The Year of the Elephant

1903 was an electrifying year.  Well, at least for elephants and Panama.  In the United States of America a debate over the use of electrocution in capital punishment cases was in full swing and Thomas Edison (inventor of the light bulb) had lobbied hard for New York State to introduce the electric chair.  He wished to promote his contention that his rival’s (George Westinghouse) alternating-current electrical system was, literally, fatal.  The execution of an Indian elephant by AC electrocution was, therefore, a wonderful coup and some 1500 spectators on Coney Island attended the execution of Topsy, a former circus elephant, who had killed at least one man.  She died very quickly (probably due to the carrots laced with cyanide that she had been fed) and this, shall we say, truncated event misleadingly helped to settle the argument over whether the use of the electric chair could result in a quick, merciful death.  Much further south, events produced a different type of spark when in November that same year a unilateral declaration of independence created the Republic of Panama.  Panama had, in fact, rebelled against Colombian control 50 times during the previous century.  (In another November, but 62 years later, I witnessed a similar unilateral declaration of independence, this time in Africa, but which proved not to be the success Panama’s was.) 

Both the US and Panama have become far more sophisticated places since then.  Panama, for its part, had a vital commercial waterway completed between two great oceans in 1914 alongside which a modern railway operates today.  The Panama Canal Railway Company is successor to the original railroad that was completed in 1855, only 2 years, in fact, after the first train journey took place in India (from Mumbai to Thane).  In 1970, supplementing its mercantile ambitions, Panama introduced a banking law which became the foundation stone upon which a modern offshore financial services centre has been built.  The law was, in a sense, a second canal through which regional and international monetary activities, rather than ships, could flow.  Panama, because of its canal, was already central to international commerce long before nearby Caribbean jurisdictions realised the profits which could be made from financial services and which became, with few exceptions, the backbone of, and central to, their economies.  The other pillar of those Caribbean economies has been tourism which, so far, Panama has not aggressively promoted in a country which offers both Caribbean and Pacific beaches and where the varied terrain reaches an elevation of 11,414 feet. 

Panama cannot be classified as being part of either the first or third world, but, rather, it is a second world country with its blend of sophistication and underdevelopment.  The canal continues to remain very important to world commerce (it is slated to be widened to welcome even larger ships) and Panama’s offshore financial services grow increasingly more attractive as those of many other jurisdictions become less so because of international pressures (read our sister publication, Offshore Pilot Quarterly).  The republic continues to broaden its horizons and is not just looking north for guidance:   the European Union has recently announced that Panama will receive over EUR 6 million in aid, spread just over 4 years, to assist with the bolstering of the country’s judicial system.  On the political front, unlike the situation in Venezuela, following 5 years of tempestuous rule by Hugo Chávez, the country has enjoyed almost 15 years of restored democracy after General Manuel Antonio Noriega was removed from dictatorial power.  Panama had already abolished any army in 1991 and a referendum in 1998 rejected a constitutional amendment that would allow the president to run for a second term.  Elections will take place in May this year without any sense of foreboding. 

A Beach Beyond Reach

While Panama and the US were sometimes at odds with each other over the canal which was controlled by the US until 2000, other Latin American countries have been fighting with each other over land long before the canal existed.  Look at the War of the Pacific (1879-83) when Chile annexed Bolivia’s nitrate-rich coastal province of Antofagasta.  Chile, at the same time, claimed Arica and Iquique from Peru.  Bolivia has never got over being deprived of a coastline and even today the country commemorates a “Day of the Sea”.  Its landlocked navy patrols Lake Titicaca and schoolchildren are taught about the country’s inalienable right to a coast.  But leave it to that agent provocateur, president Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, to pour salt on the wound and declare last November (the same month when Panamanians celebrated their country’s centennial) that he dreamt of one day “swimming on a Bolivian beach”.  Chile, smarting from his comments, recalled its ambassador in Caracas.  Meanwhile, Bolivia’s frustrated navy must weep at the thought of Panama which has not one, but two, coastlines which total, in length, 1,556 miles. 

Panama is a stepping stone between Central and South America because the country is split (literally) in two by its canal.  So it has a foot in both camps:  on the one side Costa Rica and on the other Colombia.  This unique country has come far since 1903 and so has the US, whose shadow has been cast across the isthmus; it has changed from being a regional to a super power only since the Spanish-American war in 1898, just five years before Panama’s independence.  It’s really not that long ago – which brings us back to elephants.  Let’s not forget that in 1916, two years after the Panama canal was opened, the US was still executing elephants.  This time it was the turn of Murderous Mary who was hung in Erwin, Tennessee.  Panama, without blowing its own trumpet, can certainly claim by that measure that it has progressed at a respectable pace.