Panama was an archipelago of volcanoes. The history of this multicultural and multiracial country is old, beginning millions of years ago with the formation of a land bridge that united the previously divided American continent. Thus the so-called American Biotic took place, the species and humans from each side met and the world changed. Then it was necessary to create a large knife to remove a slice of land and connect the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans through the Panama Canal. This project is presented for the first time to Carlos V, but his son Felipe II, aware of its high cost, rejects it and prohibits the subject from being discussed, proclaiming: “What God united, let not man separate”.
Finally, in 1880 the French began its construction believing that their company would be as successful as the Suez Canal. But fate had other plans, it was the Americans who raised their flag on August 15, 1914, when it was inaugurated. This was possible thanks to the new engineers devising a system of locks that allows transit by water through the different heights along the canal.
This story is similar to another from Latin America, except that in that one foreigners moved to grow cane. Both are woven on the tracks of a railway while the calluses left by the harvest or the dredging of a canal appear on the hands. It doesn’t matter if it is to irrigate an arid valley or to connect two oceans. The protagonists are the same: Chinese, people of color, Americans, Europeans and mestizos. In Los Mochis as in Panama City, two extinct companies could give us more details: the Panama Canal Company and the United Sugar Company.
While we investigate how we resuscitate them, in the land of Rubén Blades, a harpy eagle spreads its wings in the Darién Gap, near Colombia, sighting tapirs. Other birds glide through the dense jungle that leaves little room for pirouettes. The eagle flew from the San Blas archipelago, where the sand is white and the water green and transparent. She continues her journey, arrives at the capital, is tired, decides to stop at one of the many buildings that the United Nations organizations have in the City of Knowledge. She listens as a tour guide explains that the soldiers who operated the canal lived in the nearby houses. He remembers that one of the largest parks in the city is next to it and takes flight in search of food.
In Panama they speak differently: here a live player skips the bars, then pretending that the virgin is speaking to him, inverts the order of the syllables and asks “what soup?” instead of what happened? Our friend stands in line to pay for a chicken, when another asks him to leave the queue, he responds by eating some letters: “I’m going ahead” and decides not to swallow any of them, shouting “I’m going outside”. Angry because he couldn’t buy what his wife ordered, he asks the first one he finds for a candle to light his cigarette. He takes a look at the newspaper that a gentleman is reading and is happy because the Panama Papers tamale has already been uncovered. He takes the last puff, he gets on a little bus. From the truck he counts how many containers of the Danish brand MAERSK are stacked on the ship that crosses the Miraflores Locks.
On the way to the airport I see the ruins of Old Panama, the pirate Morgan destroyed it in the 17th century and in Los Mochis the mill was closed.
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