Category Archives: South of the Border

I never knew much about the Panama Canal, but assumed that it was during its construction that Yellow Fever and Malaria were defeated for the first time. Actually YF was defeated by American army doctors in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, and M has gone on and on, even in Panama, despite the best efforts, etc. I was also surprised to find, in this really good 1977 read by historian David McCullough (John Adams, etc.), that the French tried and failed to build the canal first, that Americans had favored a Nicaraguan route before T.R. got hold of the effort, and that very little about it was easy.

I knew people who grew up in the Zone, before President Carter turned the canal over to the Panamanians, but their recollections were nothing like the reported experiences of the builders–especially the thousands of black Barbados and Jamaican laborers who were largely denied services available to the whites. It was a different time, 1870 to 1914. Today, there’s an expansion going on that’s expected to be completed in 2010. Thanks to the magic of the Net, you can view the canal live via webcams at the previous link, or take a timelapse trip through the canal yourself, the whole twelve-hour journey in one minute fifty-six seconds.