"I took Panama"

In the early 1900s the American government wanted to build a canal across the Isthmus of Panama. The isthmus is the neck of land that joins North and South America and separates the Caribbean Sea from the Pacific Ocean. Building a canal across it would mean that American ships could travel quickly between the east and west coasts of the United States instead of having to make a long sea journey around South America.

The main problem was that the United States did not own the isthmus; a Latin American country called Colombia did. In 1903, when the Colombian government was slow to give the Americans permission to build the canal, President Theodore Roosevelt sent warships to Panama. The warships helped a small group of Panamanian businessmen to rebel against the Colombian government.

The rebels declared that Panama was now an independent state. A few days later they gave the Americans control over a ten-and-a-half-mile-wide strip of land called the Canal Zone across their new country. The way was clear for the Americans to build their canal. They began digging in 1904 and the first ships steamed through the completed canal in 1914.

Most Latin Americans thought that the Panama rebellion had been organized by Roosevelt. They thought so even more when he openly boasted: "I took Panama."

Bryn O'Callaghan: An illustrated history of the USA; Longman, Harlow, 1990/1996, page 87