By Roger Ricardo Luis on April 15, 2024
Panama Canal
The control of maritime routes since time immemorial is a matter of exercising power of the highest priority, for as the saying sums up: “…he who dominates the sea, dominates the land”.
That is why the prolonged drought suffered by the Panama Canal has put on the international geopolitical chessboard the need to seek alternative ways to avoid putting in crisis, as is happening now, the global supply chain that flows from Asia, where the economic heart of the world, led by China, is located.
Climate change is one of the main causes of the lack of rainfall affecting the interoceanic route and, judging by scientific predictions, the current situation may be repeated in the future with more frequency and much worse results for the canal activity. Hence, the construction of new waterways takes on special significance today.
Where are the canals from…
An interoceanic waterway has been on the historical agenda of Latin American nations such as Mexico, Nicaragua, Colombia and Honduras because of their privileged geostrategic location between the Pacific and the Atlantic and their connection with the East Coast of the United States and Europe.
Thus, the Aztec country came to the rescue of the idea of the inter-oceanic train at the beginning of the last century carried out by President Porfirio Diaz, when some sixty were going from coast to coast loaded with merchandise from the ports of Salina Cruz, on the Pacific, and Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, but when the Panamanian route was opened, the Mexican alternative declined.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador revalidated the experience of the Interoceanic Train of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and made it one of the mega-projects of his six-year term in office. The work in progress, which is already providing services in its first stage, has a little more than three hundred kilometers of railroad track to be traveled in about six hours, through which 1.4 million containers may be transported per year.
In fact, a study carried out last December by a group of researchers of the National Council of Science and Technology of that country assures that this corridor could mean a “transit of goods never seen before in the region, equivalent to that of Panama or possibly greater”.
The Nicaraguan super-channel
An old dream since the Spanish colonization of an interoceanic canal through Nicaragua, but only in February 2012 President Daniel Ortega announced his interest in materializing it.
268 kilometers long, between 230 and 520 meters wide and up to 30 meters deep, the canal would run along the Punta Gorda River, in the Caribbean, passing Lake Nicaragua, and reach the end of the Brito River, in the Pacific, with deep-water ports at each end.
Planned to be built in five years, this super canal would surpass its counterparts in Panama (80 km) and Suez (193 km). Five thousand ships could cross the waterway annually, in 30 hours of navigation.
The construction and administration concession was assigned to the Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development (KHND) Group, which was promised an investment of 50 billion dollars by Chinese businessman Wang Jing.
But in 2022, the Swissinfo news agency reported that the canal project was deflating until it became “a residual project”; however, that same year President Ortega ratified that the canal would be a reality, but analysts affirm that the colossal work does not seem to be of interest to the United States, much less with Chinese support.
Colombia: seven presidents and a canal
The idea of building an interoceanic canal is a Colombian interest that dates back to 1964 with the government of President Guillermo León Valencia. The project, called the Atrato-Truandó Canal, would run through the Chocó and Darién regions, first in a waterway version, and over the years moved on to the so-called dry canal option, consisting of a railroad.
Since then, the plans for the project have passed in one way or another through the hands of presidents Belisario Betancourt, Virgilio Barco, Ernesto Samper, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, Juan Manuel Santos and Gustavo Petro, while China is the country most willing to give financial warmth to the birth of the idea.
“China is in talks with Bogota to build an alternative to the Panama Canal that would link the Colombian Atlantic and Pacific coasts by rail,” Juan Manuel Santos told the Financial Times in 2011.
The then president announced that the Asian giant had carried out studies on transportation costs per ton, the cost of the investment with promising results. However, political analysts suggest that the United States did not look favorably on the idea of its main ally in Latin America.
With the arrival of Gustavo Petro to the presidency, the interest in the gigantic work as a formula to decongest the maritime passage of Panama and, of course, to provide the nation with a stable, long-lasting and substantial economic item was revived.
It is said that in the last meetings of the current South American head of state with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jin-Pinhg, the matter has been discussed again. Government sources have said that there are other large companies interested in investing in the project, as if to say that there will not only be “fried rice” served on the table, although it may be the main course.
The Bogota daily El Tiempo reported that the current proposal is based on a rail corridor of about 200 kilometers through the subregions of Urabá in Antioquia and Chocó, where the stretch between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean is smaller. Now, the project appears to be part of the relaunching of the railroad in Colombia, judging by what the country’s press is saying.
Honduras does not want to be left behind
In October of last year, President Xiomara Castro announced that Honduras was betting on the project of an inter-oceanic train to link the Pacific with the Atlantic. Press reports announced that the materialization of the project would take ten to fifteen years with a preliminary cost in the order of 20 billion dollars.
The project contemplates a railroad of more than 400 kilometers linking the ports of Castilla (Caribbean) and Amapola (Pacific) for the transit of 10,000 containers in 24 hours, which would arrive at the docks in ships with a capacity of more than 300,000 tons.
To date, consortiums from China, the United States, Japan, South Korea, Qatar, Italy and Spain have shown interest in participating in the Honduran interoceanic waterway.
All these canal initiatives, with the exception of the Interoceanic Train of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico, which is moving forward, have been announced with great fanfare, only to be followed by a phase of suspicious discretion that many blame on financing, but behind the façade there are greater interests.
As pharaonic works in Third World lands, they have their “pros and cons”. The former are the most talked about: benefits for maritime routes and trade, new value chains that are created, the sources of employment they generate, the construction of industrial parks, the contribution they make to the GDP of the countries that provide their territories, among others.
On the opposite side (much less publicized) are the irreparable damage to nature, the environment and its negative impact on climate change that these colossal works entail; also, the material and immaterial damage done to the historical and cultural heritage of the indigenous populations and of the nations themselves as a whole, the forced displacement and evictions of hundreds of thousands of families from the areas where these roads cross.
Above all these things is the decision making process, which has always been part of the geopolitical power dispute for its global strategic value and consequent control and exploitation. For now, the old U.S. vision of seeing the region south of the Rio Grande as its backyard weighs heavily in this.
Dr. Roger Ricardo Luis is a Professor of the Faculty of Communication of the University of Havana. Head of the Discipline of Print Journalism and Agencies. Twice winner of the José Martí Latin American Journalism Award.
Source: Cubaperiodistas translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English