277. America Drills Through Hell’s Gorge (Part 5)
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Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnand. And me, William Drimple. So we are joined once again by the brilliant Matthew Parker, author of Hell's Gorge, to discuss our final chapter of the building of the Panama Canal. Now, in the last episode, we saw the complete failure of the French attempt and Bono Varia convincing the Americans to build a canal in Panama over Nicaragua, but Colombia does not want to hand over the rights to the US. So the US is going to have to help Panama get its independence.
And we have before us now the first American skulldugry of fiddling the politics of Latin America to suit themselves. Something, of course, that we will see much more of in the twentieth century. So, Matthew, tell us more about how the Americans managed to separate Panama off into a much smaller and more bullyable independent state. Okay, so the the leader of the wannabe Panama independence movement, a guy called Manuel Amador, travels to the United States to get help with basically freeing his country from Colombia and therefore getting the canal or in his country rather than rather than someone else's.
He meets Cromwell, the lawyer, obviously, who was so important in getting the Americans to change their mind and choose the Panama route. And he is basically promised help from him. He also meets Bruno Varia And one of his compatriots meets John Hay, the Secretary of State, who ba he can't say exactly, but basically says the Americans will support an independence movement in in Panama. Without American help, the Colombian army will just move in and and and close them down.
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