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Summary: It was not only Wall Street
Review: WAS PANAMA A MERE CREATION OF WALL STREET --O WAS ITS INDEPENDENCE THE EFFECT OF THREE POWERFUL FORCES?by: Roberto N. Méndez (*) Panamanian lawyer Ovidio Díaz-Espino's essay, "How Wall Street Created a Nation", whose Spanish version recently became available, informs us about a few, little-known but important, historical facts related to Panama's independence from Colombia, which happened on November 3, 1903. Un-fortunately, the essay's argument is simplistic, aside from the fact that it turns out to be contradictory and unoriginal. The book's title, its Preface, its first chapter, and the author's own public statements, all align themselves with the "black legend" which surrounds Panama's independence.
According to it, Panama's independence from Colombia was conceived, promoted, financed and led by a group of New York bankers, headed by cunning lawyer William N. Cromwell, who acted in liaison with President Theodore Roosevelt. Also according to the legend, Panama's founding fathers were little more than corrupt puppets, who merely followed Cromwell's instructions word for word, all in exchange for the classic handful of silver coins. Such viewpoint is not only simplistic -it contradicts several historical sources and evidences, some of which, paradoxically, are mentioned by Díaz-Espino himself. For one thing, it is well known that José A. Arango and other Panamanians started the conspiracy between June and July of 1903, at great personal risk. In other words, the separatist plot began spontaneously in Panama, and much before the Colombian Congress rejected the Herran-Hay Treaty, which occurred on August 12, 1903. Only after the treaty was rejected did President Theodore Roosevelt began to lean in favour, not of Panama's independence, but of the odd thesis of American jurist John Basset Moore. According to Moore, the Mallarino-Bidlack Treaty of 1846 allowed to US to build a Canal through Panama, regardless of the wishes of the Colombian government. Well-known historical documents testify to this fact. French investor Phil-lipe Bunau-Varilla provided one of them, in his book "From Panama to Verdun". Bunau-Varilla describes there how he met, in early October of 1903, with Roosevelt, and how he convinced the American President to abandon Moore's thesis, and to lend support to the separatist plot. Surprisingly, Díaz-Espino mentions the meeting in his book, but he never realizes that it contradicts his essay's central thesis.
The essay's ending is no less of a surprise. On chapter 11, Díaz-Espino asserts that Panama's independence from Colombia was the joint result not of one, or two, but of three "powerful forces"; the first, Roosevelt's "ambi-tions" relative to the Canal; the second, Wall Street's "greed"; the third, Panamanians' "century-old aspiration to independence". "Does not such a statement imply a contradiction vis a vis the essay's cen-tral argument?", Díaz-Espino was asked publicly in mid 2003, while visit-ing Panama on occasion of Panama's yearly Book Fair. As expected, the author was unable to offer a coherent answer. In addition to that incongruence between central thesis and historical evi-dence, Díaz-Espino's essays suffers from a lack of originality, derived, ap-parently, from the author's unawareness about previous works on the sub-ject.
Indeed, Colombian journalist and historian Eduardo Lemaitre, whose work "Panama and its separation from Colombia", was published already in 1972, described the role that Cromwell and his group played in detail. And before Lemaitre, Colombian intellectual Oscar Teran, in his voluminous essay "From the Herran-Hay to the Hay-Bunau-Varilla treaty" (published in the thirties of last century) also divulged a large amount of information on the subject. What is more, Teran used the same sources that Díaz-Espino uses. It is therefore amazing that neither of these two previous and well-known works is even mentioned in Díaz-Espino's essay. Yes, Ovidio Díaz-Espino's essay informs us of a few interesting and little known historical facts; unfortunately, his viewpoint is simplistic, contradic-tory, and lacking of originality. His purpose seems to be convincing us that Panama's independence was an episode characterized solely by the selfish-ness, corruption and cowardice of its participants. But in doing so Ovidio-Díaz contradicts himself, and seems to forget that all historical events are the result of interactions between positive and negative elements, which in one way or another contribute to the material and spiritual advancement of the people. -------------
(*) Roberto N Méndez (www.rnmendez.com) is a professor of economics at Panama's National University.
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