Goodbye Panama. 1903

How was Panama lost? Why was it lost? When was it lost? In this authoritative and entertaining study, Enrique Santos Molano maintains that the loss of Panama for Colombia was decreed long before Colombia existed, when in 1788 Thomas Jefferson stated that the construction of a canal through the isthmus of Panama, or through Nicaragua, was an imperative and a desideratum. With unobjectionable documents, the author reveals how, throughout the 19th century, the United States wove "with constant provocations, million-dollar offers and veiled and revealed threats" the separation of Panama. What happened in 1903 was only the final chapter of a long history that began with Balboa's discovery that there was another ocean besides the Atlantic, and that the two were separated by just a strip of land.