''Un país que no se vende'': Negotiations and Signing of the Torrijos-Carter Panama Canal Treaties

The history of the Panama Canal is a long process characterized by failures, deceptions and tensions. This odyssey took place in a Central American country whose history in the last century would not have been so dissimilar to those of other small neighboring states, if only it had not been for this economic resource disproportionate to Panama's wealth that is the interoceanic canal. Today, the net profit directly linked to the canal is about 2 billion dollars, about 3% of the country's GDP. Added to this are a whole series of economic and financial services inextricably linked to the existence of the canal, which constitute the most profitable sector of the State. Yet this was not always the case. The Panamanian Government has had complete sovereignty over the canal and the entity that manages it for less than a quarter century, a very short time compared to the more than one hundred years of existence of the infrastructure. Reconstructing the history of the Panama Canal in detail, from the failure of the French project to the Panamanian attainment of sovereignty, passing through the creation and management of the Panama Canal Zone by the United States, is an enormous undertaking. For this reason, we decided here to dwell on a single crucial moment in the history of the canal and relations between the United States and Panama: the January to September 1977 negotiations on the complete transfer of the ownership of the canal. This last effort between the diplomatic teams of the Torrijos and Carter Governments was the last act in a series of largely unsuccessful attempts that lasted at least thirteen years to find a new agreement on the U.S. management of the canal. In fact, the United States owned the waterway along with a portion of 1,432 square kilometers of isthmus land to the right and left of the infrastructure. This intense diplomatic process was an almost unique moment in recent history, in which two countries, one 133 times larger and 2000 times richer than the other, found themselves negotiating almost equally on an issue of utmost importance for both.
In this work, we have tried to update the historiography on relations between the United States and Panama in 1977 and to describe in detail the deeds that all the negotiating teams involved carried out. In fact, over the last twenty years, the Governments of both countries have declassified and made available for research numerous documents that are fundamental to better understanding this process. Our meticulous work on the negotiation transcripts can also serve to make the 1977 process a case study for workers in the field of international diplomacy, thanks to the richness in public documentation. In fact, the detailed analysis of formal and informal meetings, memorandums, economic and political proposals, letters, newspaper articles and testimonies of the protagonists has offered a better understanding of the different nuances of this negotiation process.