The Panama Canal celebrated its 25th anniversary under Panamanian hands this Tuesday in a solemn ceremony in which the late former US President Jimmy Carter was remembered and Donald Trump’s threats to take back the interoceanic waterway were ignored. Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino and hundreds of guests attended the ceremony in the garden of the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) headquarters, near the canal, including former President Mireya Moscoso, who symbolically received the canal from Carter on December 31, 1999.
In a speech, Mulino said he felt joy for the 25 years of Panamanian sovereignty over the Canal but added that “a sadness […] invades us for the death of Jimmy Carter,” who passed away on Sunday at the age of 100. A minute of silence was observed at the ceremony in memory of Carter.
Carter and Panamanian nationalist leader Omar Torrijos signed the canal handover treaties in Washington in 1977. “With the signing of the Torrijos-Carter treaties, we Panamanians committed ourselves as a nation to the safe operation of the canal, open to peaceful transit for ships of all nations, in times of peace or war, and without any discrimination,” said the head of the ACP, Ricaurte Vásquez.
“For 25 years, Panamanians and their canal have delivered!” he added in his speech. The 80-kilometer canal, built by the United States, was inaugurated in 1914. To protect it, Washington established an enclave where the American flag flew and had its own military bases, police and justice system.
Neither Mulino nor the other speakers mentioned Trump’s threats in their speeches. The US President-elect said his country should “take back control” of the canal due to the “ridiculous fees” that Panama charges to pass through it.
Tuesday’s ceremony also honored some twenty Panamanians killed in 1964 after students tried to raise a national flag in the former Canal Zone, the US enclave created to protect the waterway that connects the Pacific Ocean with the Atlantic.
“The Panama Canal is much more than a strategic infrastructure,” it is the engine of the national economy, stressed the Canal Minister, José Ramón Icaza, who also affirmed that the waterway is “a wonder of the world”. The interoceanic route moves 5% of world maritime trade, contributes 6% of Panama’s GDP and 20% of its tax revenue
