and soon a veritable American fleet had assembled offshore with instructions to prevent any Colombian troops from landing. 

p. 270 The Dawn Watch by Maya Jasanoff 

The Colombian gunboat Bogotá fired shells upon Panama City the night of November 3, causing injuries and mortally wounding Mr. Wong Kong Yee of Hong Sang, China. The ship had originally been owned by the Maharajah of Cutch (India), who had been using it as a yacht. 

A United States Navy gunboat, USS Nashville, commanded by Commander John Hubbard, who had also helped to delay the disembarkation of the Colombian troops in Colón, continued to interfere with their mission by insisting that the "neutrality" of the railway had to be respected.

On November 6, 1903, the new government of the new state of Panama sent a telegram to Washington declaring its independence. The United States recognized Panama by return cable. "Today we are free," proclaimed Panama's president beneath the nation's first, home stitched flag. "President Roosevelt has made good. . . . Long live President Roosevelt!"

p. 270  The Dawn Watch by Maya Jasanoff 

On November 13, 1903, the United States formally recognized the Republic of Panama (after recognizing it unofficially on November 6 and 7). On November 18, 1903, the United States Secretary of State John Hay and Philippe-Jean Bunau-Varilla signed the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty. No Panamanians signed the treaty, although Bunau-Varilla was present as the diplomatic representative of Panama (a role he had purchased through financial assistance to the rebels), even though he had not lived in Panama for seventeen years prior to independence, and never returned afterwards. The treaty was later approved by the Panamanian government and the Senate of the United States.

What was to become of the country's greatest asset? Twelve days later, a Panamanian emissary signed an agreement for the canal with the U.S. secretary of state. On terms still more generous to the United States than the ones offered by Colombia, the new nation of Panama granted the United States "in perpetuity the use, occupation and control" of a ten mile zone flanking the canal (rather than the earlier six), along with a host of associated privileges. President Roosevelt celebrated the deal in his year-end message to Congress. With fifty-three "disturbances" in Panama in fifty-seven years, he said, "Colombia was incapable of keeping order." "The people of Panama rose literally as one man" against their distant rulers, and "the duty of the United States in the premises was clear." By helping the secessionists the United States advanced the "honor" "commerce and traffic" of "our own people . . . , the people of the Isthmus of Panama and the people of the civilized countries of the world."

pp. 270-1  The Dawn Watch by Maya Jasanoff

The ambassador of Colombia in Ecuador Emiliano Isaza was informed of the situation in Panama but did not inform his government to prevent a revolt in Bogotá. The government of Colombia then sent a diplomatic mission to Panama in an effort to make them reconsider by suggesting an approval by the senate of Colombia if they reconsidered the Hay–Herrán Treaty instead of the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty.

The mission met aboard the ship USS Mayflower with the Panamanian delegation formed by Constantino Arosemena, Tomás Arias and Eusebio A. Morales, which rejected all proposals. Colombia then sent later a delegation of prominent politicians and political figures who met with the same representative for Panama  without reaching any consensus.  

The Times of London saluted the Roosevelt's administration's "firm, luminous, and convincing" stand. "Whatever may have been the action of individual American partisans of the Panama Canal in fomenting the rebellion," the editors averred, "there is no reason whatever to suppose that President Roosevelt's Government took the least part in working for the overthrow of Colombian rule upon the Isthmus." But the Manchester Guardian was more suspicious, and accused the United States of having torn off by force what it had failed to acquire by legitimate diplomacy. 

 p. 271 The Dawn Watch by Maya Jasanoff 

From the Guardian archive

Editorial

The news that has come from the Isthmus of Panama since the insurrection in the town was announced suggests that the movement was inspired by United States agents. The Government at Washington may be assumed to have kept itself unpledged and its responsibility nominally unengaged, but it has interfered between the insurgents and the Colombian Government decisively, and the insurgents must almost certainly have known that it would…What the facts really amount to is that the United States Government, coveting the Canal territory and unable to control it by treaty, has torn it off from Colombia by force.

As Jasanoff concludes: 

What outsiders had surmised about American complicity in the revolution, insiders could prove. One such insider was a Colombian intellectual and diplomat named Santiago Pérez Triana. 

 p. 271 The Dawn Watch by Maya Jasanoff

The son of radical Colombian president Santiago Pérez Manosalbas, Pérez Triana was forced into exile after a scandal involving his business ventures, fleeing over the Andes and down three rivers to the Atlantic and a new life in the United States, London, and Madrid. His marriage to the daughter of a millionaire associate of John D. Rockefeller freed him from financial worries and permitted him to focus on journalistic endeavors, including the founding of the influential journal Hispania. Pérez Triana seized on the movement for hemispheric unity with his support for the anti-interventionist Drago Doctrine at the 1907 Hague Convention and his spellbinding orations at the Pan-American Financial Conference in 1915. Before his death, he became a forceful advocate for the Allied cause in the First World War, cementing his status as one of Latin America's most powerful voices on the world stage. 

See Santiago Pérez Triana (1858-1916): Colombian Man of Letters and Crusader for Hemispheric Unity by Jane M Rausch

When contacts in Bogotá told [Pérez Triana] about the American Shenanigans in Panama, Pérez Triana shared what he knew with British liberals - including his friend R. B. Cunninghame Graham. When Cunninghame Graham introduced Pérez Triana to others, including Joseph Conrad, that's how the cynical truth of the Panama story came to Conrad's attention just as he was sketching out the final section of Nostromo. 

Reading Pérez Triana's travelogueof his escape from Bogotá, Down the Orinoco in a Canoe (published in english with a preface by Graham in 1903), Conrad might have been struck by the way Pérez Triana led his his reader into Colombia as if on the trail of the conquistadores - the same way Marlow had imagined the Romans arriving in England in Heart of Darkness. "The land of Bogotá was really the land of El Dorado," Conrad read. It lured foreign prospectors deeper and deeper on a "bootless quest" for rumored treasure. With a spot of literary alchemy Conrad could turn gold into silver, Colombia into Costaguana.

From Pérez Triana, Conrad would have heard both the facts leading to the secession of Panama and a compelling interpretation of them. Pérez Triana had little tolerance for the instability of his home country - but the alternative, an influx of Americans as "wolves in sheeps clothing under cover of the Monroe doctine," appeared far worse. "As a rule," Pérez Triana believed, "the citizens of the United States in their dealings . . . with Latin Americans are either patronising or overbearing." When Americans said "that America should be for the Americans, they mean America for the citizens of the United States."

pp. 271-2  The Dawn Watch by Maya Jasanoff         

So, now the border between Colombia and Panama runs through Darién!

The Monroe Doctrine Centennial half dollar

 

 

The naming of Abya Yala by The World Council of Indigenous Peoples 

Naming the continent of America after a European coloniser has been seen by some civil society groups as problematic. In 1977, the World Council of Indigenous Peoples (Consejo Mundial de Pueblos Indígenas) proposed using the term Abya Yala instead of "America" when referring to the continent.

Abya Yala, which in the Guna language means "land in its full maturity" or "land of vital blood", is the name used by the Native American nation Guna people, neighbouring part of what is called the Darién Gap (today North West Colombia and South East Panama) to refer to their section of the American continent since before the Columbus arrival, and the creation, by European colonists, of borders and boundaries that divide their lands.  

By the Colombian Act of June 4, 1870 Tulenega Shire was created, which also included the present territory of the Guna Yala district; this comprises some of the communities of the District of Wargandí such as Mordi, and Sogubdi Asnadi; the communities of the region of Madungandi including Tiuarsicuá, and Guna communities of Colombia, such as Tanela and Arquía. The land area of the Tulenega Shire stretched from the province of Colon to the Gulf of Urabá, Colombia. The head of regional government was generally a commissioner appointed by the central government. The law also recognized the Guna as property owners of the Shire.

After separation of Panama in 1903, the Act of 1870 was ignored. The territory of the former region was divided de facto into two parts: the majority remained in the new Republic of Panama, while a small portion remained in Colombia.

The suspension of the designated region, the incursions of outsiders into Guna villages in search of gold, rubber, and sea turtles, banana concessions, and colonial police abuse caused great discontent among the natives and brought the February 25, 1925 Guna Revolution, led by Nele Kantule of the town of Ustupu and Ologintipipilele (Simral Colman) of Ailigandi. 

The armed Guna attacked the police on the islands and Ugupseni Tupile, as the police were accused of abuses and suppressing Guna customs in several communities. The Guna proclaimed the independent Republic of Tule, separating from the central government of Panama for a few days.

The subsequent peace treaty established the commitment of the Government of Panama to protecting the customs of the Guna. The Guna, in turn, accepted the development of a formal school system in the islands. The police brigade would be expelled from their territory and all prisoners released. The negotiations that ended the armed conflict constituted a first step towards establishing the autonomous status of the Guna and maintaining the culture that was being suppressed.

Based on Article 5 of the Constitution of 1904, which allows for special political divisions for reasons of administrative convenience or public service, legislation on indigenous territories in Panama established the Guna District of San Blas in 1938 including areas of the provinces of Panamá and Colón. Its boundaries and administration were finalized by Act No. 16 of 1953.

Currently, according to the ruling of the Supreme Court of 23 March 2001, the region has a different political and administrative organization, independent of the Districts and Villages. The counties are governed by special institutions themselves, and by resolution of Division of the Supreme Court, on 6 December 2000, an institution is the consent of indigenous peoples who wish to develop projects in their territories.
 
In the Guna language, they call themselves Dule or Tule, meaning "people", and the name of the language in Cuna is Dulegaya, literally "people-mouth". 

In Guna Yala, each community has its own political organization, led by a saila (pronounced "sigh-lah"). The saila is customarily both the political and religious leader of the community; he memorizes songs which relate the sacred history of the people, and in turn transmits them to the people. Decisions are made in meetings held in the Onmaked Nega, or Ibeorgun Nega (Congress House or Casa de Congreso), a structure which likewise serves both political and spiritual purposes. In the Onmaked Nega, the saila sings the history, legends, and laws of the Guna, as well as administering the day-to-day political and social affairs. The saila is usually accompanied by one or more voceros who function as interpreters and counselors for the saila. Because the songs and oral history of the Guna are in a higher linguistic register with specialized vocabulary, the saila's recitation will frequently be followed by an explanation and interpretation from one of the voceros in informal Guna language.
 
Guna families are matrilinear and matrilocal, with the groom moving to become part of the bride's family. The groom also takes the last name of the bride.

Today there are 49 communities in Guna Yala. The region as a whole is governed by the Cuna General Congress, which is led by three Saila Dummagan ("Great Sailas").

The Guna have been staunchly resistant to Hispanic assimilation, largely retaining their dress and language in migrant communities throughout Panama.

The World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP) is an international non-governmental organization, founded in 1975 to promote the rights and preserve the cultures of the indigenous peoples of the Americas , the South Pacific and Scandinavia. Its headquarters are located in Ottawa, Canada.