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From “Punks” to Geopoliticians: U.S. and Panamanian Teenagers and the 1964 Canal Zone Riots

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Alan McPherson
Alan McPherson*
Affiliation:
Howard University, Washington, DC
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Extract

In 1964, U.S. civilian teenagers managed a rare feat by sparking a major foreign policy crisis. Even more remarkable, they were abroad when they did it, and they caused the crisis out of what many considered too much patriotism. The riots that rocked Panama beginning on 9 January of that year started as a scuffle between Panamanian and U.S. high school students in front of Balboa High School (BHS), a “Zonian” institution mostly for U.S. citizens. The immediate circumstances were complicated: teenagers from Panama City marched into the town of Balboa in the U.S.-controlled Panama Canal Zone to protest the fact that BHS was not flying the Panamanian flag. Balboa High students, in turn, were already demanding that their flag continue to fly. President John Kennedy had ordered that both nations' flags be hoisted in the Zone, but implementation was slow. Then, local administrators decreed that neither flag would fly at BHS. The flag dispute seemed trivial, but its resolution could change which nation enjoyed sovereignty over the Zone. On 9 January, in the scuffle between Panamanian and U.S. students, the Panamanians' flag was torn. Then came the crisis. Within hours of the altercation, thousands of adults unleashed a bloody violence that lasted four days and killed twenty-one Panamanians and four U.S. soldiers. The U.S. Army took control of the Zone and Panama suspended diplomatic relations with the U.S. government. Panamanians further insisted on the scrapping of the 1903 Treaty that had established U.S. control over the Canal Zone. After years of negotiations, these riots led to the Panama Canal treaties in the 1970s and to the transfer of the Canal from U.S. to Panamanian hands in 1999.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 58 , Issue 3 , January 2002 , pp. 395 - 418
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2002

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References

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75 Meeting of Panama Review Group, 7 April 1964, folder Panama Review Group Meetings (Extra Copies), box 4, Lot 67D467, Records Relating to Panama, 1959-1965, Office of Central American and Panamanian Affairs, RG 59, U.S. National Archives; Gordon Chase letter to McGeorge Bundy, national security adviser, 10 April 1964, Crises in Panama and the Dominican Republic: National Security Files and NSC Histories, 1963–1969 (Frederick, Md.: UPA, 1982) 3: 0025.

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79 “Rebeldía desorientada,” La Prensa, 7 July 1964.

80 First Secretary of the Embassy Henry Taylor airgram to Department of State, 10 July 1964, folder POL 2 General Reports & Statistics PAN 7/1/64, box 2557, Central Files 1964–1966, RG 59, U.S. National Archives.