The isthmus, that geographical feature that blessed Panama, was already one known by the Spaniards at the time when Potosí silver was brought into the Atlantic by that narrow and elongated cordon of land that separates the two oceans.

The famous canal came centuries later in what was a French engineering work of cBuilder of the Suez Canal, Ferdinand de Lesseps and then with the system that finally governs at the base three locks who raise the boats and then lower them and that it was the work of the Americans.

The channel is insideforesees in 1914 precisely in the First World War. In between there were thousands of deaths from disease and slave labor in what was true apartheid, between the white Americans, the gold and silver that encompassed everything else, between the Chinese, Spaniards and Barbadians who built it. . The United States had the administration of the canal until 1998.

In 2016, the expansion was set to allow Panamax’s largest ships, which honor the canal with its name and are 34 meters wide. The new ones reach up to 55 meters.

Today 35 to 45 boats circulate a day, an amount that has not decreased in times of pandemics. The toll starts at US $ 90,000 and can reach US $ 1 million on larger ships for the 10 minutes it takes.

The channel originates $ 2 billion in revenue per year. It is an autarchic but state-owned company whose president, Jorge Luis Quijano, an engineer with 36 years of experience, is even more powerful than the president of the republic, Laurentino Cortizo Cohen, of a center party.

Panama has 4.3 million inhabitants and its economy revolves around the two hubs, the air and the sea through the canal. That yes the gaming business and financial center of a country that is still considered a major tax haven are their other two major sources of income, difficult to quantify from the sources consulted.w Silvia Naishtat