"Un país que no se vende": Negotiation and Signing of the Torrijos-Carter Panama Canal Treaties

This work reconstructs in detail the negotiation process between the United States and Panama in 1977 which led to the stipulation and signing of the two treaties on the Panama Canal named after the signatories Omar Torrijos Herrera and Jimmy Carter. In the first chapter of the thesis, we summarize in the fastest but at the same time effective way the history of the United States-Panama relations and of the Panama Canal, from the French engineering project of the 1880s to the 1976 U.S. presidential elections, paying greater attention to the evolution of the talks between the two countries since 1964, i.e., from the Panamanian flag incident. In the second chapter, we proceed with the introduction of the biographies of the protagonists of the 1977 negotiations, and the reconstruction of the inaugural meeting between the teams. In the third chapter, we cover the facts and discussions between the two parties involved up to April, paying attention to the evolution of the positions and strategies of the two Heads of Government. The fourth chapter is about the so-called “May round,” a crucial moment when diplomats met almost every day to speed up the timing for reaching an agreement. It is at this juncture that, among other things, the two-treaties solution was opted for: one on the gradual transfer of sovereignty over the canal and the Panama Canal Zone from the United States to Panama, and another concerning the neutrality of the infrastructure and the U.S. obligation to defend this condition when it fails. The fifth chapter is dedicated to the second phase of the negotiations when Panama raised the issue of an economic compensation, demanded for over fifty years of U.S. exploitation of the canal. This fundamental aspect risked cracking relations to the point of almost compromising the entire negotiating process. The sixth and final chapter concludes the chronological reconstruction of the events related to the negotiations that culminated with the signing of the two treaties in Washington D.C. on September 7, 1977.