Category: Armed Forces

Klaus Mommsen The Panama Canal is to be rivalled; some 600 km to the north-west, Nicaragua also wants to build a canal across the Central American isthmus. The idea for this project is by no means new. The first proposals were already made in Spanish colonial times, when in 1825 the government of the then "Federative Republic of Central America" had the first preliminary studies carried out. Gradually, several routes between 225 and 270 kilometres long were considered. In the end, a route from Greytown parallel to the border with Costa Rica was apparently favoured, initially about 60 km to the west. The canal would then join the Rio San Juan and follow it to Fort San Carlos in Lake Nicaragua. Beforehand, locks would have to raise ships 32 metres to the level of the lake. A large part of the passage was to be travelled on the 26 m deep lake. From the western shore of the lake, an approximately 35 km wide land crossing was then planned from San Jorge to the Pacific coast at Brito - locks would of course also be necessary here. However, this proposal was in competition with two other routes outside Nicaragua: through Mexico (Isthmus of Tehuantepec) and through Panama. When the US government saw problems of poverty and political instability in Nicaragua as well as risks from nearby volcanoes and also suspected that Great Britain (British Honduras) had too much political influence, Panama won the race. French engineers had already begun construction of the Panama Canal; in 1904, the British bought the...