It’s a major commercial portal. These days, there’s big time construction going on there – to widen the waterway. And geologists are having a field day digging up rocks that are millions of years old and collecting precious information about prehistoric times in the area.

So, where are we?

Answer: The Isthmus of Panama. The World’s intern Satenik Karapetyan reports on paleontologists studying rocks collected during ongoing excavation work on the Panama canal, which is being expanded. They say these rocks will help explain the geological history of the isthmus.

The island lies outside the south Atlantic hurricane belt and from the Panama Canal it is a 2-3 day cruise to reach this island’s main harbor at Willemstad.

The island of Curacao is the trans-continental island we were looking for in today’s Geo Quiz.

Each year, thousands of ships use the Panama Canal as a shortcut between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.Amy Mayer recently recently caught a ride through the canal on a scientific-research vessel.

The ship is called the JOIDES Resolution. (JOIDES stands for Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep Earth Sampling.) It stretches almost 500 feet long, and it is easy to spot among container ships and tankers because of its tall derrick and giant drill.

The ship cruises the world’s oceans and drills into the sea floor to bring up columns of rock and mud. Geologists use that to understand the Earth’s history.

Chieh Peng (Photo: Amy Mayer)

I joined Peng and her colleagues in the Pacific as they approached the Panama Canal. They had been at sea for seven weeks, and this was no Carnival Cruise. Tiny cabins sleep two each, in bunk beds. Four people share each bathroom. There is no alcohol allowed on board.

We entered the canal at the Miraflores locks. Vehicles called mules connected to the ship with cables to guide us. The rising water in the locks raised the ship 85 feet as we headed toward the lake at the canal’s center.

Through a heavy metal door, I found Thomas Gorgas in one of the labs. He said life on the ship can be intense. Crewmembers work 12-hour shifts with scientists who come from around the world.

“We sometimes jokingly say it’s like a combination between a university, the United Nations, and a soccer team,” he said. “Everyone has to play together.”

When tensions rise, there is no escape. Two months at sea is a long time.

As the ship entered the final set of locks, which would lower us back to sea level on the Atlantic side, crewmembers emerged on deck. It was a beautiful day and a short respite from the relentless hours in the lab.

The crew could see land on both sides – in fact, you could practically leap to it – but they still could not get off. The ship would not dock until we got to Curacao, and that was three days away.

JOIDES Resolution docked at a port in Curacao (Photo: Amy Mayer)

“A lot of people go to the gym,” she said. “That’s a major part of our life out here.”

The windowless gym deep in the ship’s lower levels has a treadmill, elliptical trainer, bikes, and free weights – and a flat-screen TV with huge speakers. But on this trip the treadmill was broken and Barnes had to run laps around the helipad, at 17 to the mile.

Barnes said as soon as she disembarked, there were two things she planned to do. “One is have a beer, and two is go for a run, on land.”

As we docked in Curacao, the gangplank went down, and yellow umbrellas beckoned from a nearby bar.
The crewmembers traded their hardhats, long pants, and steel-toed boots for shorts and sandals. They were off for a beer – their first after two months at sea.

Sir Henry Morgan in a popular 18th century woodcut

So can you name this river that traverses part of the isthmus of Panama?

The answer is the Chagres River in central Panama where underwater archaeologists have recovered six cannons believed to belong to the notorious pirate known as Captain Henry Morgan. The World’s David Leveille has details:

17th century ship's cannons recovered from the Chagres River

“Panama’s only 48 miles wide, making it the narrowest spot in the Americas and with that river taking you nearly two thirds of the way across, the Chagres really was the original Panama Canal connecting people by boats to the Camino Royale which would then take them down to the Pacific and to Panama City”.

Today the Chagres is linked to the Panama Canal. Now rewind back to 1671. Captain Henry Morgan, a swashbuckling privateer, a.k.a pirate, was in the ‘hood. Morgan was commissioned by England to secure trade routes to the New World. But on this occasion he was on his way to burn and plunder the Spanish controled Panama City.

So Morgan sent an advance team, three shiploads of pirates, to storm a Spanish fort at the entrance to the Chagres River. They captured the Castillo de San Lorenzo. Captain Morgan then arrives on the scene aboard his flagship The Satisfaction. Underwater archaeologist James Delgado picks up the story:.

“The castillo has fallen, its defenders have either surrendered or lie dead. Many of the privateers, the buccaneers, the men of Morgan’s force are there, some bandaged. Morgan seeing this, seeing his men on the ramparts is sailing in without realizing that he’s headed straight for Lajas Reef, and one after the other his ships ground, tearing into the rock, masts falling, the ships being caught by the waves, swept over, and then crushed and sinking”.

Four maybe five ships are lost. The actual shipwrecks have never been found. But 250 years later Delgado is leading a underwater research team that includes Panamanians and they just recovered something they believe was aboard The Satisfaction: Six very rusty and corroded iron cannons lying in shallow water.

Frederick Hanselmann prepares a cannon for lifting off Lajas Reef in Panama. (Donnie Reid)

“To me its not just a rusty old cannon. I mean, what you’re looking at is a gun that was on the ship of a famed notorious privateer to the (Welsh) pirate to the Spanish and so being able to interact with these artifacts connects us to that time period in 1671”.

Delgado says the 17th century pirates used their weapons much the same as their modern counterparts wield machine guns:

“That’s no different back then except instead of trucks they’re using ships and they have guns of different sizes from tiny little canon that are on the decks to shoot buckshot or scrap metal at other sailors to heavier guns that they’re going to use to take out another ship or to fight it out with a fort for on the land”.

The six recovered cannons will stay in Panama at the museum of the Patronato Panama Viejo where they will be restored. Meanwhile Hanselmann says there’s much more to investigate at the bottom of the Chagres River: “Searching for the lost ships of Henry Morgan is just one phase of the overall study of the maritime study of the river so we are definitely keeping our eyes out for other artifacts”.

Who knows what will turn up next. The researchers report seeing pieces of 17th century porcelain strewn about the river bed as well as broken bottles of booze. The bottles were left behind by Yankee prospectors who came this way in the 1800′s en route to the California Gold Rush. But that’s another chapter in the history of the Chagres River.

Ship passing through Panama Canal

The Panama Canal revolutionized trade between the nations of the Atlantic and the Pacific when it opened in 1914. Now Colombia and China are talking about building an alternative to the Canal. In an interview with The Financial Times, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said planning for the project is “quite advanced”.

Rather than a waterway, Colombia and China are discussing a so-called “dry canal.” It would consist of about 150 miles of railroad linking Colombia’s Pacific coast to a new Atlantic port that would be built near the city of Cartagena. The railroad would make it easier for China to import Colombian commodities, like coal, and to export Chinese electronics and other goods to the region.

“This will greatly benefit all the countries in the region,” says Zhou Kwan, commercial attaché at the Chinese Embassy in Bogotá. Kwan points out that the Panama Canal often gets congested and that a ship-to-rail system through Colombia could alleviate bottlenecks.

China’s growing influence

Just as construction of the Panama Canal a century ago marked US dominance in Latin America, a railroad across Colombia would symbolize China’s rise. China is now the world’s second-largest economy. Over the past decade, trade between China and Latin America has jumped ten-fold.

Yet Colombia has been slow to do business with China due to Bogotá’s strong ties to the US. Since 1999, Washington has provided the Colombian government with $5 billion in military aid to fight guerrillas and drug traffickers.

“This obsession with the United States, which was the main source of support for war against armed groups, shaded out everything else. That’s why the realization that China was important came so late to the country,” says Arlene Tickner, who teaches international relations at Bogotá’s University of the Andes.

But now that Colombia’s guerrilla groups have been weakened and security has improved, Washington is losing interest. The US is trimming aid programs, and for the past four years the US Congress has refused to ratify a free trade agreement with Colombia. “This has been a huge slap in the face to the Colombian government,” says Tickner.

Securing Latin American minerals

China is mainly concerned with securing Latin America’s minerals, oil and soybeans. Still, conservatives in Washington are alarmed. In fact, there’s been speculation that talk of the Chinese railroad will help pressure US lawmakers to approve the Colombian trade pact.

But Colombia has other motives. Disputes with President Hugo Chavez have led to a steep drop in exports to Venezuela, which used to be Colombia’s number two trade partner after the US. And Colombian highways, railroads and ports have badly deteriorated.

“Colombia has serious problems with its transportation system,” says Alvaro Ballesteros of the Colombian-Chinese Chamber of Commerce. “We need to develop our railroads. And there are Chinese companies and banks that want to carry out these projects.”

For China, there’s an added incentive. Building an alternative to the Panama Canal would send a sharp message to the government of Panama, one of the few countries that still recognizes Taiwan.

The drawing board

But the program remains very much on the drawing board. Though the Chinese Development Bank says it will help fund the $7.6 billion Colombian railroad, no one has carried out feasibility studies.

The tracks would have to be laid across the imposing Darien jungle on the Panamanian border, an area teeming with guerrillas and drug traffickers. In fact, environmental and security concerns have long discouraged Panama and Colombia from building a cross-border highway through the jungle.

Still, Panama was once part of Colombia. And ever since the Panama Canal opened, Colombia has dreamed of its own transoceanic route. In China, Colombia may have finally found a partner able to make it happen.

“These opportunities come out of the blue somehow,” says economist Juan Benavides. “It’s time for us to make a serious cost-benefit analysis, and see if it would be good to explore.”

The thing that struck me about Panama’s music is that we know about Cuban and Puerto Rican music, but we hardly know anything about classic Panamanian pop.

This was also a total labor of love. There was a guy named Miles Cleret of Sound Way who went to Panama on vacation and wound up spending all his time going to radio stations and stores and basically taking bundles and bundles of old 45 rpm 7″ records away with him. He had help from co-compiler Roberto Ernesto Gyemant, and on the 3rd collection they were joined by Will ‘Quantic’ Holland.

Panama!3

Panama!2

Panama!

Drapkin Biologist Melva Olmos and her team tunnel through the tropical forest with machetes. They’re just twenty-six miles from Panama City. But here – in Chagres National Park- it’s prime habitat for jaguars. To keep tabs on the cats, she ties cameras with motion sensors to the trees.

Olmos “One camera on each side of the trail. So there will be chances to photograph both sides of the same animal at the same time.”

Melva Olmos

Drapkin Olmos keeps an eye on jaguars for a living. She tracks where jaguars are in Panama and where they’re going.

Olmos “I’m going to mark the point on the GPS, so we have the position in the map in the office.”

Drapkin Olmos knows that jaguars live in this park, and in another park, called Soberania, to the West. Between the two parks lies a strip of scattered towns.

Rabinowitz “What you have are big green spots and just humans in between.”

Drapkin Alan Rabinowitz is concerned about the area that separates the green spots – the area between the parks. Rabinowitz is president of Panthera- a wildcat conservation group. He says, jaguars have always traveled through this landscape. But overtime, it’s filled with more people. Rabinowitz fears that eventually the jaguars in these parks will be cut off form one another, and he wants to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Rabinowitz “One main way to prevent extinction is to try to keep – at least a little- it doesn’t take much- a little genetic flow between breeding populations.”

Drapkin To keep that flow between the parks means first figuring out how jaguars cross the human landscape. So Melva Olmos is helping Rabinowitz find these jaguar pathways. But that’s not so easy. Jaguars are expert sneaks: they tend to pass unseen. So Olmos looks for clues: she breaks out the field map.

Olmos “Aqui hay un mapa, yo quiero saber. Este es Lago Alajuela. Y aqui es Soberania.”

Jaguar track

Drapkin She looks for jaguar friendly landscapes- areas with water that offer a bit of cover. Areas like this along Lake Alajuela- On the edge of Chagres National Park. Women bathe their children by the shore lined with small tin roof houses. She enters one with a big window overlooking the lake- She asks the owner- Senor Cervantes- what kinds of animals live here.

Olmos “El mas que ve aqui es el iguana.”

Cervantes “Okay, the green iguana is common in the area. Nkeyes, el gato solo. Conejo pintado si”

Drapkin Iguanas, agutis, coatimundi, and deer he says, counting on his hand. Olmos nods. These animals are typically eaten by jaguars. With prey species running around, there’s a good chance jaguars are running around here too. Even if Cervantes and his neighbors haven’t seen them.

Cervantes “No no por aqui, no. Cerca no”

Drapkin Olmos has another lead. She’s heard rumors about jaguars north of here. So she heads to the Sierra Llorona Highlands-a stretch of ranches and farms that lies between the two parks. Here the ranchers call out to each other among the rolling hills. On a clear day, you can see both the Carribean to the north and the Panama Canal to the west as the dirt road winds through fields and forests.

Olmos “Senor Illario??”

Drapkin Olmos stops along the road and asks people if they’ve seen animal tracks. She shows them pictures of four types of wildcat tracks. The men on the road point to the biggest paw marks on the page- the jaguar tracks.

Men on the road “Oh, big big big” “They were like this?”
Olmos “When was this?”

Drapkin Yes. They’ve seen those tracks. Melba then shows them a picture of a jaguar. Have any of them actually seen one of these cats, she asks? No. But they’ve heard them.

Men on the road “Grrr! Tan duro que me despierto!”

Drapkin The growls are so loud, an old woman says, she’s woken up in the middle of the night. Olmos is pretty sure that jaguars are using this area to move between the parks. But she’s not done collecting all the data yet. When she is, all that information about habitat, prey items, jaguar tracks, and jaguar sightings will be sent to New York City.

Scientists at Panthera will create a map of so-called jaguar corridors. But even as Olmos discovers these jaguar corridors, they’re already being severed by new human ones. A multilane highway is under construction right between the parks. It’s not just the highway itself that poses a threat to jaguars but the development it’s likely to bring. More access, brings more people, more houses, more stores.

Olmos ” That will stop jaguars. Cuz then basically you’ve got a city growing.”

Drapkin But Panthera’s Alan Rabinowitz says saving jaguars in this area won’t necessarily mean setting aside more parkland. Jaguars already tolerate some human development. Rabinowitz hopes that once his team finishes mapping the jaguar corridors, he can convince Panama to zone these areas for jaguar-friendly use, coffee farms, ranches, or even citrus groves.

Rabinowitz “Things which can create a mosaic that allow a few individual jaguars to sneak their way by. “It’s ambitious, but highly doable.”

Drapkin And Rabinowitz has the ambition to do this across the jaguar’s entire range- from Mexico all the way to Argentina. Melva Olmos has done jaguar conservation across that range, for ten years. But she admits the work can be exasperating. The cats are so secretive, she’s never actually seen one in the wild.

Olmos “This is very frustrating for me.”

Drapkin So she sometimes visits them in captivity. Here in the zoo near the entrance to Soberania National Park. A male jaguar stares from behind bars with yellow within yellow eyes. A few years ago, Olmos says, the zookeepers found jaguar tracks around this cage. Perhaps it was looking for a mate, the story goes. Olmos worries that if her efforts to protect jaguar corridors fail, many jaguars WON’T be able to find mates in the future.
They’ll be surrounded by too many people. And the parks they live in will be little more than large cages.

For The World I’m Julia Kumari Drapkin in Panama.

More photos for this story

Flash forward to today: When the Panamanian government announced last fall that it would spend $5.25 billion to widen and overhaul the Panama Canal, the world’s press barely mentioned it. I suppose few feats of engineering seem that remarkable or extraordinary with our 21st century technology. An indoor ski resort? No problem. A 150-story building? Yawn. But widening the Panama Canal will be no easy feat.

Despite our 21st century know-how, the technology that’s needed today is pretty much the same as it was a century years ago: we need big machines that can dig a lot of dirt, and explosives that can blow rocks to bits. This seems like a relatively easy thing to accomplish. But Panama is not such an easy place to do this. The geology is difficult terrain. The climate is hot and humid, making life quite difficult for workers. When the French tried to build a canal in the late 19th century, they failed miserably. The elements were too much – malaria and yellow fever killed roughly 22,000 people. Landslides were frequent, wiping out months of work in mere minutes.

It’s a much different picture today, of course. Those diseases are largely eradicated, the infrastructure of homes and hospitals are already in place. But widening the canal on time, within budget is not a slam dunk. As much as widening the Panama Canal is an engineering project, it will be an unparalleled organizational challenge.

Jason Margolis, Panama City, May 2007
* Panama Series

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Jaramillo: “So what a typical paleontologist does is just look around and try to find any evidence of fossils laying around. Sometimes you see the tip of the bone and then the whole animal is underneath.”

Carlos Alberto Jaramillo

Margolis: Carlos Alberto Jaramillo leads a group of paleontologists and geologists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama City. Today, Jaramillo is working in a large field of dirt alongside the canal. Massive container ships quietly chug through the waterway nearby. Large excavators have stripped away layers of dirt here, exposing fossils from different eras.

Jaramillo: “So what we are going to do is like a time travel and we are going to start at the time about 20 million years ago…”

Margolis: Jaramillo and geologist Edwin Cadena walk around the field with small hammers and hand lenses to examine fossils more closely. Cadena scrapes away some dirt with a small shovel.

Cadena: “I want to see that…Yeah, looks like a fragment…”

Edwin Cadena

Margolis: The two scientists uncover what appears to be the beak of a turtle.

Jaramillo: “You could have the whole skull here and just a tiny portion is outcropping in the surface. Who knows? Or maybe just a small piece you never know.”

Margolis: That piece of turtle is about 20 million years old. Turtles are a fairly common find here along with oyster shells and shark teeth. But fossils from unexpected species also pop up.

Jaramillo: Rhinoceros, camels, horses, plants, like palm trees.
Margolis: “Camels?”
Jaramillo: “Yeah, camels. 20 million years ago there were camels here. So you will feel like you were in Africa 20 million years ago, it’s very cool.”

E.Cadena and C.A. Jaramillo

Margolis: Finding fossils is not just about discovering what plants and animals were here. These fossils provide clues about what the climate was like and how much carbon dioxide was in the atmosphere. They also tell the story of a unique part of the globe.

Up until 3.5 million years ago, Central and South America were divided by water. Two geological plates slowly moved closer and the Panamanian isthmus eventually attached to what is now Colombia. That new land bridge opened the way for a mass migration, as animals and birds crossed between the two continents.

Jaramillo says the fossil record is relevant for biologists today. With global warming, many animals are starting to migrate from the tropics to the temperate regions, just as they did 3.5 million years ago.

Jaramillo: “ I think we are going to learn a lot about what animals migrated faster than others, what happened to animals that were there before the migration, how they compete with animals coming. How fast you will see extinction in the plants and animals that are already there. How soon a new species can really become established in a new place.”

Margolis: Currently, there are five scientists looking for fossils here. Jamarillo says he’d like to hire ten more. Once the Panama Canal Authority starts ramping up the excavation, Jaramillo says it will be a race against time.

Jaramillo: “And The engineers are not going to stop because they find a fossil, so we have to go almost everyday behind all the construction activity just trying to collect as many samples as possible.”

Margolis: The Panama Canal Authority has given the Smithsonian access for the project. But Jamarillo says what the team needs is money: about $2 million dollars. The Smithsonian is trying to raise funds from private donors. Jamarillo calls this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Once the canal expansion is complete, these fossils will be gone forever.

Jaramillo: “It’s nothing like you can go to Walmart and buy a 20 million year old turtle shell from the Panama Canal. So yea, it’s fantastic finding a new fossil. And every time we come here we find new things. It’s just incredible.”

For the World, I’m Jason Margolis, alongside the Panama Canal.

* Panama Series
* Part I: The Big Canal
* Part II: Developing Panama City
* Panama: A historical perspective

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Former U.S. school buses cruise down the city’s few major arteries. The buses are no longer just yellow, they’re colorfully painted and decorated by private owners. It’s a chaotic system with buses racing in front of one and other to steal potential passengers. Young men lean off the sides, screaming the routes. The problem is, they’re going nowhere fast. Congestion is severe in downtown Panama City.

Trute: “You have this, you have a permanent traffic jam.”

Margolis: Manuel Trute is an urban planner and consultant to the city. As he drives through some downtown neighborhoods, Trute says Panama’s transportation leaders are discussing a high-speed bus system with a dedicated lane. They’ve done this successfully in other Latin American cities. The plans here are still theoretical though. And the city just keeps growing.

Panama City is building up to the clouds, with skyscraper after skyscraper. Donald Trump is building a new 65-story tower of luxury apartments. Foreign retirees from North America and Europe are coming here in droves. Wealthy Panamanians are also investing in high-rise living.

Planned Trump Tower

Trute: “I think we are the new Miami. (laughs) I could say that. Maybe people got tired of Miami. Even the architecture looks like what is going on in Miami right now.”

Margolis: The new buildings make for a striking skyline of shimmering glass. That is, unless you’re the neighbor. Some new towers are being built literally less than six inches away from existing single-family homes. Trute says the city isn’t prepared for this kind of haphazard growth.

Manuel Trute

Trute: “I think this is a city, with what I call growing pains. We’re beginning to grow and more and more; we see the need of more infrastructure and urban planning tools. And the government is facing the need of assuming they have to do something. They’re facing this big problem “OK, you have this, a lot of buildings. You need more roads, you need more water for them, you need more electricity.”

Margolis: Even so, the market demand is hot. And developers are hungry to build more.

Boca La Caja is a small working-class neighborhood in the shadow of the skyscrapers. The streets are a colorful maze of twisting alleys. Families have lived here for generations. It’s a good piece of real estate, right on the water. And developers have been trying to buy out residents like Jose Gonzalez.

Gonzalez: “I don’t want to move. I’ve lived in this home 28 years. Everything is closeby, malls, commerce. If I sell my home I will have to resettle on the outskirts on the city. I’ll have to spend an hour in traffic. “

Margolis: Gonzalez says he would move though if the price were right. Developers have offered him about $100,000 for his small home. He wants $300,000. A woman yells from behind, “We’re being reasonable. The people a few streets over are demanding millions.” She refers to them as “the alligators.” She says we just want what’s fair.

Panama City skyline: Photo by Marcos Guerra, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

To understand Panama City’s current strains, you have to understand Panama’s geography and history. When the American and Panamanian governments signed a treaty in 1903 to build a canal, the Americans retained control of a five-mile buffer along each side of the waterway. That was the canal zone. Government Urban planner Ariel Espino explains that this effectively squeezed the city.

Espino: “The city doesn’t have a huge space to expand into. This city is basically sandwiched between the ocean and the canal zone.”

Margolis: Building in the canal zone was largely off limits. Engineers knew that a healthy forest was needed to help soak up rainwater and prevent floods into the canal. Those guidelines are still in effect today.

Espino: “So you have an environmental restriction there where you need to preserve a lot of forest, rainforest around the canal. And you have the city growing up against it.”

Margolis: Now that Panama controls the canal zone, the voices clamoring for more building there are becoming louder. But this is also no ordinary rainforest. Panama is a thin isthmus that links Central and South America: a critical passageway for migrating birds and animals.

Lawrence: “For jaguars, for pumas, for harp eagles, for all kinds of species, all kinds of forest dependent species are going to really require a corridor like this for survival.”

Margolis: William Laurance is a scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. He studies forest fragmentation.
With increased land speculation and demands for timber products, Laurance worries about what would happen to migrating animals if the canal zone is paved over. Some squatter settlements have already cropped up. Laurance says it doesn’t take too much development to destroy this migration corridor.
Lawrence: “Sometimes even just a large road is enough to stop a number of these forested interior species such as some of the understory birds.”

Margolis: But with the realities of an overcrowded population and a booming economy, it will be a balancing act between environmental needs and the needs of people.

For the World, I’m Jason Margolis, Panama City, Panama.

* Panama Series
* Part I: The Big Canal
* Part III: Panama fossils
* Panama: A historical perspective

Listen to the radio story

Heckadon: “It is very difficult to explain perhaps to someone who is not from the isthmus what does the canal mean, but perhaps what comes best to my mind, when you travel in Central America and you look at the coat of arms of the Central American countries, they have volcanoes in their coat of arms and their currencies. In Panama it’s not that way. In Panama the national coat of arms has the canal as a centerpiece. Because it does reflect its geographical destiny.”

Margolis: The length of the Panama Canal, from Atlantic to Pacific, is 50 miles. Almost half of that distance it taken up by a massive man-made lake. But to reach Gatun Lake, ships must pass through narrow, winding channels. And at both ends of the canal, ships enter three sets of locks, where boats are raised and lowered 85 feet. The biggest ships that can enter the locks are called “Panamax” freighters. They’re named this way because ship builders know just how big they can build and still get through the canal. Ivan Barillo works at the Miraflores Locks for the Panama Canal Authority. He watches a massive cargo ship enter the locks. Huge doors slowly swing closed and the chamber begins to fill with water.

Barillo: “Chambers are 110 feet wide, by 1000 feet long.”
Margolis: “110 feet wide? And how wide is that Panamax ship?”
Barillo: “106 feet beam. So there’s only 24 inches clearance to each side.”

Margolis: Not a lot of room. Eight locomotives are tethered to the ship by 35,000 pound resistance cables. The locomotives, or mules as they call them, run on tracks alongside the chambers, four mules on each side. The mule drivers communicate with the ship’s pilot using bells. The locomotives tighten and slacken their cables to make sure the massive ship doesn’t bump into the concrete sides of the lock chamber. It’s a tight squeeze, but the system works.

In the Canal Authority’s control room, supervisor Neils Hanson gazes up at a massive board with blinking lights and television monitors. He’s watching ships heading in both directions, at various stages along their canal passage.

Hanson: “It’s like a chess game really, you know. You’re playing chess. Two sides. You have the Atlantic and Pacific and you’ve got 30 ships going through. And those are your chess parts, you’re just moving them around to make them work.”

Margolis: Up to 43 big ships can pass through the canal on any given day. Depending on the size of the ship and traffic, it takes about eight to 10 hours to cross from one side to the other. Hanson says, right now, the canal is near capacity and ships have to wait their turn offshore to enter. He says it can get pretty backed up.

Hanson: “We’ve had up to 115 at one time, ships waiting. When we have lock overhauls, for example, where one side of the locks is shut down for maintenance, ships have gone, up to 115 ships waiting in line, which is eight to 10 days waiting to get through the canal.”

Margolis: Hanson says if a ship has to wait more than 10 days, it’s actually faster to go all the way around South America. To ease congestion, the Panama Canal Authority is building a third lane. The new passage and locks will accommodate so-called “Post Panamax” ships. Those vessels are too wide to get through the current locks. All told, engineers expect to excavate enough land to cover an entire 18-hole golf course with a pile of rocks and dirt 350 feet high.

De La Guardia: “It is a historical challenge. This is a big effort for a small country.”

Margolis: Jorge de La Guardia is the program manager for development at the Panama Canal Authority. He says, the seven-year project will cost more than 5 billion dollars. It’s a big investment for a country of three million people. But the canal is the country’s major moneymaker and the government says it needs an upgrade to stay competitive in world trade. Nearly half the ships that come through the canal travel between the east coast of the United States and Asia. But as freighters get bigger, De La Guardia says the canal is losing business.

De La Guardia: “Right now, the Post Panamax ships go to the area of Long Beach, Los Angeles, the west coast of the United States. They unload there and then they transfer to trucks or trains and move them to Chicago and New York.”

Margolis: De La Guardia says the canal loses about $350,000 for each one of those big ships that doesn’t use the canal. That’s also bad for the environment. As ships chug all the way around South America, they use a lot more fuel, putting more greenhouse gasses into the air. Expanding the waterway is expected to generate 35,000 jobs. Canal officials are hoping to use home-grown labor.

The city of Colón sits on the Caribbean terminus of the canal. The original town was built to house the tens of thousands of people who came here a century ago to work on the canal. It was a hastily built place then. Today the buildings are dirty and dilapidated. Young men and women hang out on balconies during the middle of the weekday, apparently with little to do. Claudio Lindo sells juices from a pushcart.

Lindo: “If it’s really going to happen, then I welcome the canal expansion. Unemployment is very high here. We’re all waiting to see if the government will come through and fulfill its promise of creating lots of jobs for all the people who have applied to work on the canal expansion. There’s a lot of us here who want to work on the canal.”

Margolis: Lindo says he himself would like to work on the canal as a carpenter.

Claudio Lindo

Margolis: Despite widespread skepticism and concerns about government corruption, many Colón residents are proud that their country is taking on this challenge. Most are descendants of the original canal workers.

Everaldo Jesus Cusati Flores says his grandfather came from Palermo in Sicily to work on the canal. Flores thinks the expansion will bring prosperity to Colón and Panama. And he backed up his sentiment with his vote. In a referendum last fall, he was among the 77 percent of Panamanians who voted in favor of expanding the canal.

Street in Colón

Panamanians began thinking of their waterway as a major asset seven years ago. That’s when control of the canal passed from American to Panamanian hands. Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter attended the historic event. He was the one who signed the Panama Canal treaty in 1977. Here’s what Carter said at the handover ceremony on December 31st, 1999.

President Carter: “Today we come together with a spirit of mutual respect, acknowledging without question the complete sovereignty of Panama over this region.”

Margolis: The months preceding the handover were a time of great anxiety for everyone involved with the canal.

Heckadon: “There were great fears, not only here in Panama but abroad, that a canal in Panamanian hands will probably cease operating within 24 hours. However, the fact that the transition, the handover, took place seamlessly. That has given an enormous boost to Panama internally and externally.”

Margolis: Again, historian Stanley Hecakdon.

Heckadon: “The word in Spanish is confienza, that confidence. I think that by Panama showing it can handle the canal well, and moreover that it was able to discuss the upgrading and go to a national referendum, and that it got approved, it gave the international community, investors from different countries, confidence in the country’s future.”

Margolis: And that confidence is visible all over Panama, as the country prepares to expand the canal and embark on a period of unprecedented growth.

For the World, I’m Jason Margolis, Panama City, Panama.

* Panama Series
* Part II: Developing Panama City
* Part III: Panama fossils
* Panama: A historical perspective

Jason Margolis

The World’s Jason Margolis went to Panama to report on the excavation project, to examine the engineering, how the project is affecting Panama’s economy and environment, and Panama City’s current explosive growth.

* Part I: The Big Canal
* Part II: Developing Panama City
* Part III: Panama fossils
* Panama: A historical perspective