The treaty that changed a country

The Jan. 9, 1964 confrontation in Panama, when students tried to raise the Panamanian flag in the U.S.-controlled Canal Zone, became a turning point in the country’s struggle for sovereignty.

Jorge Arosemena, who was a night student of civil engineering at the University of Panama, recalled seeing people fall as the army moved in. The violence, which left people dead and wounded, helped push forward negotiations with the United States that had dragged on for 13 years with little progress.

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I experienced Jan. 9 very intensely because I was a student, finishing my third year of civil engineering as a night student at the University of Panama, and we saw people fall because the army was already there

For former Foreign Minister Jorge Eduardo Ritter, the central grievance was not simply that the United States administered the Canal. It was the existence of the Canal Zone itself, which he described as "a state within another state, a country within another country." Ritter served as deputy minister to negotiator Adolfo Ahumada and followed the negotiations that produced the Torrijos-Carter treaties.

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The permanent humiliation was having the Canal Zone, a state within another state, a country within another country

Ritter said doubts remained that an agreement would be reached until Jimmy Carter became U.S. president. He recalled Carter telling Panama’s ambassador, Gabriel Lewis Galindo, in March 1977: "Before the first snow falls, you will have a treaty." The treaty was signed on Sept. 7, well before Washington’s first snowfall.

The transition lasted 20 years. Once the treaty took effect, the Canal Zone disappeared and the interoceanic route passed to Panamanian control. The Panama Canal Authority assumed responsibility for the waterway, while the Interoceanic Region Authority managed returned properties. Ritter said the old arrangement provided Panama with $1.9 million, compared with more than $3 billion in the canal authority’s current budget.

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Before the first snow falls, you will have a treaty

Arosemena, now executive president of the Ciudad del Saber Foundation, once feared being mistaken for an American during the 1964 unrest. His office is in the former Fort Clayton, the most important U.S. Army installation in Panama, where the U.S. Southern Command previously led the invasion of Panama.

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It is difficult for me to imagine this country without the ports, without the Canal and with a Canal Zone