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Prize Possession is a comprehensive history of U.S. policy toward the Panama Canal between 1903 and 1979, focusing on five key themes:the Canal's defense and its place in American strategy; the Zone's autocratic system of government; its strictly segregated labor force; its commercial development at the expense of Panama; and the equally controversial issue of U.S. intervention in Panamanian politics.The book is based for the most part on the hitherto largely untapped sources of U.S. government agencies, namely the State, War, and Navy Departments, and the Canal Zone administration, as well as on the papers of notable dramatis personae such as Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt and Philippe Bunau-Varilla. ... Read more

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More Heat - Less light on an Old Story
This is a good albeit flawed study. It is well-researched but some will question its conclusions, the direct ones and the subtle ones. The footnotes are good and reflect careful research. The index is comprehensive and useful. Nonetheless, this book errs on being unduly critical of the U. S. role and administration. One is hard pressed to find a less imperialistic nation than the United States.Look at the French, Belgium, English, Japanese, etc. imperial examples.

Specifically the book covers the years from 1904, when Panama with help from the U. S. separated from Colombia in November 1903, to 1979.The book also includes some useful information dating back several hundred years.The author points out that many European countries wanted access to the Isthmus of Panana, only fifty miles wide in some sections, for trade and imperialistic reasons. England, France, Spainand other European countries wanted to build and control a canal to unite the two oceans. It took the boisterous Theodore Roosevelt to do it. His actions have been widely condemned or praised by countless historians.

It is well to remember that had TR not acted, and I am not an apologist for him, Panama would have remained a neglected province of Colombia. Remember as well that Panama, along with four other Latin American nations,joined Gran Colombia voluntarily in the 1820s. It was quickly ignored and scorned by Colombia for the next 80 years. To wit: there were over 80 up risings, attempts at achieveing independence, against Colombia during those years. They were not happy campers and yes, they were ignored by the government in Bogota. Cognizant of European ambitions on Panama, one far thinking senator suggested that Colombia move its capital to Panama City to guarantee its continued sovernity over the Isthmus. It never happened and the senator lost his seat.

In an attempt to keep Europe at bay, Colombia signed a series of understandings with the U.S. to guarantee their hegemony over Panama. The U. S. even intervened or threatened to do so several times when Panama tried to establish their independence from Colombia. The U.S. wasn't pure either, it wanted to eventually build a canal in the region. Plus the Monroe Doctrince was still in full force. Colombia's experience highlights the danger of seeking a powerful protector -- they may take you over.

The book has five major themes. "The canal's defense and its place in America's strategy, the Zone's regimental system of government, its strictly segregated labour force, its commercial development at the expense of Panama, and the equally controversial issue of U.S. government intervention in Panamanian Politics."

Clearly, the author has a very biased and erroneous point of view. Too bad for it weakens his book and negates all the serious research he did. He should have been more balanced.

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Dr. Mellander earned a Ph. D. in Latin American History from the George Washington University. He specialized in U.S.- Panamanian relations and wrote three books and many articles on Panama. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

I was there...
I see some liberal whack jobs will believe anything as long as it paints us in a bad light.I have to wonder why some people are so ready to believe dirt and so quick to reject truth. I was stationed there in the finest military organization that I ever had the HONOR (a word that liberals have to look up in a dictionary) to serve with.Troopers from the 193rd were injured risking their lives to save civilians that were taking fire from the PDF and DigBats.I was there, I know it because I fired on those that were firing on the civilians.The Panamanian people by and large loved us.I was treated to home cooked food and smiles the entire operation.And when everyone went home-reporters included-and forgot about the operation my brothers and I were still there.Never heard of any mass killings by any one but their own people.

I'm Glad I Don't Live In A Small, Weak Country Like Panama!
If I recall correctly, approximately 3,000 innocent civilians were killed by the illegal invasion of a sovereign nation (Panama) by President Bush the First - who happened to holda grudge against its leader! The vast majority of those killed were the poorest of the poor, whose only crime was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time! I guess if it was lawyers, politicians,and rest ofPanama's elite that got slaughtered instead,then it would not have been okay!And, that gets a one-star reviews from many readers for being "biased!" And one wonders why President Bush 2 invades another sovereign nation (Iraq),who just so happened to hold a grudge against its leader, too?I'd like to know how all these hypocrites wouldreact if other nations around the world pointed to Presidents Bush's 1 & 2 and did exactly the same thing causing total anarchy! One can only pray that President Obamasings a different tune to the rest of the world!

For those wishing more information on this sorry subject,I heartily recommend: Exhumations In Panama - Breaking the Silence (United States Invasion of Panama), which interviews eye witness who survived the carnage. I wish every policy maker in the U.S. State Department read a copy before launching their next godforsaken war!

See also: Post-invasion Panama: Status of democracy and the civilian casualties controversy : hearings before the Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs of the ... first session, July 17 and 30, 1991

Slanted
I've known a lot of Panamanians who experienced the invasion first hand, and I'm married to one. I have been to Panama many times. Sorry to all those who hate the US and the US military, but the invasion was pretty innocuous...as invasions go. One Panamanian told me the worst part afterwards was the curfew because some people got stuck in discos overnight. My wife said the soldiers were very nice, and they gave a lot of their MREs away. She also said a lot of babies were conceived during the occupation because many of the women wanted an American father. Not exactly the sort of thing that happens when a populace hates the occupiers. Sure some people died in the invasion, but if anyone cares to recall, Noriega declared war on the US! Our soldiers are brave people, and they aren't the Viking barbarians who pillage, plunder, and kill innocent civilians. On the other side, I have yet to meet one Panamanian who doesn't despise Noriega and his Batallones de la Dignidad.

Quick to judge
Great insights. But can we have views a review from the other perspective. The folks that were in bed when the invasion started. Looking for any views here.

The Truth is The Truth
Stationed on Howard AFB 1yr before, during and 1yr after Just Cause. This book is completely true. If you were not there and only came in for the invasion you have no idea what really went on leading up to the invasion, during the invasion, and after the invasion. There is a little thing called propoganda that the U.S. likes to use to display "Just Cause". ... Read more

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Panama Foreign Policy and Government Guide (Russia Industrial Library) ... Read more

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Panama Government And Business Contacts Handbook (World Business, Investment and Government Library) ... Read more

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As in the myth of a phantom gringo boat receding into the mist, elusive promises of participatory democracy and a semi-autonomous forest reserve have spurred the Emberá Indians of Panama to leave their dispersed settlements in the Darién forests and become more involved with the outside world. Since the late 1960s, they have elected representatives to the national government and sought to equalize their political and economic relationships with neighboring blacks.

In this first full-length ethnography of the Emberá of Darién (also known, with the Wounaan, as the Chocó), Stephanie C. Kane investigates their use of myth and magic to interpret the changes that occurred in the mid-1980s after Manuel Noriega assumed command of the Panama Defense Forces. She reveals how magical discourse, founded on the ancient global practice of shamanism, is the language used to cross the gap between the known and the unknown. Approaching local history with shamanic logic and organizing each chapter around a set of interpretive dilemmas, Kane highlights the ways in which myth and magic relate integrally to Embed life, including ecology, economy, politics, health, constructs of race and gender, and memory.

Arguing that anthropology is both empirical and imaginative, Kane modifies the ethnographic gaze to include Indian views of the anthropologist and, more generally, Euro-Americans. Kane also presents analyses of indigenous women's land rights and the politics of rainforest development.

First published in 1994, this second edition of The Phantom Gringo Boat includes a new preface by the author, as well as two supplementary essays, "The Rise of Patriarchy in Emberá Indian Village Law" and "Emberá (Chocó) Medicinal Plant Use: Implications for Planning the Biosphere Reserve in Darién, Panama", and three reviews of the first edition. ... Read more

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Shamanic forces meet development in the Panama forest
Trying to study the Embera or Choco people of southern Panama (and also northwestern Colombia) was no joke.As I read the author's fieldwork story, I thanked my lucky stars that in India, I did my own work in a country without much direct US involvement, no anti-drug teams roaming about, where CIA-trained thugs were not in charge, where my country had not invaded, never mind created my host nation.How would my future have looked---in terms of anthropological research---if Washington had bombed New Delhi, killing thousands, and then arrested the Indian Prime Minister, imprisoning him in Florida on drug charges?Given that set of images, you have to admit that Kane has done an amazingly good job, weaving her way between Embera, white and black Panamanian settlers in the Darien forest, and Panamanian officialdom.

At first, I could not quite discern where the book was headed, though I liked its style, a kind of elliptical voice, a looking in many directions without a sharply focussed center.As I realized that this was her effort to replicate the shamanic style she wrote about, I began to admire the book more and more.The facts come together leisurely, not presented as a barrage from the start.The Embera had been pushed into establishing villages, having previously lived in scattered homesteads in the forest.Then they were encouraged to form a comarca, or autonomous region, requiring education, politics, and bureaucratic skills.Numbers of Indians and others crossed over the porous border between Panama and Colombia looking for a better life or escaping strife---the jungle grew more dangerous, but was being cut down as well.Shamans mediated between people and their precarious life situations.In the end you realize she has described Embera settlements as having a shamanic field in a dynamic relationship to the surrounding society.Disease and bad luck are interpreted in terms of that relationship.These evils empower the shamans because they `cure' them.Kane draws a parallel to state power, which `cures' such evils as undevelopment, crime, disasters, or illegal immigration.She says "by means of the social-shamanic dynamic, local culture struggles to press meaning on changes wrought by transnational forces so that they can be molded to local purpose." (pp.171-172)Though shamans could use their powers for evil, Kane finds that most do not.In my own work in Goa, there were two classes of such people, those who tried to harm others, and those who cured.Sometimes---and this was echoed in Richard Lieban's work on Cebuano sorcery---the two poles were represented in a single individual.Among the Embera, in the 1980s, "the shaman funneled anxieties and questions into the circuit of ritual power and returned them transformed."

I am not qualified to say if THE PHANTOM GRINGO BOAT represents Panamanian society very well.I have never set foot there.But as a book of anthropology, I found it well-written, original, and full of concern for the people studied.In the modern style, Kane tried to place herself in the ethnographic picture, not hide behind some doubtful curtain of "objectivity".A phantom gringo boat, bearing the fruits of development and change, always appeared to be just around the next bend in the river in Embera dreams.Meanwhile, the people were left with most of the problems.It seems to me that phantom gringo boats are sailing everywhere in this world.
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The real world the empire's media ignores.
The U.S. invasion of Panama was one in a long line of crimes prosecuted by U.S. warlords.Our corporate controlled media WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception didn't spend much time on the death and suffering of the Panamanians, nor did the corporate media spend much time providing the geopolitical or historical context for this assault.Instead, we received endless images of Noriega (Bush's former fishing buddy and a CIA asset) pounding a podium.
This book reveals the state terror of that invasion, and the agenda of the empire A Game as Old as Empire: The Secret World of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption.
Predictably, this book will be ignored by those who have absorbed ultranational sentiments, or who have been seduced by the financial well-being that working for our military complex provides The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives; nevertheless, this book provides a moving look at U.S. brutality for those with the honesty to take a look in the mirror.

For more on Panama and Latin America:
The Panama Deception
Emperors in the Jungle: The Hidden History of the U.S. in Panama (American Encounters/Global Interactions)
School of Assassins: Guns, Greed, and Globalization
War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death
Our Brand Is Crisis
Why We Fight ... Read more

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Labour law reforms introduced in Panama during the Torrijos administration (1968-1981) were a radical departure from past authoritarian agendas that had benefited only a small, entrenched elite. Offering a historical analysis of the enactment and implementation of labor policy in those years, Dr Phillipps presents a study of the power relations among Panama's political elite, the business sector and labour. The author argues that the 1972 Labour Code, which exemplified the Torrijos regime's reformist nature, lent the regime popular support and a measure of legitimacy. The business sector, however, blames the Labour Code for most of the economic woes experienced during the mid-1970s, including widespread unemployment. By manipulating their considerable economic assets and waging a fierce anti-government campaign both in Panama and in the United States at the time of the Canal Treaty negotiations, the business sector was able to have the Labour Code amended and significantly weakened. In the light of the recent upheaval in Panama, this study provides a profile of Panama's political elite and analyzes the country's fragile political institutions.Though the Torrijos administration provided an opening for the greater enfranchisement of the working classes, the Noriega years, characterized by greed and plunder, obliterated most of Torrijos' reforms and set the stage for the return of the traditional ruling class. ... Read more

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Panama Government And Business Contacts Handbook ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from NotiCen: Central American & Caribbean Affairs, published by Latin American Data Base/Latin American Institute on January 7, 2001. The length of the article is 1031 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: PANAMA: GOVERNMENT SUSPENDS BUS-FARE INCREASE AFTER RIOT.
Publication: NotiCen: Central American & Caribbean Affairs (Newsletter)
Date: January 7, 2001
Publisher: Latin American Data Base/Latin American Institute
Page: NA

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This digital document is an article from NotiCen: Central American & Caribbean Affairs, published by Latin American Data Base/Latin American Institute on August 16, 2001. The length of the article is 2774 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: PANAMA: GOVERNMENT DECLARES STATE OF EMERGENCY IN INDIAN ZONES.
Publication: NotiCen: Central American & Caribbean Affairs (Newsletter)
Date: August 16, 2001
Publisher: Latin American Data Base/Latin American Institute
Page: NA

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This digital document is an article from NotiCen: Central American & Caribbean Affairs, published by Latin American Data Base/Latin American Institute on November 8, 2001. The length of the article is 1473 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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Title: PANAMA: GOVERNMENT PROPOSES US$4 BILLION MODERNIZATION PROJECT TO ENLARGE THE CANAL.
Publication: NotiCen: Central American & Caribbean Affairs (Newsletter)
Date: November 8, 2001
Publisher: Latin American Data Base/Latin American Institute
Page: NA

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Chapters: Vice President of Panama, Panama Canal Authority, Panamanian Passport, Graciela Dixon, National Assembly of Panama, National Library of Panama. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 24. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: This article is part of the series:Politics and government ofPanama Vice President of Panama is the second highest political position in Panama. Position of only one Vice President will be filled since 2009. Previously, there were positions of First Vice President and Second Vice President, also known as first designate to presidency (Primer Designado a la Presidencia) and second designate (Segundo Designado a la Presidencia). According to the current constitution, vice presidents are elected in the same ticket as president. However, the position of Second Vice President is now abolished and will not be filled after 2009 . History of the office holders follows. The list is not complete. ...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=17640725 ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Caribbean Update, published by Caribbean Update, Inc. on September 1, 2001. The length of the article is 509 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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Title: US$400 MILLION MULTIMODAL CENTER IN COLON.(Panama government promotes creation of transportation center)(Brief Article)
Publication: Caribbean Update (Newsletter)
Date: September 1, 2001
Publisher: Caribbean Update, Inc.
Volume: 17Issue: 8Page: NA

Article Type: Brief Article

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Panama Democracy & Government Reform Handbook ... Read more

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Panama Government and Business Contacts Handbook ... Read more