Speaker 1: What's worrying my crimes? I'm I'm Robert Evans hosted Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards podcast about the worst people in all of
Speaker 1: history and consequently about an awful lot of war crimes,
Speaker 1: which is what we're gonna be talking about today more
Speaker 1: or less with our special guests, Sophie Cut the airhorns,
Speaker 1: the airhorns eight or nine, eight or nine airhorns. Chelsea mending, Chelsea. Hey,
Speaker 1: how are you doing today? How are doing today? It's
Speaker 1: all right, a little it's a little cold and snowy
Speaker 1: out here in New York. Got the uh, got the
Speaker 1: lovely Brooklyn weather. But I have at least at least
Speaker 1: they have power and some kind of functioning, functioning emergency
Speaker 1: services and transportation and water and basic essentials, all those
Speaker 1: Yankee things, those carpetbagger luxuries that we don't have down
Speaker 1: in Texas. All we need is to freeze to death.
Speaker 1: And if we don't freeze to death, to be build
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of dollars for several ways of natural gas,
Speaker 1: because that's how freedom looks. I'm in Texas, by the way, yes, uh, Chelsea, Um,
Speaker 1: what do you know? What do you know about Panama? Uh?
Speaker 1: What do I know about Panama? Whenever I think about it.
Speaker 1: Whenever I think about I usually think of like Teddy
Speaker 1: Roosevelt and uh, steam shovels. So yeah, that's that's that's
Speaker 1: what I usually think of. Um, I don't know much
Speaker 1: about the actual I don't know much about it beyond
Speaker 1: like imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, naval strategy, and engineering. That is
Speaker 1: a lot of the history of Panama. And that's what
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about today. Today. Our bastard is
Speaker 1: the United States of America, a little country you might
Speaker 1: have heard of, I don't know. Um. And and specifically,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the relationship between the United States of
Speaker 1: America and Panama, which is one of the most abusive
Speaker 1: relationships in the entire history of geopolitics. It's it's really outstanding. Hey,
Speaker 1: that's a nice it's miss you got. There be a
Speaker 1: shame if America were to happen to it North America. UM. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this this was all inspired when a friend advised
Speaker 1: me to take a look at a documentary called The
Speaker 1: Panama Deception, which was made in UH and is quite good.
Speaker 1: And so I decided to start looking a little deeper
Speaker 1: into the history of Panama. I found a book length
Speaker 1: study on the history of US Panamanian relations and a
Speaker 1: bunch of articles, and my god, it is it is, Chelsea.
Speaker 1: It is as fucked up as I don't know, Sophie.
Speaker 1: What's something that's sucked up like a like a like
Speaker 1: a bed lash to the ceiling. I mean that makes sense.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say when people put their beds in
Speaker 1: their closets and then like then they can't get into
Speaker 1: it gets stuck, and then you just it's just like
Speaker 1: then you have no bed. Yeah, it's as fucked up
Speaker 1: as a bed closet. Chelsea. Well, I usually I usually
Speaker 1: think of somebody who like uses the toilet and then
Speaker 1: it doesn't slush and then come back three or four
Speaker 1: days later. Yeah, you could say I just choked on coffee.
Speaker 1: You could. You could say that the history of US
Speaker 1: Panamanian relations would be embodied. Is like if Panama is
Speaker 1: like a small apartment in the US, is a guest
Speaker 1: at a party in that apartment. The US has just
Speaker 1: like continuously been leaving upper deckers for the last hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty years or so, just just just shipping in
Speaker 1: the water tank. That's that's America, as regards Panama and
Speaker 1: also drinking all of their beer. It's good stuff. It's
Speaker 1: good stuff. So Panama is one of those countries you
Speaker 1: can look at on a map and immediately no is
Speaker 1: just kind of completely fucked in a historic sense, right,
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful place, but in terms of geopolitics, it's
Speaker 1: just doomed because of where it is in the world.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like how you can look at Ukraine
Speaker 1: with its fertile soil and its position like right between
Speaker 1: the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Western Europe and be like, boy,
Speaker 1: I bet those people got their ship fucked up constantly
Speaker 1: because other folks needed wheat. Panamas in the same kind
Speaker 1: of position. Their northern neighbor is Costa Rica and their
Speaker 1: southern neighbor is Columbia. The nation is the bridge between
Speaker 1: Central and South America, and more to the point, it
Speaker 1: is the narrowest land mass in Central America. So if
Speaker 1: you wanted to say, dig a big trench through a
Speaker 1: country to let people travel from the Atlantic Ocean to
Speaker 1: the Pacific Ocean without sailing around an entire extra continent,
Speaker 1: it's basically the best place to do it. And people
Speaker 1: realize that pretty much as soon as they found Panama.
Speaker 1: In the seventeen hundreds and eighteen hundreds, travelers who wanted
Speaker 1: to go from New York to San Francisco would generally
Speaker 1: go by way of Panama. So if you were trying
Speaker 1: to get to like, if you were doing like the
Speaker 1: New York to San Francisco route, traveling through the middle
Speaker 1: of the United States was just you would you were
Speaker 1: you would probably die horribly, right. We all played Oregon
Speaker 1: Trail or some version of that. Um, So your best
Speaker 1: bet was to sail down to Panama from New York,
Speaker 1: then spend like three days going across Panama on the
Speaker 1: back of a borough, and then sail from Panama's Pacific
Speaker 1: coast up to San Francisco. That was how you did,
Speaker 1: like went from east coast to west coast back in
Speaker 1: the day. UM. And I think if things were still
Speaker 1: that way, rint would probably be cheaper in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: So you've got this, You've got this perfectly situated country,
Speaker 1: and from kind of the beginning of the United States
Speaker 1: being a thing, American or US leaders are looking down
Speaker 1: there and being like, boy, I bet we could fucking
Speaker 1: cut cut a hole in the middle of that country,
Speaker 1: and that would really make it easier for us to
Speaker 1: colonize North America. Um So, like most of Latin America,
Speaker 1: Panama was owned by Spain for centuries, and Spain used
Speaker 1: its resources to buy gold for their various kings and
Speaker 1: spices to make better paya. In eight one, Panama freed
Speaker 1: itself from its now ailing colonial master. There was a
Speaker 1: strong independence movement in the Isthmus, but they were overruled
Speaker 1: by the folks who wanted to join the Grand Columbia Federation. So, yeah, Panama,
Speaker 1: and like Colombia, a whole bunch of Central and South
Speaker 1: America separates from Spain in eighteen twenty one, and a
Speaker 1: bunch of guys in Panama are like, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: would be rad if we were our own country, But
Speaker 1: more of them are like, you know what, would probably
Speaker 1: be a better idea if we were part of Colombia
Speaker 1: because we're tiny and Columbia is real big, and they're
Speaker 1: probably just gonna take us over if we're if we're not,
Speaker 1: if we don't get on board the Columbia train. It's
Speaker 1: the story as old at time now. Panama subsequently tried
Speaker 1: to free itself from Columbia, and like eighty they there
Speaker 1: were a bunch of different independence attempts in the eighteen
Speaker 1: thirties and up to eighteen forty, but it never quite
Speaker 1: worked out. Um and the region's separatist tendencies were boosted
Speaker 1: by the fact that they were very isolated. There were
Speaker 1: no roads connecting them to Colombia. There were a couple
Speaker 1: of cities and towns in Panama, was not heavily populated,
Speaker 1: and they didn't really trade with Columbia. They mainly traded
Speaker 1: with the Caribbean and other parts of like South America,
Speaker 1: rather than their countrymen in Bogata. From the beginning of Panama,
Speaker 1: Americans saw the isthmus as something to exploit. In eighteen
Speaker 1: forty six, the USA signed the bid Lack Treaty with Columbia,
Speaker 1: and this basically, in the bid Lack Treaty, the US
Speaker 1: promise to protect Columbia's control over Panama in exchange for
Speaker 1: access to any future canal that might be dug through
Speaker 1: the country. So we were like, hey, hey, Columbia, you know,
Speaker 1: you guys are a new country, you don't have much
Speaker 1: of a military yet. This place is real isolated and valuable.
Speaker 1: We'll we'll take we'll protect it for you. We're a
Speaker 1: big country. We've got a whole lot of developed we
Speaker 1: got ships and everything. Do you just chill out. Let
Speaker 1: us protect Panama and if someone happens to build a
Speaker 1: canal there, we get free access to it. Because it
Speaker 1: was you know, surely a deal without any sort of
Speaker 1: ulterior motives to it that will never be abused by
Speaker 1: the United States, Right, but it wasn't. The United States
Speaker 1: of the time still considered by the rest of the
Speaker 1: world to be a young upstart with US. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like in comparison, it compares it to the European powers
Speaker 1: of the time, like France and France and Spain. And
Speaker 1: for for reference, the USA in this period is younger
Speaker 1: than Nancy Pelosi. Um. So yeah, we are a young upstart,
Speaker 1: but we've got more resources than Columbia, which which has
Speaker 1: nothing in Panama, which has like less than nothing. So yeah,
Speaker 1: the US signs this this wonderful treaty that will never
Speaker 1: have any any ulterior consequences. Um. And it was kind
Speaker 1: of like there wasn't really a lot of other options
Speaker 1: that Columbia had at the point, um, because Panama barely
Speaker 1: anyone lived there and they didn't have any sort of
Speaker 1: ability to stop someone from invading them in Columbia didn't
Speaker 1: have any roads connecting them to Panama, so they couldn't
Speaker 1: do anything. And in the eighteen forties everyone knew that
Speaker 1: somebody was going to figure out how to dig a
Speaker 1: canal through Panama. So it kind of made sense, like
Speaker 1: trusting in the United States is basically our best bet.
Speaker 1: Maybe they won't suck us over, which is never a
Speaker 1: good bet to make with the United States. Nope. So
Speaker 1: the deal was inked right at the end of the
Speaker 1: US Mexican War, and it established a pattern that would
Speaker 1: hold true for more than a century, which was that
Speaker 1: Panama was to become a pawn of United States power politics.
Speaker 1: Um and not just the United States really, just in general.
Speaker 1: White people were going to continue to come in and
Speaker 1: funk around in Panama because we wanted to get to
Speaker 1: the Pacific Ocean more easily. So after the bid Lack Treaty,
Speaker 1: the US government felt free to act as if the
Speaker 1: Isthmus was basically their property. In eighteen fifty, we signed
Speaker 1: the Clayton Bulward Treaty with England, which guaranteed US British
Speaker 1: cooperation to build a canal in Panama in the future.
Speaker 1: Neither Colombia nor the Panamanian government were referenced in the
Speaker 1: treaty or consulted in this. So as soon as the
Speaker 1: US signs this treaty to protect Panama, we make a
Speaker 1: deal with the British to build a canal, and nobody
Speaker 1: talks to the people who lived there at all, Like
Speaker 1: it's it's just the white people being consulted here, because
Speaker 1: who else do you really need? They don't have shovels,
Speaker 1: not our shovels, not steam shovels. Yeah, steam shovels, clean coal,
Speaker 1: clean burning coal. Um. The California Gold Rush of eighteen
Speaker 1: forty nine that the first massive wave of US citizens
Speaker 1: in the Panama. Most of these people were just traveling through,
Speaker 1: but a sizeable minority settled in Panama, mainly to establish
Speaker 1: businesses in Panama City and Cologne. Uh. And these businesses
Speaker 1: just serviced white people who are on their way to
Speaker 1: strike it rich in California. So you get all these
Speaker 1: white people traveling through through Panama to get to California
Speaker 1: to dig for gold near San Francisco. And you also
Speaker 1: get a whole bunch of white people who settled in
Speaker 1: Panama because they're like it seems like everyone's gonna die
Speaker 1: panning for gold, and it's better to just take their
Speaker 1: money before they make it to the West coast, which
Speaker 1: is the smart play, right. That's those are the people
Speaker 1: who really made bank off of the gold rush. Now,
Speaker 1: since the US had just won a nasty little colonial
Speaker 1: war in Mexico and taken a third of the country
Speaker 1: for the United States, most of the whites who settled
Speaker 1: in Panama did so assuming that it was going to
Speaker 1: be a part of the United States. At this point
Speaker 1: in time, a lot of Americans are like, well, of
Speaker 1: course we're going to own all of Central and South
Speaker 1: America at some point. They're connected to us. Why wouldn't
Speaker 1: they be our property, which, you know South, that was
Speaker 1: the goal. I mean, there was a lot of talk
Speaker 1: even in like the early stages of the Civil War
Speaker 1: among the Confederacy about like, once we once we beat
Speaker 1: the Union, why wouldn't we go down and take Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's get Cuba, let's get Mexico, let's take it all. Baby.
Speaker 1: Uh it was you know, we don't talk so much
Speaker 1: about that anymore. So, Yeah, all of these Americans who
Speaker 1: moved to Panama to make money off of forty niners
Speaker 1: or like eventually this will be like the the I
Speaker 1: don't know at this point on what that point would
Speaker 1: have been, like the thirtieth state or something, but they
Speaker 1: were sure it was going to be a state now.
Speaker 1: At around this time, the Pacific Male Steamship Company ink
Speaker 1: to deal with the Colombian government to build a railroad
Speaker 1: through the region, and the goal of this was to
Speaker 1: speed up the journey from east coast to west coast.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna quote now from a wonderful book titled
Speaker 1: Emperors in the Jungle about the United States relationship with Panama.
Speaker 1: The company imported workers from China, Ireland and elsewhere for
Speaker 1: the job, but most workers were blacks from Jamaica or Cartagena.
Speaker 1: The imported workers gave rise in eighteen fifty three and
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty five to epidemics of yellow fever, which previously
Speaker 1: had been rare, exploited, Sick, and full of despair, hundreds
Speaker 1: of Chinese workers in their families killed themselves and moss.
Speaker 1: In eighteen fifty four, more than six thousand laborers, perhaps
Speaker 1: twice that many died in the railroad's construction. Completed in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty five, the railroad allowed passengers to cross the
Speaker 1: Isthmus and leave Panama more quickly in three hours instead
Speaker 1: of three days required by Mueller Boat, charging twenty five
Speaker 1: dollars in gold for passenger and with forty passages annually.
Speaker 1: The railroad was a cash flow for its New York
Speaker 1: owners and netted more than seven million in its first
Speaker 1: six years of operation. So this is the kind of
Speaker 1: thing like I I heard as a kid that we
Speaker 1: built a railroad for Panama. You never hear about like
Speaker 1: the human cost. Like one of the things is there
Speaker 1: used to be a sizeable Chinese population in Panama, but
Speaker 1: they committed mass suicide because of how miserable the work was.
Speaker 1: It's just like that didn't make it into the history
Speaker 1: books that I that I came across um as a
Speaker 1: kid probably shouldn't. Uh the fact that to nine eleven's
Speaker 1: worth of laborers and maybe more died making the railroad.
Speaker 1: We also, I mean that was every railroad they were
Speaker 1: just like they were just like built in blood and bones.
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool stuff railroads anyway. So the human shrapnel
Speaker 1: from this railroad through Panama didn't stop it, just like
Speaker 1: the massive death toll that was made to build it.
Speaker 1: Because when they built the railroad. There had been this
Speaker 1: whole industry in Panama writing white people across the country
Speaker 1: for three days or so to get them to the
Speaker 1: port on the west coast of Panama, and that industry dies.
Speaker 1: So all of the money that used to be going
Speaker 1: to Panamanians is now going to this US owned railroad,
Speaker 1: So instead of flowing into the country, it flows to
Speaker 1: New York where you live. Yeah. So it's it's a
Speaker 1: it's basically a cycle where it's just like it's a
Speaker 1: it's a reinvestment cycle. Yeah, a reinvestment away from away
Speaker 1: from the place where the railroad actually exists, to the
Speaker 1: United States. It's a siphoning of wealth. Yeah. Yeah, it's great. Um,
Speaker 1: so this is an absolute They invented liberalism, Yeah, they
Speaker 1: figured it out real early. Panama was the test case.
Speaker 1: Uh so. Yeah, it's it's kind of a fucking disaster
Speaker 1: for Panama, and an economic depression strikes the isthmus as
Speaker 1: soon as the railroad really like gets going. Um. This
Speaker 1: leads to a simmering anti US sentiment, which was stoked
Speaker 1: by news that Bastard's pot alumni William Walker, had recently
Speaker 1: conquered nearby Nicaragua and declared at a slave state. We
Speaker 1: did a couple episodes on him back in the day.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that he was like an American who conquered
Speaker 1: Nicaragua briefly in order to spread slavery there. So this
Speaker 1: really freaked out people in Panama because a ton of
Speaker 1: black slaves in Panama had been freed while in Colombia
Speaker 1: had been freed in eighteen fifty two. Um, there were
Speaker 1: huge numbers of them in Panama to build the railroad,
Speaker 1: and they started to worry that America was coming for them. Right,
Speaker 1: we just got freed. This American just conquered Nicaragua to
Speaker 1: make slavery legal there. It's not far away from us. Clearly,
Speaker 1: they're getting ready to take us over and re enslave
Speaker 1: us again. And all of these tensions boiled over in
Speaker 1: April nineteen, eighteen fifty six, into what came to be
Speaker 1: called the Watermelon Riot. The gist of the story was
Speaker 1: that a drunken man named John Oliver um and I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure it's a different John Oliver than the guy
Speaker 1: who has a TV show so Television's darling. John Oliver
Speaker 1: was on his way to California in eighteen fifties six,
Speaker 1: waiting at a train station in Cologne, and he decided
Speaker 1: he wanted some watermelon, so he walks over to a
Speaker 1: fruit stand and because he's wasted, he just steals it. Now,
Speaker 1: the fruit stands owned by a guy named Jose Manuel
Speaker 1: Luna Uh, and Luna gets angry that John Oliver, NBC's
Speaker 1: darling has just walked off. Is it HBO? They're the
Speaker 1: same thing, they are, but they're not, they're not at all.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. So John Oliver, with his big Hollywood salary,
Speaker 1: steals some fucking watermelon and this guy Luna, gets really
Speaker 1: angry and he chases after him, being like, what the funk, dude,
Speaker 1: you make millions of dollars a year. John Oliver pulls
Speaker 1: a gun on him. Luna pulls a knife in return,
Speaker 1: which takes some takes some balls, like to for someone
Speaker 1: to pull a gun on you and you just pull
Speaker 1: a knife right back. That's a that's a move, um.
Speaker 1: And thankfully there's a lot of like Panamanians around. It's
Speaker 1: a crowded market area. And as soon as John Oliver
Speaker 1: pulls a gun, another man pulls like grabs the gun
Speaker 1: away from Oliver and takes it from him and it
Speaker 1: fires in the in the process of this, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't injure anyone. So John Oliver runs like hell um,
Speaker 1: but word of the theft in the confrontation spreads quickly
Speaker 1: and everybody's already angry at the United States here, So
Speaker 1: this kind of sparks a mob, and the mob heads
Speaker 1: to the train station, protesting the U S in general
Speaker 1: and protesting American travelers in particular. They assault people along
Speaker 1: the way and they loot traveler's luggage. By the time
Speaker 1: the violence dies down, sixteen passengers had been killed and
Speaker 1: another sixteen had been injured, and one or two locals
Speaker 1: were also killed. And just like the general melee that
Speaker 1: breaks out. So yeah, they kill a bunch of people. Um,
Speaker 1: this causes an uproar in the United States. Yeah. This
Speaker 1: you know, this is this is this is a this
Speaker 1: is a country that was funded basically on like they
Speaker 1: massacred nine people in Boston in time to start a war.
Speaker 1: Yeah much, I mean, and it's just you know, obviously
Speaker 1: America has changed since then, because now we're still in
Speaker 1: massacred nine people in Boston. We wouldn't do anything, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just Boston, right, Um, it's not like I don't
Speaker 1: know Pittsburgh, shout out to Pittsburgh. Um, so yeah, it's
Speaker 1: we're a different country then, and we get angry over this,
Speaker 1: but we don't go to war because again America is
Speaker 1: a lot chiller in these days. Um. We do, however,
Speaker 1: demand reparations from Columbia, which is broadly reasonable. You know,
Speaker 1: sixteen citizens get murdered in a in a riot. You know,
Speaker 1: you kind of sparked the riot by being shitty, but
Speaker 1: it's not unreasonably be like, hey, he should give us
Speaker 1: some money because a bunch of our people got killed,
Speaker 1: better than going to war. So at this point the
Speaker 1: United States is old. US is getting a better grade
Speaker 1: than I think New u s would have gotten because
Speaker 1: if sixteen Americans got killed in Panama to day, well
Speaker 1: we'll talk about what happens when one American gets killed
Speaker 1: in Panama in nineteen eighty nine. So the next couple
Speaker 1: commenced five months later, So they pay off the United
Speaker 1: States and we we we chill out. The next couple
Speaker 1: happens five months later. Due to internal unrest that started
Speaker 1: in the Panamanian General Assembly, the Blacks, which were Panama's
Speaker 1: opposition party, threatened to take up arms over a political dispute,
Speaker 1: William Mervin, commanding the U. S. Pacific Squadron, landed troops
Speaker 1: in Panama under the ages of protecting U. S. Citizens
Speaker 1: who lived in Panama from unrest. The whole situation ended uneventfully,
Speaker 1: but Mervin unwittingly established a pattern that would repeat itself
Speaker 1: more than a dozen times up to nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1: In fact, the United States intervened militarily on at least
Speaker 1: a dozen occasions in Panama just during the later half
Speaker 1: of the Night of the eighteen hundreds. So this guy Mervyn,
Speaker 1: he sends in U. S. Troops for the first time
Speaker 1: just to protect American citizens from unrest and local Panamanian politics,
Speaker 1: and that just keeps happening forever up until like literally
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties. In eighteen sixty, violence breaks out in
Speaker 1: the Panamanian led Slatter again. Black Panamanians take up arms
Speaker 1: against the government. US railway agent William Nelson writes worryingly
Speaker 1: to the US Console, the in words are at the
Speaker 1: railroad bridge, and I fear that if they get out
Speaker 1: of ammunition, they may come here to take our arms.
Speaker 1: Nelson begged the government to send in the Marines to
Speaker 1: protect the railroad. The Panamanian government also begged the US
Speaker 1: to send in the Marines, and again a popular domestic
Speaker 1: political movement was clamped down on with the help of
Speaker 1: North American soldiers. So this is the first time that
Speaker 1: we actually send in troops to shut down like a
Speaker 1: popular uprising, that's a local uprising. The Blacks as a
Speaker 1: political party are heavily dominated by like Caribbean immigrants who
Speaker 1: were brought in to build the railroad, and they're agitating
Speaker 1: for better, uh like treatment from the government. And because
Speaker 1: they're threatening the government, which is friendly to the United States,
Speaker 1: the US sends and marines to crack some skulls and
Speaker 1: stop them from you know, protesting. Uh. This would again
Speaker 1: content that's the whole history of the y car that
Speaker 1: Smedley Butler would agree with you, and he spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time in Panama. UM. So, the Civil War
Speaker 1: breaks out back in the United States, and after a
Speaker 1: year or two, it was pretty clear that ought to
Speaker 1: uh Abraham Lincoln that the United States wasn't going to
Speaker 1: get out of this thing without proclaiming, you know, some emancipation. Now,
Speaker 1: Abe was a bit of a racist himself, and he
Speaker 1: was still convinced that white people and black people could
Speaker 1: not co exist together in the same country. The only
Speaker 1: solution he could see was to find a big, empty
Speaker 1: foreign land that he could ship all of the United
Speaker 1: States as black people too. And this is how we
Speaker 1: got Liberia. As I think most people know. But Abe's
Speaker 1: first idea was actually Panama. See it was filled with
Speaker 1: coal mines, and in Lincoln's head, this made it the
Speaker 1: perfect place to send freed slaves. And I'm gonna quote
Speaker 1: again from Emperors in the Jungle by John Lindsay poland
Speaker 1: coal mines, he told a room full of free blacks
Speaker 1: and eight in August eighteen sixty two, will afford an
Speaker 1: opportunity to the inhabitants for immediate employment until they get
Speaker 1: ready to settle permanently in their homes. Columbia, however, saw
Speaker 1: the plan the kind of subtle invasion. Central American countries
Speaker 1: were also opposed, and many free blacks in the United
Speaker 1: States greeted Lincoln's proposal with hostility. It was scrapped. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was that was abs first idea. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: you know what, these freed slaves are gonna need to
Speaker 1: do coal mining. That'll make him happy. Philip fill the
Speaker 1: minds up. No, no, I mean it counted as woke
Speaker 1: for the day because he didn't think they should be
Speaker 1: able to earn money. So I guess I mean fair,
Speaker 1: but good on, good on you. It's there. No, So
Speaker 1: the Civil War ends, and yeah, I mean everybody's like
Speaker 1: it's it's right there. Yeah. Yeah, with Abraham Lincoln taking
Speaker 1: the role of ices. So the Civil War ends, and
Speaker 1: you know, pretty pretty much the best case scenario if
Speaker 1: you're gonna have a civil war, the worst people don't win.
Speaker 1: But then comes reconstruction, which is pretty much the worst
Speaker 1: case scenario. The US never gives up on its dream
Speaker 1: of a Panama Canal controlled controlled for the profit of
Speaker 1: the United States, but for a while, devastated by war,
Speaker 1: it had no ability to pursue that goal. So France
Speaker 1: steps in because France, you know, they're doing a lot
Speaker 1: better at this point, and they do have the ability
Speaker 1: to go into Panama and try to make a canal
Speaker 1: of their own, and they have experience in colonies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they've got they've got a lot more experience in colonies.
Speaker 1: They've got a better navy at this point. Um, they're
Speaker 1: really good at imperialism in these days. But you know what.
Speaker 1: They're bad at Chelsea building a fucking canal. And it's
Speaker 1: not the only it's not the only canal that they
Speaker 1: failed at building. No, no, this might be the worst
Speaker 1: failure of canal building probably that anyone has. This is
Speaker 1: second to the Suez Canal. Yeah. Second, well we'll see
Speaker 1: that they finished the Suez Canal though, right, I don't
Speaker 1: think the French did. Oh yeah, you're right. This is
Speaker 1: the same story because I think the British had to fit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: France has a proud history of fucking up canals, getting
Speaker 1: thousands of people killed, and then someone else finishes it. Well,
Speaker 1: here's another story of that. I'm gonna quote from a
Speaker 1: rite up by Thomas Leidenberg of the University of Houston.
Speaker 1: In the eighteen seventies, a brilliant French engineer by the
Speaker 1: name of Ferdinand de Lessups was put in charge of
Speaker 1: a project to replace the railroad link connecting the the
Speaker 1: Atlantic to the Pacific with the sea level Canal. De
Speaker 1: Lessups one worldwide acclaim for completing the Suez Canal, and
Speaker 1: he fervently believed that he was the best man to
Speaker 1: meet the new challenge, paying scant attention to reports by
Speaker 1: the American Army engineers that the obstacles in the mountains
Speaker 1: and jungles of Panama were too numerous. The great engineer
Speaker 1: determined to build a sea level canal like the one
Speaker 1: at Suez. De lessups attempted canal building in Panama was
Speaker 1: a disaster from the beginning to end. Malaria and yellow
Speaker 1: fever carried away the lives of French engineers, their families,
Speaker 1: and the hapless workers who took part in the project. Altogether,
Speaker 1: twenty thousand people died in the eight years, and fluding
Speaker 1: the best young engineers graduating from French universities. Nature itself
Speaker 1: conspired against the French canal builders. With an hour's slippery
Speaker 1: soil filled up with holes which had taken days to dig,
Speaker 1: Machines rusted in the rain and broken er heavy loads.
Speaker 1: The river Chagra rose up more than its normal forty
Speaker 1: feet and even wiped out the railroad tracks built above
Speaker 1: it thirty years earlier. Less Ups was forced to give
Speaker 1: up on his projected sea level canal after eight torturous years.
Speaker 1: By this time it had already cost twice the original
Speaker 1: estimate of a hundred and thirty one million dollars, with
Speaker 1: less than one third of the canal completed, the famous
Speaker 1: Canal Company to declared bankruptcy. De lessups in the company's
Speaker 1: directors had light about or covered up the many factors
Speaker 1: that plagued the canals progress, its costs, the death's caven's malaria,
Speaker 1: broken machinery, and the pickled corpses sent to French medical
Speaker 1: schools to help pay the bills. Yeah, they sent the
Speaker 1: corpses of the people who died building the canal to
Speaker 1: medical schools. Yeah, pickled them and mailed them over. I
Speaker 1: thought you used the word pickled. I wasn't. Yeah, all
Speaker 1: of like France's young engine years die and they just
Speaker 1: pickle the corpses and send them to medical schools because
Speaker 1: they're trying to make ends meet. It's so expensive. The
Speaker 1: thing that's most valuable about the canal winds up being
Speaker 1: the corpses of the men who try to build it.
Speaker 1: It's pretty great. Yeah, yeah, what what are you gonna dorry?
Speaker 1: Are you going to preserve a corpse in the word
Speaker 1: when you're talking about like a human. No, they didn't
Speaker 1: have refrigeration yet, didn't know. They did not pickle. They
Speaker 1: have pickles, though they have a lot of pickles. Those
Speaker 1: are your options back in the day. So this like
Speaker 1: almost leads to the collapse of the French government because
Speaker 1: it was such a big project that basically everyone in
Speaker 1: French society of any position of power was involved, not
Speaker 1: just like politicians, but journalists and editors of newspapers and
Speaker 1: business leaders. All of these guys have been bribed by
Speaker 1: members of the canal company in order to provide positive
Speaker 1: coverage and in order to like get the government on board.
Speaker 1: And when this thing fails, so does asterous lye. It
Speaker 1: like almost collapses the French government. It's it's hard to
Speaker 1: exaggerate how big of a funk up this canal is.
Speaker 1: It fucking rules In other words, it's a very fun story,
Speaker 1: minus the pickled part. That's the best part of it.
Speaker 1: That's literally not the best part of it. You know,
Speaker 1: you've really succeeded in building a canal when the corpses
Speaker 1: of the men who worked on it are the most
Speaker 1: valuable part of it, that's just awesome to me. Robert, Well,
Speaker 1: you know what the most valuable part of our podcast
Speaker 1: is are we selling pickled corpses? So we are absolutely
Speaker 1: not selling pickled corpses. I don't think you can guarantee
Speaker 1: that I can guarantee you we're not selling pickled corpses.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, who knows what ad is going to
Speaker 1: come on after this. I'm sure the fridge, I mean,
Speaker 1: that could be a new raytheon makes a lot of corpses.
Speaker 1: You're leaving money on the table by not pickling them.
Speaker 1: Let's just see what the ads happened to be. We're
Speaker 1: back and Chelsea just finished doing a little on the
Speaker 1: spot research. Well, y'all were hearing all those wonderful ads
Speaker 1: for pickled corpses on the Suez Canal because we were
Speaker 1: we were talking out of our our our rears a
Speaker 1: little bit there, Although it's a nice at anyway, Chelsea,
Speaker 1: why don't you throw out what you found? I found
Speaker 1: that the French did maintain control of the of of
Speaker 1: the Suez Canal for at least for at least a
Speaker 1: few years, but it basically had enormous difficulties and was
Speaker 1: a financial and economics sort of disaster for a few years.
Speaker 1: So that was a I just wanted to job. I
Speaker 1: just wanted to double check that because I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure it didn't end up well for the
Speaker 1: French either. There and and and you know what the
Speaker 1: death toll on the Suez Canal was. Uh no, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't have that in front of me. Okay, I'm curious.
Speaker 1: And it must have been astronomical. Yeah, because it's a
Speaker 1: it's it's basically a dessert and you have to it's
Speaker 1: it's not like you have, like you know, equatorial rains constantly.
Speaker 1: Holy shit, I just looked it up. A hundred twenty Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was didn't mark out for a well, yeah, a
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty thousand deaths among one point five million workers.
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ canals a brutal. Yeah, that's so many dead people.
Speaker 1: That's like a war. I don't know. So I guess
Speaker 1: we're really having trouble when we're trying to determine which
Speaker 1: canal is more of a funk up, because way more
Speaker 1: people died on the Suez Canal. But at least they
Speaker 1: got a canal out of the deal. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: but you know, maintaining control of it seems to be
Speaker 1: an issue. Yeah, that was also a problem for them.
Speaker 1: Good God Almighty, don't build canals, is the message I'm
Speaker 1: taking out of the existing one. Endlessly leave the land
Speaker 1: where it is. Bred them, don't build them, sail around
Speaker 1: fucking wherever. Just stop this terrible idea. It doesn't it's bad.
Speaker 1: Don't build canals. That's gonna be my only motto now. So, uh,
Speaker 1: French efforts in Panama end in disaster. Uh. And the
Speaker 1: US government was still really but so the French obviously
Speaker 1: failed to make this canal. And even though they fail
Speaker 1: their efforts, they're really worry the United States, UM, because
Speaker 1: we assume that like, okay, France didn't make it happen
Speaker 1: this time, but one of these fucking Europeans is going
Speaker 1: to figure out how to make a canal, and then
Speaker 1: they're gonna be making all that sweet canal money and
Speaker 1: we in the US are going to be left to
Speaker 1: sit and spin. Uh. And you know, this is the
Speaker 1: era of the Monroe doctrine, when President Monroe had been like,
Speaker 1: all of Latin America is basically our backyard, and if
Speaker 1: if Europe fox around there, then then we'll come. We'll
Speaker 1: come beat them up. And it was not like a
Speaker 1: we want to protect Latin America thing. It was a
Speaker 1: we want to profit off of Latin America. You guys,
Speaker 1: you guys steal Africa. Um. And President Rutherford Hades, after
Speaker 1: French failure in the canal, warned Europe that when it
Speaker 1: came to Panama, the policy of this country is a
Speaker 1: canal under a American control. Obviously, Panamanians were not consulted
Speaker 1: in this declaration, but Ruth Oft Hayes didn't really care
Speaker 1: what they thought. He was trying to scare Europe away
Speaker 1: from building a canal, and to this end, he warned
Speaker 1: them that if they did succeed in building a canal
Speaker 1: there and local unrest threatened their control of it, they
Speaker 1: would have to send in their navy and their soldiers.
Speaker 1: And since this would be a violation of the Monroe doctrine,
Speaker 1: the United States would get involved to fight Europeans trying
Speaker 1: to regain control of the canal. It's a little bit
Speaker 1: of i don't know, pre gun boat diplomacy there. And
Speaker 1: right around this same time, the United States is like
Speaker 1: the eighteen eighties, uh, eighteen seventies, eighteen eighties, the United
Speaker 1: States sends in a flotilla of ships to scout out
Speaker 1: the area around the Panamanian Isthmus and this is so
Speaker 1: that the United States can start making plans to construct
Speaker 1: a canal of their own. Again, the Colombian government was
Speaker 1: not consulted. Neither was anyone in Panama. We just send
Speaker 1: some boats over to scout shit out, and the president
Speaker 1: gives the ship's captain's orders to open fire on any
Speaker 1: local boats that try to stop them. This pisss off
Speaker 1: the Colombian government's representative in Washington, d See, and he
Speaker 1: complained in writing, when government's attempt to acquire land in
Speaker 1: foreign countries for construction or enterprises such as that under discussion,
Speaker 1: they normally begin by obtaining the consent of the sovereign
Speaker 1: of the country in which the land is located. Um,
Speaker 1: which is a fair point. But the United States is
Speaker 1: not going to do that. Uh. In the mid eighties,
Speaker 1: this piece of metal right here is sovereign. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: have we have the last argument of kings. Yeah, is
Speaker 1: the cannon. And it also is the last argument of
Speaker 1: people who don't really care if you have a king,
Speaker 1: because we got democracy guns. Baby, they're better than your
Speaker 1: king guns. I don't know anyway. In the mid eighteen eighties,
Speaker 1: Columbia was convulsed by a civil war with between the
Speaker 1: conservative government and an insurgent liberal army. The rebel leader,
Speaker 1: a guy named Preston, was ordered ordered a shipload of
Speaker 1: weapons from the United States, and we sold them to him.
Speaker 1: But when the shipment arrived in Central America, the U. S.
Speaker 1: Customs clear refused to release east them at the pressuring
Speaker 1: of Columbia's right wing government. This provokes a riot, and
Speaker 1: Preston briefly took US citizen hostage to try to get
Speaker 1: his guns released. The U. S. Marines were sent into
Speaker 1: Panama again, and the resulting situation degenerated into a riot.
Speaker 1: Some rioters looted property owned by the French canal company,
Speaker 1: who asked and received the help of U. S. Marines
Speaker 1: to round up and execute looters. The New York Times
Speaker 1: reported at the time fifty eight persons, among whom it
Speaker 1: is believed were several innocent people, were thus summarily summarily dispatched.
Speaker 1: Just a good solid report. They were probably innocent, but
Speaker 1: you know we shot summary execution. Yeah. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: so much that's in that that is just classic United
Speaker 1: States right up to today, Like, oh, there's this rubble
Speaker 1: and he wants guns, will sell them to him, but
Speaker 1: then we won't let him take them because he's going
Speaker 1: to fight against the government that that we broadly support.
Speaker 1: Because they acquiesced to our needs. Yeah, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: the it's the equivalent of the military age mail today. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's fucking around contract ship. Yeah, I mean it's everything.
Speaker 1: It's everything American in one perfect little package. Uh. We're
Speaker 1: We've just always been the irrepressible little scamp that we
Speaker 1: are today. So the war turned against the rebels, and
Speaker 1: in March they fled the city of Cologne, leaving it
Speaker 1: burning behind them. The fires tour through Panama's largest city,
Speaker 1: leaving thousands of mostly black Panamanians homeless and launching a
Speaker 1: refugee crisis. The United States Secretary of the Navy saw
Speaker 1: this all as a great opportunity to make the case
Speaker 1: that the U. S. Navy deserved a bigger role in
Speaker 1: Latin America and thus more money. He dispatched ships to
Speaker 1: Columbia to apprehend the rebel leader. He also sent in
Speaker 1: Marines to protect the railroad in US property from unrest.
Speaker 1: The Commodore in charge of all this was given special
Speaker 1: orders to involve the press and give them all of
Speaker 1: the access they wanted so that Navy could keep the
Speaker 1: country with us in the matter. The guy the commodore
Speaker 1: was also ordered to scout out good potential sites for
Speaker 1: new navy bases. No attempt was taken to help refugees,
Speaker 1: or to eliminate the or to alleviate the crisis. No
Speaker 1: humanity arian aide was dispensed, but the Civil War led
Speaker 1: to the start of what would become a century long
Speaker 1: U S. Navy presence on the Panamanian ISTHMUS. Now this
Speaker 1: should make it clear that from the beginning, the only
Speaker 1: value Panama held to the United States government and military
Speaker 1: was due to its location. The people who actually lived
Speaker 1: there were an afterthought at best. And I meant it
Speaker 1: when I said at best, because when US officials spent
Speaker 1: time thinking about Panamanians, they tended to get really fucking
Speaker 1: racist about it. Here's how the New York Herald wrote
Speaker 1: about Panamanians in this period. I'm gonna try to put
Speaker 1: on my old timey voice, my old timey racist voice.
Speaker 1: Oh it's a very reliable newspaper too. It's the fake
Speaker 1: Zoo incident. I think was the New York Herald. Wait,
Speaker 1: what was the fake two incident? Oh it's an interesting
Speaker 1: like do your thing, dear bit. First of all, I
Speaker 1: go crap this, Okay. Uh So here's the New York Herald,
Speaker 1: writing about Panamanians, the vast majority of the inhabitants of
Speaker 1: the Isthmus have never emerged from a half savage condition
Speaker 1: or else have relapsed into that state. But no one
Speaker 1: can a to underestimate the prowess of the savages when
Speaker 1: they are mustard and swarms as they can be here
Speaker 1: from the miserable morass and the jungle clothed mountains. That's
Speaker 1: some good that's some good racist pros right there. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is this is coming from the same news
Speaker 1: that yeah, and the like. Apparently there was a awful calamity,
Speaker 1: was like the headline in on November nine, eighteen seventy four. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Herald filled this entire front page news to an
Speaker 1: account of an escape from the Central Park Zoo by
Speaker 1: basically like a herd of animals like tigers, bears. Uh
Speaker 1: and uh that twelve of the wild carnivorous beasts are
Speaker 1: still at large. The Herald warned and left in a
Speaker 1: very tiny little bit of small print and said that
Speaker 1: this is that all of this, uh sounds true, but
Speaker 1: it's not. Wait what they just wrote a fake article
Speaker 1: that it's not true. By the way, heads up. This
Speaker 1: was a joke. Amazing a little just a little bit
Speaker 1: of light libel. It's history like that that makes you
Speaker 1: proud to be a journalist. Yeah, just just lying about
Speaker 1: a zoo breakout for nothing. Oh god, that's good. That's good,
Speaker 1: you know it really it really serves to point out
Speaker 1: how respectable journalism has always been as a discipline. Um,
Speaker 1: just just makes my heart swell. So pamphleteera was the
Speaker 1: original Twitter. Yeah, I mean there's actually a lot to
Speaker 1: say about how um, the old kind of like and
Speaker 1: this is in Europe to like the network of pamphlets
Speaker 1: and newsletters and stuff that were just like these cheap,
Speaker 1: little kind of mimiographed things printed out. We're like what
Speaker 1: eight Chan became today. Right, It's where all of your
Speaker 1: anti Semitic conspiracy theories, which this is actually happening in
Speaker 1: this period of time eighteen seventies, eighteen eighties, eighteen nineties.
Speaker 1: This is like the spread of of the toxic ship
Speaker 1: that we have today that goes through through Twitter and
Speaker 1: parlor and stuff like that. It was spreading in these
Speaker 1: little shitty pamphlets and these yellow press magazines and stuff
Speaker 1: like the New York Herald. You know, it's it's it's cool,
Speaker 1: I guess is what I'm saying. This has been a
Speaker 1: problem with forever. It's pre industrial Twitter, and then you
Speaker 1: have like you have posted, you have like the industrial
Speaker 1: area era of like circulated newspapers, widely circulated newspapers, and
Speaker 1: now we're going back, you know, from mass media to
Speaker 1: a decentralized platform anyway, and part of well, now, partly
Speaker 1: I want to dig into this because part of why
Speaker 1: this is a good comparison to make is that the
Speaker 1: purpose of all of the racist propaganda spreading in places
Speaker 1: like Parlor and Twitter right now is to build up
Speaker 1: a kind of xenophobic and explicitly kind of exterminationist far right.
Speaker 1: And the purpose of all of the racism that like
Speaker 1: US newspapers were writing about Panamanians in the eighteen eighties
Speaker 1: and nineties was to justify the US taking over the
Speaker 1: country to build a canal. These people are savages, their monsters,
Speaker 1: and they have this They don't deserve this valuable land.
Speaker 1: We have to take it from them because they're they're
Speaker 1: too incompetent and dangerous to manage it themselves. It is
Speaker 1: it's the same basic process, right, It's the same thing
Speaker 1: as scaring people about Mexican immigrants in order to, you know,
Speaker 1: distract from the damage that neoliberal capitalism is doing from
Speaker 1: the working class and blame it on immigrants and stuff
Speaker 1: like it is or a fake or a fake you know,
Speaker 1: central park Zewo escape effect and for park Zewo escape,
Speaker 1: which I guess has less of a political purpose to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it did, but I don't want to I
Speaker 1: don't want to dig into that. Yeah, I'm sure there
Speaker 1: was some bizarre, bizarre racist underpinning of that whole story anyway.
Speaker 1: Uh So, Yeah, all of these interventions by U S
Speaker 1: soldiers had been firmly one sided affairs up until this point.
Speaker 1: Through the eighteen eighties, the U S would either gun
Speaker 1: down or capture and execute people with very little resistance.
Speaker 1: And this didn't look good in the media, right, Nobody,
Speaker 1: nobody wants to see their soldiers is just shooting a
Speaker 1: bunch of defenseless people protesting for better living conditions. So
Speaker 1: the American media made sure to build a narrative of
Speaker 1: Panamanian natives is terrifying, violent monsters. Irvan King of the
Speaker 1: New York Tribune wrote that the people of Panama were
Speaker 1: quote to all intents and purposes savages the Isthmian the
Speaker 1: Isthmian Indians are an expert and a kind of savage
Speaker 1: warfare and are always aided by a mob of negroes.
Speaker 1: Some bad stuff. Yeah. King was an expert propagandist for
Speaker 1: US interests, and while the locals were slavering beasts. In
Speaker 1: his articles, US soldiers were described as having captured the
Speaker 1: place as if by magic. Their neat and clean appearance
Speaker 1: and quick and precise movements solicited the admiration and respective
Speaker 1: men of all nations, even that of those who are
Speaker 1: most opposed to the proceeding. I think about like when
Speaker 1: Trump shot missiles at Syria, and that was an NBC
Speaker 1: anchor was like talking about the beauty of our weapons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's this, it's it's this constant need to like contrast
Speaker 1: US military intervention as like shining and clean and precise
Speaker 1: to the to the violent savages that we're deploying our
Speaker 1: weapons against. It again, something that has now not changed
Speaker 1: in a hundred and what forty years fifty something like that.
Speaker 1: It's rade. So a lot of powerful, rich white North
Speaker 1: Americans had a vested interest in getting and keeping other
Speaker 1: Americans US citizens interested in Panama. Obviously, a Panama Canal
Speaker 1: would have both military and economic benefits, but those were
Speaker 1: not the only reasons for such a venture. US naval
Speaker 1: strategist Alfred Mahon was one of the first to suggest
Speaker 1: building a canal in order in order to make it
Speaker 1: easier to people the US West coast with white Europeans.
Speaker 1: From John Lindsay Poland quote Mahon, who strongly influenced the
Speaker 1: young Theodore Roosevelt, believed that control of the seed determined
Speaker 1: the world struggles for power, and had done so throughout history.
Speaker 1: Mayhan's strategic thinking about the Panama Canal also had a
Speaker 1: racial dimension. A canal would allow Europeans to reach Oregon
Speaker 1: and California without even stepping off the coast en route,
Speaker 1: thus avoiding contact with savages in the Western plains or
Speaker 1: along the Panama Railroad. The greatest factor of sea power
Speaker 1: in any region is the distribution and numbers of its
Speaker 1: population and their characteristics. Mayhan wrote in an essay about
Speaker 1: the canal two years before its completion, the foremost question
Speaker 1: of the Pacific as affecting sea power is the filling
Speaker 1: up of the now partly vacant regions our own Pacific
Speaker 1: coast by a population of European derivation, it is most
Speaker 1: desirable that such immigration should be from northern Europe. So
Speaker 1: a big part of why the Panama Canal whether such
Speaker 1: immediacy to it is that in this period of time,
Speaker 1: it's actually easier in some cases for people from China,
Speaker 1: from Japan, from Asia to migrate to the U. S.
Speaker 1: West Coast or to the North American West Coast, because
Speaker 1: it's kind of a more direct route for them, because
Speaker 1: you gotta go all the way through fucking Panama to
Speaker 1: get there from the east coast, and that makes it
Speaker 1: harder for Europeans to fill up California, Oregon in Washington,
Speaker 1: UM and so Mayhan and guys like Roosevelts started to
Speaker 1: think that, like we in order to stop the Asiatic
Speaker 1: hordes from dominating the West coast, we have to cut
Speaker 1: a hole through Panama. That's another major factor in this um.
Speaker 1: Asian immigration threatened political efficiency, in Mahean's view, because of
Speaker 1: the different ethnic people's ideas quote do not allow intermingling
Speaker 1: and consequently, if admitted, are ominous of national weakness through
Speaker 1: flaws in homogeneity. Roosevelt shared Mahean's thesis no greater calamity
Speaker 1: could now befall the United States that they have the
Speaker 1: Pacific Slope fill up with a Mongolian population. Peake cringe.
Speaker 1: Pete Roosevelt, I mean, he's this, It's there's there's two
Speaker 1: Roosevelts in history. One of them is the Roosevelt you
Speaker 1: learn about when you're a fourteen year old boy and
Speaker 1: the boy scouts who is rad and like every young
Speaker 1: man who likes knives in the wilderness is hero, right.
Speaker 1: He and John the rough writers and like Hike and
Speaker 1: with John Muir, and he's exploring the Amazon and he is,
Speaker 1: you know, getting shot in the middle of the speech,
Speaker 1: getting malaria. Well the Amazon does finally get It's like
Speaker 1: Latin America gets its revenge on Roosevelt in the end.
Speaker 1: But you when you learn about him as a young
Speaker 1: like as like I'm literally holding a machette right now,
Speaker 1: as the young kind of boy that I grew up
Speaker 1: like you grew up idolizing Teddy Roosevelt. And then my
Speaker 1: adulthood and I think a lot of people's adulthood is
Speaker 1: a long process of learning, Oh my god, he was
Speaker 1: one of the worst people who ever lived, just a
Speaker 1: not just racist within a time of racism, but like
Speaker 1: an arch an arch bigot of his day, like it's
Speaker 1: so so bad and he's so he did split the
Speaker 1: vote and allowed somebody even worse to come into power. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he did, he did, he did. He fumed up in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways politically. He did also give us
Speaker 1: the National Park System, which is I mean, that's the
Speaker 1: thing about America. It's like with Eisenhower, where there's a
Speaker 1: lot of horrible stuff, including the military industrial complex that
Speaker 1: you but we got the Interstates. Uh, it's very frustrating,
Speaker 1: the comp past job of the AUTOMU. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: we will talk about the only US president that you
Speaker 1: can even sort of feel good about in this episode two. Um,
Speaker 1: who's who's the only US president who doesn't funk over Panama?
Speaker 1: Jimmy Jimmy Carter. I'm sure that's not a surprise c anybody. Um. So.
Speaker 1: Columbia had another civil war from eighteen ninety nine to
Speaker 1: nineteen o two. This one was again between liberal and
Speaker 1: conservative factions in the government. The Liberals were particularly popular
Speaker 1: in rural areas among the peasantry. Before long, the war
Speaker 1: became a fight between the left wing masses of peasants
Speaker 1: in the country and poor laborers on the left in
Speaker 1: Panama cities and wealthy conservative central conservatives who ran the
Speaker 1: central government of Colombia. Liberal troops gained control of most
Speaker 1: of Panama in nineteen o one, and again they're fighting
Speaker 1: against the government in Bogata at this point, and the
Speaker 1: government in Bogata goes to the US to beg for help,
Speaker 1: taking advantage of the bid Lack Treaty, which again gives
Speaker 1: the US the right to use force to defit into
Speaker 1: its railroads and the canal zone, or the zone that
Speaker 1: they think will be the canal. So the bid Luck
Speaker 1: Treaty was just meant so the U s could protect
Speaker 1: a future canal and protect the railroad that they have,
Speaker 1: But as soon as Bogata calls in them for help,
Speaker 1: they use it to justify going in to crack down
Speaker 1: on a left wing populist movement that's threatening to free
Speaker 1: Panama from Colombian control. Captain Thomas Perry and his gunboat
Speaker 1: the Iowa, sail up and warn the liberal military leaders
Speaker 1: that he's going to send in the Marines if liberals
Speaker 1: interfere with the railroad. Because of how things were laid
Speaker 1: out geographically, this made it impossible for the Liberals to
Speaker 1: kick the central government out of the Isthmus and complete
Speaker 1: their victory. Because of where the railroads located, it basically
Speaker 1: lets the U. S. Marines wall off government controlled Panama
Speaker 1: from the regions that the liberals control, so they're forced
Speaker 1: to sign a peace settlement which has written out under
Speaker 1: the watchful eye of U. S. Navy officers. The treaty
Speaker 1: did not last, though, and fighting started up literally a
Speaker 1: month later. The liberals quickly took again all of Panama
Speaker 1: except for the big cities, and again Club asked for
Speaker 1: the United States to intervene. Marines were sent in the
Speaker 1: protect Cologne and Panama City. At this point, the US
Speaker 1: throughout the bid lect treaty entirely and started stationing troops
Speaker 1: on trains, saying that only U. S. Soldiers were allowed
Speaker 1: to use the railwaid ways and basically acting as armed
Speaker 1: enforces for the failed Colombian government. US interventions stopped a
Speaker 1: Liberal victory which would have led to Panama separating and
Speaker 1: establishing itself as an independent nation. By the end of
Speaker 1: the civil war, which could have ended fairly quickly but
Speaker 1: was elongated by years due to the United States, Panama
Speaker 1: was completely fucking devastated, and the Colombian government was broke.
Speaker 1: Six of Panama's cattle were killed during the fighting, thousands
Speaker 1: of civilians were turned into refugees, agriculture broke down, and
Speaker 1: the local economy shattered entirely. The only places that were
Speaker 1: left sort of intact with the cities, which were dominated
Speaker 1: by conservative elites who had by this point learned well
Speaker 1: that their continued comfort relied on pleasing the North Americans.
Speaker 1: Now right, yeah, it's not great now. Right before the
Speaker 1: start of the Columbian Civil War in eighteen the US
Speaker 1: had gone to war with Spain. This had been a
Speaker 1: fairly quick and easy victory, but there had been one
Speaker 1: major snack. The USA's most powerful battleship, the Oregon, had
Speaker 1: been docked in San Francisco. Now, the Oregon had never
Speaker 1: been used in war, and obviously American North American people
Speaker 1: were really excited to see how good this ship was
Speaker 1: going to be at killing foreigners. But it was far away,
Speaker 1: and it took it weeks to actually get to Cuba,
Speaker 1: and so it missed all of the fun fighting and stuff.
Speaker 1: Um And like the news as it's sailing, the news
Speaker 1: is breathlessly covering how far the Oregans made it because
Speaker 1: everybody's just got such a boner to see how this
Speaker 1: modern warship fucking you know, kills people. Um, And because
Speaker 1: the Oregon gets there so late, all of these pundits
Speaker 1: in the news are like, you know, if we had
Speaker 1: a pan a canal and Panama, this eight thousand mile
Speaker 1: journey would have just been four thousand miles and we
Speaker 1: could have watched this boat kill Spaniards. Really, that wouldn't
Speaker 1: that have been nice? That is a priorities. So the
Speaker 1: fact that the Oregon takes so long to get into
Speaker 1: the fight as the last draw for hawks in the
Speaker 1: US defense establishment. With a canal in Panama, they argued,
Speaker 1: and this was actually like, militarily is a good point.
Speaker 1: The same fleet would be able to protect both the
Speaker 1: Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Right, you don't need two feets
Speaker 1: if you can sail went around both sides. Now, when
Speaker 1: Teddy Roosevelt became president, he'd made building a canal in
Speaker 1: Panama one of his top goals. That this canal would
Speaker 1: be in Panama was not yet a foregone conclusion, though
Speaker 1: many in Congress wanted to build through Nicaragua, which would
Speaker 1: be you know, it would be a longer canal, but
Speaker 1: it would also probably be easier and safer to build
Speaker 1: because of Nicaraguan geography and stuff. So enter the New
Speaker 1: Panama Canal Company, which was run by the same people
Speaker 1: who had managed the disastrous French canal project that could
Speaker 1: kill twenty thousand people. One of these people was Philippe
Speaker 1: bunal Varia. He and one of his shareholders weren't warned
Speaker 1: the United States to pick Panama because they'd gone to
Speaker 1: all the wanted the United States to pick Panama because
Speaker 1: they'd gone to all the trouble of purchasing a canal's
Speaker 1: worth of land and from the Colombian government. If they
Speaker 1: could sell it to the USA, it would mitigate the
Speaker 1: horrible financial losses they had suffered failing to build a
Speaker 1: canal for France. Thomas Leidenberg rights for the University of
Speaker 1: Houston quote by priority agreement, The New Panama Company had
Speaker 1: until December thirty one, nineteen o three, before the areas
Speaker 1: approved by the Old Canal Company, as well as the
Speaker 1: construction machinery, railroad track, locomotives and so forth, would be
Speaker 1: deeded to the Columbia. Then Colombia and not the New
Speaker 1: Panama Canal company could sell these rights, for which the
Speaker 1: new canal company was demanding forty million dollars from the
Speaker 1: United States. Congressmen serving on a committee to inspect the
Speaker 1: sites where the canal might be built were invited to
Speaker 1: talk with officials in France, where they were entertained lavishly
Speaker 1: and presented with the French perspective on the doomed canal
Speaker 1: project for five weeks. Then their fridge hosts brought the
Speaker 1: congressman to Panama, where canal company officials showed them only
Speaker 1: what the company wanted them to see. As luck would
Speaker 1: have it, a volcano and Nicaragua erupted in nineteen o
Speaker 1: two for the first time in sixty eight years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Bueno Veria made quick quickly made postage stamps as
Speaker 1: a reminder of the eruption and sent them to members
Speaker 1: of Congress. Not surprisingly, Congress selected the Panama route. Jesus,
Speaker 1: it's a really convenient volcano eruption, historically significant like natural occurrence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is why the Panama Canal is not in Nicaragua. Well,
Speaker 1: also would have been the Nicaraguan Canal. But yeah, and
Speaker 1: of course Buenoveria, being a smart guy, is like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we gotta like remind them of of how dangerous Nicaragua's
Speaker 1: camp canal there we'll get volcanoed. Uh So. Obviously the
Speaker 1: whole situation was not quite as simple as Buenoveria made
Speaker 1: it out to be though. For one thing, the French
Speaker 1: were selling land they didn't have the right to sell
Speaker 1: because under their agreement with Colombia, that land was supposed
Speaker 1: to revert to Colombian control and all of the equipment
Speaker 1: pretty soon. And they also legally did not have the
Speaker 1: right to sell that land to a foreign power because
Speaker 1: it was not their land. Obviously, the United States not
Speaker 1: care about this ship now, we do. We do not
Speaker 1: give one solitary funk about what Columbia's contract with the
Speaker 1: French says. Um any Yeah, And obviously, so the government
Speaker 1: in Bogata is really unhappy with the fact that the
Speaker 1: US is talking with the French like this, but they're
Speaker 1: effective count Like, they can't really counter this because Bogata
Speaker 1: is kind of in the middle of nowhere right in
Speaker 1: this period of time, they don't have reliable telegraph connections.
Speaker 1: It takes other representatives a while to get messages anywhere.
Speaker 1: Um and when they eventually get in touch with the
Speaker 1: US government and let them know that they don't agree
Speaker 1: to the purchase. Washington said, like, by the time Columbia
Speaker 1: is able to get a message out that like, hey,
Speaker 1: the French don't have the right to sell you this stuff, um,
Speaker 1: negotiations have already progressed. Now the US does try to
Speaker 1: make a deal with Bogata. They're like, what if we
Speaker 1: give you ten million of the forty million that we're
Speaker 1: going to give to the French and a quarter of
Speaker 1: a million dollars a year in rent. So we send
Speaker 1: this offer back to Bogata and there's no response for
Speaker 1: what Teddy Roosevelt considers to be an unacceptable length of time.
Speaker 1: The President starts to get afraid that they're going to
Speaker 1: have to be forced to go back and pic Nicaraguay
Speaker 1: after all, and angry Teddy gets racist at a staff meeting,
Speaker 1: yelling this is like, like, so America right now, it's
Speaker 1: not Yeah, I think peak United States, Peak USA right now,
Speaker 1: And again peak Teddy. Those contemptible little creatures in Bogata
Speaker 1: ought to understand how much they are jeopardizing things and
Speaker 1: imperiling their own future. I'm sorry, temptable little creatures. So
Speaker 1: this is so this is the this is the this
Speaker 1: is the dawn of the big stick of the Yeah,
Speaker 1: he is about to use his big stick. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And he doesn't speak softly either. That always goes together
Speaker 1: in the quote. But he's a pretty loud guy, you
Speaker 1: know who does speak softly while carrying a big stick,
Speaker 1: A big stick that they will sell you for a
Speaker 1: reasonable price. Raytheon, Oh God, I was coming. Ray Theon
Speaker 1: does speak softly. You rarely hear statements from the Raytheon corporation.
Speaker 1: They prefer to speak through their missiles that are made
Speaker 1: out of knives. Breda, And thank you for that, Chelsea.
Speaker 1: I was out of breath from yelling products. Still, so
Speaker 1: the reality of the situation so obviously, like the US
Speaker 1: is like trying to at least kind of sort of
Speaker 1: do the right thing. When Columbia points out that the
Speaker 1: French don't have the right to sell this car, okay,
Speaker 1: we'll we'll pay you a quarter of what we were
Speaker 1: going to pay the French company. And they send this
Speaker 1: out and they don't get a response for a long time,
Speaker 1: and part of the reason why the response is delayed
Speaker 1: is the fault of a lawyer for the French company,
Speaker 1: Cromwell who was deliberately trying to gum things up in
Speaker 1: order to make the Americans angry at the Colombians. And
Speaker 1: one of the things he wants to avoid because he's
Speaker 1: getting a cut of what the French company makes, he
Speaker 1: doesn't want the company to part with any of the
Speaker 1: forty million dollars they're being paid um by the Americans,
Speaker 1: so he doesn't want the Colombian government to get paid off.
Speaker 1: And he both like kind of jams up the works
Speaker 1: within the Colombian government. And he has several meetings in
Speaker 1: Rose with Roosevelt where he tries to convince him basically
Speaker 1: that hey, you know, the Panamanians don't even want to
Speaker 1: be a part of Colombia, and if Panama is an
Speaker 1: independent country, this whole process of negotiation is going to
Speaker 1: be a lot easier. Um. He also pays like journalists
Speaker 1: in the United States to write articles on this same
Speaker 1: like in this same line, he bribes the New York
Speaker 1: World to put out an article because he knows that
Speaker 1: Teddy reads the New York World, and the article announces
Speaker 1: the state of Panama stands ready to secede from Colombia
Speaker 1: and enter into a canal treaty with the United States.
Speaker 1: So the final straw comes in late nineteen o three,
Speaker 1: when the Colombian government rejects the US offer and demands
Speaker 1: more money in exchange for the canal. The Colombian government
Speaker 1: is very reasonably like, why is a French company getting
Speaker 1: three quarters of the money you're paying for this canal
Speaker 1: when it's our fucking land and they don't have the
Speaker 1: right to sell it to you. And this really pisses
Speaker 1: off Roosevelt because he doesn't want any delay. He calls
Speaker 1: the Colombian people jack rabbits and a corrupt pithecoid community
Speaker 1: undeserving of the rights and privileges enjoyed by Europeans, and
Speaker 1: this causes Teddy Roosevelt to give the green light for
Speaker 1: a US backed separatist coup in Panama. Now, Roosevelt and
Speaker 1: his cronies had been chatting for a while about how
Speaker 1: much easier this whole business would be if Panama were
Speaker 1: its own country, conveniently dominated by the United States, and
Speaker 1: obviously Cromwell had stoked these conversations. No one seemed to
Speaker 1: think it was ironic that the United States had just
Speaker 1: intervened repeatedly in a civil war to stop Panama from
Speaker 1: separating from Colombia. Now, though the United States supported Panamanian
Speaker 1: independence from a right up by the BBC quote, there
Speaker 1: was indeed an independence movement in Panama centered around the
Speaker 1: American owned railroad between Cologne and Panama City. This also
Speaker 1: happened to be represented by Cromwell, and it was Cromwell
Speaker 1: who sent a man he believed to be one of
Speaker 1: Panama's conspirators, Gabrielle du Bac, to see Hay, who was
Speaker 1: like the Secretary of State at the time. During that meeting,
Speaker 1: Hay claimed that if revolutionaries were to seize power in Panama,
Speaker 1: the United States could stop Colombian troops from intervening under
Speaker 1: the guys of protecting the railway. And again this is
Speaker 1: like the bid Lack Treaty. Unfortunately for Cromwell, Dubach reported
Speaker 1: everything to the Colombian legation, double crossed exposed an unnerved
Speaker 1: Cromwell disowned the genuine Panamanian rebel He had also been
Speaker 1: dealing with Manuel Amador Guerrero. But Amador was quickly taken
Speaker 1: up by Bueno Varia, who sent him back to Panama
Speaker 1: with a revolution kit, a proclamation of independence, draft constitution,
Speaker 1: a homemade flag, and a promise of a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars to underwrite the new government. It was quite by chance.
Speaker 1: The frenchman later insisted that he bumped into the U. S.
Speaker 1: Secretary of the Navy while strolling around Washington, who told
Speaker 1: him that an American gunboat was on its way to
Speaker 1: Cologne when Ovaria sent Amador and his accomplice as a
Speaker 1: coded cable giving them the news which convinced them of
Speaker 1: American support for their revolution. So well, lot is happening here,
Speaker 1: but gist of it is the French find a Panamanian
Speaker 1: revel give him a flag that they made themselves, a
Speaker 1: constitution that they made themselves, and a hundred thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: and say go start a revolution. Will take care of
Speaker 1: the rest. And then the same French representative of the
Speaker 1: Canal Company goes to the U. S. Secretary of the
Speaker 1: Navy and is like, will you shoot the Colombians if
Speaker 1: they try to stop this? And the Secretary of the
Speaker 1: Navy is like, yeah, why the funk not? Yeah, let's go.
Speaker 1: It's rad So the panem we're on You're on our
Speaker 1: side now, So now everyone's fine with an independent Panama.
Speaker 1: And that is what happens. The Panamanian rebels use the
Speaker 1: money the US had given them to bribe the Colombian
Speaker 1: military in Panama, and on November three nine, Panama to
Speaker 1: claes it's independence. More US money and silver coins was
Speaker 1: handed out to hundreds of Colombian soldiers who had all
Speaker 1: been bribed to go along with it. Amador gave an
Speaker 1: Independence Day speech where he declared, the world is astounded
Speaker 1: in our heroism. Yesterday we were slaves of Colombia. Today
Speaker 1: we are free. Long lived President Roosevelt. Yeah no, did
Speaker 1: not age well, yeah, free would be a little bit
Speaker 1: much to state about the status of Panamanians in the
Speaker 1: new order of things. I didn't I didn't like that
Speaker 1: very much. So the U. S. State Department recognizes Panama
Speaker 1: as an independent nation. Several hours after the declaration, the press,
Speaker 1: who weren't very corrupt, all attacked Teddy Roosevelt for this,
Speaker 1: pointing out that basically he had stolen Panama from Colombia
Speaker 1: and blatantly violated US treaties with Columbia um now. The
Speaker 1: New York Times called it an act of sordid conquest.
Speaker 1: Roosevelt responded by pointing out that no US troops or
Speaker 1: ships had been in Panama City, but it was taken,
Speaker 1: so how could this be an active conquest. Roosevelt told
Speaker 1: Congress that the people of Panama rose literally as one man.
Speaker 1: A senator responded, the one man was Roosevelt. That's solid
Speaker 1: congressing guy. So Roosevelt immediately authorized the negotiation of a
Speaker 1: new canal treaty with the new government of Panama. The
Speaker 1: negotiation was handed by Bueno Varia, who had been permitted
Speaker 1: to by the new government to discuss arrangements with the US.
Speaker 1: So the new Panamanian government says to Bueno Varia, who
Speaker 1: was the guy who had told the people who became
Speaker 1: the new Panamanian government to start a revolution, They're like,
Speaker 1: you can start negotiations with the United States, but he
Speaker 1: had not been approved to actually sign a treaty or
Speaker 1: conclude negotiations. Bueno Varia ignored this. He in the United
Speaker 1: States decided that actual Panamanians were still not a necessary
Speaker 1: part of the negotiations. They concluded a treaty, which was
Speaker 1: ratified by the new Panamanian government after Teddy Roosevelt threatened
Speaker 1: to let Columbia invade if they didn't ratify it. No
Speaker 1: Panamanians actually signed the treaty giving the US the right
Speaker 1: to build a Panama Canal. Hey, it sounds like how
Speaker 1: foreign policies work fill last basically the eighth century. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this is this is we're definitely, like Teddy is,
Speaker 1: establishing a lot of how US foreign relations and interventions
Speaker 1: will work for more than a century afterwards. It's pretty great. Now.
Speaker 1: Under the treaty, the United States was given control and
Speaker 1: sovereignty over territory including and around the canal zone. Um,
Speaker 1: and it was supposed to be in perpetuity, right, so
Speaker 1: basically forever we get this territory. Roosevelt was over the
Speaker 1: moon with the deal, but he had no trouble justifying
Speaker 1: the blatant and shameless contempt for a people's right to
Speaker 1: self determination. He said, quote, reasons of convenience have been
Speaker 1: superseded by reasons of vital necessity, which do not admit
Speaker 1: acts of infinite delays. If ever, a government could be
Speaker 1: said to have received a mandate from civilization, the United
Speaker 1: States holds that position with regard to the inter Oceanic Canal. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: we stole this land from Panama. Yeah, we didn't ask
Speaker 1: them or like, and we violated our principles of democracy.
Speaker 1: But divine right, divine not just write all of civilization
Speaker 1: demands that we make this canal, and then it be
Speaker 1: as the profit from it. Right. But of course the
Speaker 1: United States was not building a canal in Panama purely
Speaker 1: for the good civilization. We were doing it for profit,
Speaker 1: for military advantage, and to extend the white race across
Speaker 1: the west coast of North America. The agreement Washington and
Speaker 1: Panama signed was heavily influenced by the fact that the
Speaker 1: Isthmus had been devastated by war and that Panama's continued
Speaker 1: existence was contingent upon US goodwill. In their new constitution,
Speaker 1: Panama was officially a protectorate of the United States, who
Speaker 1: had the power to intervene militarily quote in any part
Speaker 1: of the Republic of Panama to re establish public peace
Speaker 1: and constitutional order in the event of their being disturbed.
Speaker 1: So we take the bid Lack Treaty and we just
Speaker 1: extended to now that we're building a canal, we can
Speaker 1: send our soldiers anywhere in Panama for any reason. That's
Speaker 1: wrap US efforts in Panama started with the removal of
Speaker 1: nearly a hundred million cubic yards of soil which were
Speaker 1: dumped just sort of wherever four dred and twenty three
Speaker 1: square kilometers to be flooded for the project, which led
Speaker 1: to the creation of Gattan Lake. This required the displacement
Speaker 1: of thousands of Panamanians who previously leaved in the lived
Speaker 1: in the territory we were digging up. Many of these
Speaker 1: people were made homeless by the early stages of the
Speaker 1: conuct construction product, and of course they were not paid
Speaker 1: anything for this. We just forced them off of their
Speaker 1: land and destroyed their owns. The creation of Gatton Lake, though,
Speaker 1: created a problem for the white occupiers. Mosquitoes, Uh you know,
Speaker 1: mosquitoes breed and water, and Gatton Lake was basically a
Speaker 1: giant puddle of still water and mosquitoes bread like crazy
Speaker 1: in it. Uh yeah, yeah, it's a bad idea. It
Speaker 1: was not a great call for us. So soon all
Speaker 1: of the white people that we had sent to Panama
Speaker 1: to build this canal start dropping like flies, because we
Speaker 1: basically build a giant mosquito incubator. Many of the workers
Speaker 1: who died, of course, we're black Africans, but that was
Speaker 1: not what concerned anyone in the United States. It was
Speaker 1: the death of white workers that was really a problem. Um.
Speaker 1: And this was in part of problem because the US
Speaker 1: plans and Panama. This was not like a normal colonial venture, right,
Speaker 1: This is not just about resource extraction. It was not
Speaker 1: a situation of like, yeah, we're gonna lose some white people,
Speaker 1: but eventually we'll get all of the good stuff out
Speaker 1: of there and we can just abandon it. The canal
Speaker 1: is always going to be valuable, so you need to
Speaker 1: have a population of white people there to maintain it.
Speaker 1: And that meant that Panama was going to be needed,
Speaker 1: would need to be made safe for white people to
Speaker 1: live it, um. And that meant that essentially what was
Speaker 1: going to follow was a war on biology itself on
Speaker 1: behalf of the white race, because like all of these
Speaker 1: tropical diseases needed to be eradicated. John Lindsay Poland describes
Speaker 1: it as the transformation of the canal zone to make
Speaker 1: it biologically safe for white men. And in Part two, Chelsea,
Speaker 1: that's what we're going to talk about. Oh yeah, this
Speaker 1: is this is going in a fascinating direction that I'm
Speaker 1: not familiar with, the sort of like bio the sort
Speaker 1: of like the like terraforming of the region, or the
Speaker 1: attempt to terraform yeah. This this is like a terraform
Speaker 1: project and spoilers were bad at it. We we do
Speaker 1: everything wrong. Yeah, which is probably why I don't know
Speaker 1: much about it. No, yeah, it's it's very funny. But
Speaker 1: we'll have to wait until Thursday for that. Until Thursday, Chelsea. Wait, wait,
Speaker 1: we were people fighting on the interwebs dot net dot com.
Speaker 1: You have socials to plug? You got plug? Oh I
Speaker 1: have I have socials? What so? I? Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: have a I have a Twitter account. Uh x y
Speaker 1: Chelsea on Twitter. Um I am also x y Chelsea
Speaker 1: eight seven on Twitch. I do twitch strings mostly video games.
Speaker 1: Uh uh and uh a little bit of some text
Speaker 1: of some like tech related stuff. Um so yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I just play video games and chat about technology. So
Speaker 1: check Chelsea out there. And check out Panama when there's
Speaker 1: not a plate We're not, I mean, I I don't know.
Speaker 1: I assume they have a vibrant tourist industry that's been
Speaker 1: suffering from this. Their food is great. Just may all
Speaker 1: the money we really old Panama. We we we fucked
Speaker 1: him up pretty bad. Um so send him money to Panama.
Speaker 1: Stick at the mail like Panama and an en girlp
Speaker 1: and send him forty dollars yep, hell yeah, yep, let's go.
Speaker 1: H