United States government. The line of railway is very nearly that
of the canal, and the work of the railway engineers was of great value
to the French engineers of the canal. There are several telegraphic
and telephone systems; a wireless telegraph station at Colon; and
telegraphic cables from Colon and Panama which, with a connecting
cable across the isthmus, give an “all-cable” service to South
America, to the United States and to Europe. There are two old
wagon roads from Panama City, one, now little used, north to Porto
Bello, and the other (called the royal road) 17 m. north-west to
Cruces at the head of navigation on the Chagres River. Other roads
are mere rough trails.
Inhabitants and Towns.—The population in 1909 was about 361,000. The inhabitants exhibit various degrees of admixture of Indian, negro and Spanish blood, with an increasing proportion of foreigners. The Indians are most numerous in the western part. The negroes, largely from Jamaica and the other West Indies, came in large numbers to work on the canal. The Spanish was the race that stood for civilization before North American influence became strong. Many Spanish peasants, Italians and Greeks came in to work on the canal, but this is not a permanent population. As elsewhere in Spanish America, there has been German colonization, notably in Cocle province, where a large tropical estate was established in 1894.
The principal cities in Panama are: Colon (q.v.), at the Caribbean end of the canal; Panama (q.v.), at the Pacific end of the canal, and near it, in the Canal Zone, the cities of Balboa and Ancon; Bocas del Toro (pop. about 4000), capital of the province of the same name, in the north-western corner of the country, with a large trade in bananas and good fishing in the bay; Porto Bello (pop. about 3000), formerly an important commercial city, in Colon province, on Porto Bello Bay, where Columbus established the colony of Nombre de Dios in 1502—the present city was founded in 1584, was often captured by the English (notably by Admiral Edward Vernon in 1753), and by buccaneers, and is the terminus of an old paved road to Panama, whence gold was brought to Porto Bello for shipment; Chagres (pop. about 2500), also in Colon province, formerly an important port, and now a fishing place; Agua Dulce, formerly called Trinidad (pop. about 2000), in Cocle province, on Parita Bay, the centre of the salt industry; and San Miguel, on an island of the same name in the Gulf of Panama, the principal pearl fishery. The larger inland cities are: Ciudad de David (pop. about 8000), the capital of Chiriqui, 12 m. from the Pacific, 60 m. east of the Costa Rican boundary, with a trade in cattle; Los Santos (pop. about 7200), the capital of Los Santos province; Santiago de Veragua (pop. about 7000), 300 ft. above the sea, with various manufactories, gold, silver and copper mines, and mineral springs and baths near the city; Las Tablas (pop. about 6500) and Pese (pop. about 5600) in Los Santos province; Penomene (pop. about 3000), on the river of that name in Cocle province (of which it is the capital), with a trade in straw hats, tobacco, cacao, coffee, cotton, rubber, cedar and cattle; and in the Canal Zone Gorgona (3000) and Obispo (2500), each with an American colony.
Administration.—By the constitution promulgated on the 13th of February 1904 the government is a highly centralized republic. All male citizens over 21 years of age have the right to vote, except those under judicial interdiction and those judicially inhabilitated by reason of crime. The president, who must be at least 35 years old, is elected by popular vote for four years, is ineligible to succeed himself and appoints cabinet members (secretaries of foreign affairs, government and justice, treasury, interior [“fomento”] and public instruction); five supreme court judges (who decide on the constitutionality of a bill vetoed by the president on constitutional grounds—their action, if favourable to the constitutionality of such a bill, makes the president’s signature mandatory); diplomatic representatives; and the governors (annually) of the provinces, who are responsible only to him. The president’s salary is $18,000 a year. There is no vice-president, but the National Assembly elects every two years three designados, the first of whom would succeed the president if he should die. The National Assembly is a single chamber, whose deputies (each at least 25 years old) are elected for four years by popular vote on the basis of 1 to every 10,000 inhabitants (or fraction over 5000); it meets biennially; by a two-thirds vote it may pass any bill over the president’s veto—the president has five or ten days, according to the length of the bill, in which to veto any act of the legislature. At the head of the judiciary is the Supreme Court already referred to; the superior court and the circuit courts are composed of judges appointed for four years by the members of the Supreme Court. The municipal court justices are appointed by the Supreme Court judges for one year.
The seven provinces, restoring an old administrative division, are: Panama, with most of the territory east of the canal and a little (on the Pacific side) west of the canal; Colon, on either side of the canal, along the Caribbean; Cocle, west and south; Los Santos, farther west and south, on the Azuero Peninsula, west of the Gulf; Veraguas, to the north-west, crossing to the Mosquito Gulf; and Chiriqui, farthest west, on the Pacific, and Bocas del Toro on the Caribbean. The provinces are divided into municipal districts (distritos municipales), each of which has a municipal legislature (consejo municipal), popularly elected for two years, and an alcalde, who is the agent of the governor of the province and is appointed annually. By the treaty of the 18th of November 1908 Panama ceded to the United States the “Canal Zone,” a strip of land reaching 5 m. on either side of the canal and including certain islands in the Gulf of Panama; from this cession were excluded the cities of Colon and Panama, over which the United States received jurisdiction only as regards sanitation and water-supply.
Education.—The system of public education dates from the independence of Panama only and has not been developed. But primary instruction has been greatly improved; there is a school of arts and trades at the capital, in which there are endowed scholarships for pupils from different provinces; a normal school has been established to train teachers for the Indians; high schools and training schools have been opened; and the government pays the expenses of several students in Europe.
Coinage and Finance.—In June 1904, under the terms of an agreement with the American Secretary of War, Panama adopted the gold standard with the balboa, equivalent to an American gold dollar, as the unit; and promised to keep in a bank in the United States a deposit of American money equal to 15% of its issue of fractional silver currency, which is limited to four and a half million balboas. This agreement put an end to the fluctuations of the paper currency previously used. Currency of Panama is legal tender in the Canal Zone, and that of the United States in the Republic of Panama.
The republic has no debt: it refused to accept responsibility for a part of the Colombian debt; and it has no standing army. On the 30th of June 1908 the total cash assets of the government were $7,860,697, of which $6,000,000 was invested in New York City real estate, and more than $1,500,000 was in deposits in New York. In the six months ending with that date the receipts were $1,259,574 (largely from import and export duties, and taxes on liquors, tobacco, matches, coffee, opium, salt, steamship companies and money changers), and the cash balance for the six months was $105,307.
History.—The Isthmus of Panama was probably visited by Alonso de Ojeda in 1499. In 1501 Rodrigo Bastidas coasted along from the Gulf of Venezuela to the present Porto Bello. Columbus in 1502 coasted along from Almirante Bay to Porto Bello Bay, where he planted a colony (Nombre de Dios) in November; the Indians destroyed it almost immediately; it was re-established in 1510, by Diego de Nicuessa, governor of the newly established province of Castilla del Oro, which included what is now Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. In 1510 Martin Fernandez de Enciso, following Alonso de Ojeda to the New World, took the survivors of Ojeda’s colony of Nueva Andalucia (near the present Cartagena and east of Panama) and founded on the Tuira river the colony of Santa Maria la Antigua del Darien (commonly called Darien). An insurrection against Enciso in December 1510 put in command Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, who had accompanied Rodrigo de Bastidas in the voyage of 1501. In September 1513 Nuñez crossed the isthmus and (on the 25th or 26th) discovered the Pacific. Immediately afterwards he was succeeded by Pedro Arias de Avila, by whom Nueva Andalucia and Castilla del Oro were united in 1514 under the name of Tierra Firma, and who founded in 1519 the city of Panama, now the oldest European settlement on the mainland in America. The portage between the two oceans was of great commercial importance, especially in the 16th century, when treasure from Peru (and treasure was the raison d’être of the Spanish settlements in Panama) was carried across the isthmus from Panama City. A Scotch settlement under letters patent from the Scotch Parliament was made by William Paterson (q.v.) in 1698 on the site of the present Porto Escoces (in the north-eastern part of the republic), but in 1700 the Spanish authorities expelled the few settlers still there. Panama was a part of the viceroyalty of New Granada created in 1718, and in 1819 became a part of the independent nation of Colombia and in 1831 of New Granada, from which in 1841 Panama and Veragua provinces seceded as the state (short-lived) of the Isthmus of Panama.
