The Lost Towns Of The Panama Canal

The untold history of the Panama Canal--from Panama's point of view. Sleuth and scholar, Marixa Lasso has uncovered a long-overlooked story: to build their Canal, Americans displaced 40,000 Panamanians and erased entire cities, only to convince the world they had brought modernity to the tropics.--

Cutting a path from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the Panama Canal set a new course for the development of Central America—but at considerable cost to Panamanians. Sleuth and scholar Marixa Lasso recounts how the canal’s American builders displaced 40,000 residents and erased entire towns in the guise of bringing modernity to the tropics.

This book discusses in depth the importance and history behind the Panama Canal. To the uninitiated, the Panama Canal is an artificial 82 km (51 mi) waterway in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean and divides North and South America. Colombia, France, and later the United States controlled the territory surrounding the canal during construction. France began work on the canal in 1881, but stopped because of lack of investors' confidence due to engineering problems and a high worker mortality rate. The United States took over the project on May 4, 1904, and opened the canal on August 15, 1914. The US continued to control the canal and surrounding Panama Canal Zone until the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties provided for handover to Panama. After a period of joint American–Panamanian control, the canal was taken over by the Panamanian government in 1999. It is now managed and operated by the government-owned Panama Canal Authority.

Meet the transcendental milestones that marked the different stages of the Panama Canal, one of the most important civil engineering works of recent times, representative of a new era of globalization and trade. This publication is part of an editorial effort of Grupo Popular, which celebrates the thirty-fifth anniversary of Popular Bank Ltd., an international licensed banking subsidiary based in Panama. With this ebook, the reader can interactively see the historical value and innovative character of this extraordinary work, which opened a world of new possibilities.

This book is intended to provide readers with information about the Panama Canal, an artificial 82 km (51 mi) waterway in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean and divides North and South America. It was first opened in 1914. This book provides a thorough account of the canal's history and details of its construction, with pictures included.

When the United States took on the building of the Panama Canal in 1904, workers were faced with extremely difficult living conditions. The tropical diseases such as malaria and yellow fever plagued them just as they had the earlier French effort. The housing stock left behind by the French was dilapidated and inadequate. About a hundred sets of beautifully drafted architectural plans left by the French came in handy for locating drains, etc., as the Americans made repairs to existing buildings. Some workers found insect ridden rooms in adjacent towns while others lived in tents or thatched huts near construction sites. Not wanting to endanger the lives of their families, most men left their wives and children behind. What started out as a cesspool of disease and loneliness eventually emerged as a little piece of paradise for its Canal Zone residents. This book tells some of the stories of the various townsites scattered along the fifty miles of the Panama Canal Zone between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. It also shares the fond memories of a few of its residents whose hometowns have changed since the Panama Canal was turned over to Panama on December 31, 1999, and the Canal Zone as they knew it was no more.

Beyond the Lab and the Field analyzes infrastructures as intense sites of knowledge production in the Americas, Europe, and Asia since the late nineteenth century. Moving beyond classical places known for yielding scientific knowledge, chapters in this volume explore how the construction and maintenance of canals, highways, dams, irrigation schemes, the oil industry, and logistic networks intersected with the creation of know-how and expertise. Referred to by the authors as “scientific bonanzas,” such intersections reveal opportunities for great wealth, but also distress and misfortune. This volume explores how innovative technologies provided research opportunities for scientists and engineers, as they relied on expertise to operate, which resulted in enormous profits for some. But, like the history of any gold rush, the history of infrastructure also reveals how technologies of modernity transformed nature, disrupting communities and destroying the local environment. Focusing not on the victory march of science and technology but on ambivalent change, contributors consider the role of infrastructures for ecology, geology, archaeology, soil science, engineering, ethnography, heritage, and polar exploration. Together, they also examine largely overlooked perspectives on modernity: the reliance of infrastructure on knowledge, and infrastructures as places and occasions that inspired a greater understanding of the natural world and the technologically made environment.