Panama Canal

PANAMA CANAL

The movie was a documentary on the making of Panama Canal. The canal was built to connect the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans. It began with the Spanish proposed the idea to benefit their government. A French man named Ferdinand de Lesseps took the idea and was optimist about it. He was confident because he built the 115 miles Suez Canal. Even though Ferdinand De Lesseps was a great promoter, but he was not an engineer. Another problem was the fact that Ferdinand De Lesseps had never been in Panama before. The French was trying for 9 years. They were facing a lot of problems such as malaria, yellow fever, and the fast growing forest. There were a lot of insects that caused so many deadly diseases. In 1889 the Europe was in debt. They had approximately 300million dollar catastrophe.

In the “I took the Isthmus” part of the movie, there was an ex- Panama Canal worker being interviewed. His name is Robert Dill. He is 104 years old. He told a story about how the United States showed its greatness to the world by creating one of the greatest men made creations. An engineer named J.F. Stevens designed the Canal. The Canal used the three locks system that raises the ship passing through the Canal.

There were still problems such as tropical diseases like malaria. The Spanish-American war was also happening at that time. In order to tackle the diseases problem, the US did sanitation programs, insecticide usage, medical treatments, which was given as segregation. There were what they called gold cup and silver cup of workers. The white workers were the gold, and the Caribbean black workers were the silver cup. The other problem that the US faced during the making of the Canal was the lawsuit that was placed by the Colombia. There were rebellion movements, which later caused President Roosevelt proposed to the Columbian government that the US would pay 10 million annually, but no one signed the agreement.