Sounding sovereignty: performance and politics in the 1999 Panama Canal handover

Abstract

The Panama Canal’s handover from US governance to Panamanian sovereignty concluded on 31 December 1999. ‘Patria Entera’ (loosely translated as ‘Whole Homeland’), a state-sponsored open-air concert, commemorated the handover and promulgated new readings of the Panama Canal Zone’s decolonisation process. Concert headliner Rubén Blades deployed repertory and symbolic strategies to counterbalance Panamanians’ ambivalence regarding the handover. ‘Patria Entera’ recast the Panama Canal Zone as an accessible space and narrated the handover as the Panamanian citizenry’s collective inheritance of the Canal and accompanying Zone. Yet the concert’s discursive arc overlooked persistent and emerging challenges.

Keywords:

• Panama Canal
• Rubén Blades
• performance
• salsa music
• US–Panama relations
• postcoloniality

Notes

1. Following Ana Patricia Rodríguez (2002), I refer to the ‘Panama Canal (Zone)’ as conjoined but separate entities comprising both the commercial waterway and its adjacent former military and civilian enclave. This notation seeks to invoke their political and economic linkages without implying that these sites are synonymous.

2. Spatial constraints preclude an overview of US history in Panama, but useful guides include Julie Greene’s Canal Builders (2009), David McCullough’s Path Between the Seas (1977) and Matthew Parker’s Panama Fever (2007).

3. While the exact number of US interventions in Panama is contested, Roberto N. Méndez lists the 1903 military operation to procure Panamanian independence from Colombia; a 1915 conflict between Panamanian officials under then President Belisario Porras and the US government resulting from uprisings in Colón; the 1925 tenants’ strike; the 1941 ouster of Panamanian president Arnulfo Arias; and the violent clashes of 1959 and 1964 (pp. 46–48). Aims McGuinness chronicles the Watermelon Riot of 1856, often considered the first US military intervention in Panama, in Path of Empire (2008).

4. The Panama Canal Commission was authorised by the Torrijos–Carter Treaties as an interim body, comprising Panamanian and US officials, to oversee the transition. Previously, the Panama Canal was managed by the US-led Isthmian Canal Commission (1904–1914) and the Panama Canal Company (1914–1979). The ACP took over in 1999 and continues to manage the Panama Canal.

5. Recent statistics demonstrate that although Panama’s national economic growth rate has increased rapidly since the departure of the United States, the country’s profits from maritime tolling and financial sectors have not translated into redistributed income or improved quality of life for most Panamanians (see ‘Transformed Panama Shrugs Off Noriega,’ Financial Times, 20 December 2011). From the ACP’s 2008 earnings of approximately $2 billion, direct financial contributions to the Panamanian government amounted to roughly $700.8 million, with an additional $13.6 million in indirect contributions from taxes and social security payments. Yet few see perceptible effects (‘Angry Panama: the earthbound bite back.’ The Economist, 24 November 2012).

6. The following treatments of the Canal Zone as utopia/paradise merit consideration: Missal, A. 2008. Seaway to the Future: American Social Visions and the Construction of the Panama Canal, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, Knapp, H. and Knapp, M. 1984. Red, White, and Blue Paradise: The American Canal Zone in Panama, San Diego, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

7. As Jesús Alemancia and Raúl Leis state, nationalising the Panama Canal (Zone) was a central issue for General Omar Torrijos Herrera (1968–1981). Capitalising upon Panamanian anti-US protests in 1959 and 1964, Torrijos rallied Panamanians to a nationalist anticolonial cause. Torrijos advocated ‘devoting [the Canal Zone] to the greatest possible social [and collective] use,’ a statement later debated by various interest groups as the reversion process began in the late 1970s (Reversión canalera: informe de un desafío, 1995, p. 18).

8. Papa Egoró means ‘Mother Earth’ in the Emberá language.

9. After the 1989 invasion, Guillermo Endara was elected president under the Alianza Democrática de Oposición Civilista (ADOC), which combined the National Civil Crusade with Arnulfistas and other party members. Despite technically winning the 1989 election, Endara, who was reinstated with the aid of the US military, did not dramatically reform the political system (see Scranton 1993, pp. 65–102, Millett, 1996). The Arnulfista party became the Panameñistas in 2005 (personal communication, Carlos Guevara Mann, 10 December 2012).

10. Suspicion of Blades intensified when Blades was named Minister of Tourism by Martín Torrijos’ PRD government in 2004.

11. The label ‘national artist,’ which I use to describe Panamanian artists Sammy y Sandra Sandoval, Manuel de Jesús Abrego and Osvaldo Ayala, is significant due to Panama’s law requiring the participation of one national artist per touring international artist, as well as the performance of ‘national’ repertoire like pindín during performances featuring ‘international’ repertoire. Panamanian composer Dino Nugent suggests that the law requiring the presence of ‘national artists’ came into being within the last few decades (personal communication, 24 May 2010).

12. For a critique of Turner’s concept of liminality, see Weber (1995).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Katherine Zien

KATHERINE ZIEN is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at McGill University.