Deep Cut
Series Editors
Lynne Itagaki, University of Missouri
Daniel Rivers, Ohio State University
Founding Editors
Claire Potter, Wesleyan University
Renee Romano, Oberlin College
Advisory Board
Mary Dudziak, University of Southern California
Devin Fergus, Hunter College, City University of New York
David Greenberg, Rutgers University
Shane Hamilton, University of Georgia
Jennifer Mittelstadt, Rutgers University
Stephen Pitti, Yale University
Robert Self, Brown University
Siva Vaidhyanathan, University of Virginia
Judy Wu, University of California, Irvine
Deep Cut
Science, Power, and the Unbuilt Interoceanic Canal
Christine Keiner
The University of Georgia Press
athens
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2020932724
ISBN: 9780820358635 (ebook: open access edition)
ISBN: 9780820338941 (hardback: alk. paper)
ISBN: 9780820338958 (paperback: alk. paper)
ISBN: 9780820358307 (ebook: standard edition)
An earlier version of material from chapters 1 and 3 appeared, in very different form, within Ashley Carse, Christine Keiner, Pamela M. Henson, Marixa Lasso, Paul S. Sutter, Megan Raby, and Blake Scott, “Panama Canal Forum: From the Conquest of Nature to the Construction of New Ecologies,” Environmental History 21 (2016): 206–87. An earlier version of material from chapters 5–6, in very different form, appeared in Christine Keiner, “A Two-Ocean Bouillabaisse: Science, Politics, and the Central American Sea-Level Canal Controversy,” Journal of the History of Biology 50 (2017): 835–87, to which Springer Nature retains copyright.
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To the Memory of James A. Keiner
1940–2016
Sailor, Civil Servant, Father, Friend
Contents
Acknowledgments xiii
The Central American Sea-Level Canal and the Environmental History of Unbuilt Megaprojects 1
PART I. IN THE SHADOW OF THE PANAMA CANAL
Canalizing and Colonizing the Isthmus 17
Confronting the Canal’s Obsolescence 33
Mobilizing for Panama Canal II 49
Assessing Mankind’s Most Gigantic Biological Experiment 88
Avoiding an Elastic Collision with Knowledge 107
PART III. THE POST-PANATOMIC CANAL
Optioning the Sea-Level Canal for the Energy Crisis 131
Containing the Panama Canal Treaty’s Environmental Fallout 152
Remembering the Unbuilt Canal 175
Notes 187
Bibliography 229
Illustrations
FIGURES
2.1. A landslide blocking the Panama Canal, 1916 35
2.2. U.S. Air Force personnel and residents of Río Salud, Colón, Panama, 1952 38
MAPS
1.1. Map of proposed Central American interoceanic canal routes, 1902 18
1.2. Map of the routes studied by the Atlantic-Pacific Interoceanic Canal Studies Commission, 1970 19
1.3. U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey map of the Panama Canal Zone, 1914 30
Acknowledgments
I am grateful beyond words to my generous mentors, friends, and colleagues for helping me in many ways: Sharon Kingsland, Pamela Henson, Jeffrey Stine, James Carlton, Robert Kargon, Helen Rozwadowski, Kurk Dorsey, Ronald Doel, Stephen Bocking, Ashley Carse, Marixa Lasso, Megan Raby, Blake Scott, Paul Sutter, Penelope Hardy, Lincoln Paine, John Cloud, Matthew Booker, Gerard Fitzgerald, Matt Chew, Roger Turner, Jeremy Vetter, Mark Hersey, Matt McKenzie, Daniel Macfarlane, Scott Kaufman, Mark Lawrence, Shaine Scarminach, Katey Anderson, Jordan Coulombe, Derek Nelson, Jake Hamblin, Tony Adler, Samantha Muka, Karen Rader, JoAnn Palmeri, Katie Terezakis, Tamar Carroll, Rebecca Edwards, Michael Laver, Rich Newman, Rebecca Scales, Corinna Schlombs, Rebecca DeRoo, Deborah Blizzard, Tom Cornell, Ann Howard, Kristoffer Whitney, Sandra Rothenberg, LaVerne McQuiller Williams, and James Winebrake.
I deeply appreciate the work of the University of Georgia Press’s team of editors, managers, and production associates, both past and present, especially Mick Gusinde-Duffy, Derek Krissoff, Andrew Berzanskis, Lynn Itagaki, Daniel Rivers, Jon Davies, Beth Snead, David Des Jardines, Sara Ash Georgi, Erin Kirk, Ihsan Taylor of Longleaf Services, and two extremely helpful anonymous reviewers.
To the organizers and audience members of seminars at which I presented earlier versions of this work, thank you for your hospitality and helpful feedback: Tom Lassman of the Smithsonian History Seminar on Contemporary Science and Technology; Eric Roorda, Glenn Gordinier, and Carol Mowrey of the Munson Institute of American Maritime Studies at Mystic Seaport; Betsy Mendelsohn and David Kirsch of the University of Maryland Colloquium in the History of Technology, Science, and Environment; Zachary Cuyler and Troy Vettese of the New York University Energy and the Left Workshop; the Johns Hopkins University Department of the History of Science and Technology Colloquium; the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute Barro Colorado Island Bambi Seminar; the Tri-University History Conference on Cold War Encounters; and the University of Connecticut–Avery Point Coastal Perspectives Lecture Series. Thanks also to the organizers, panelists, and audience members of conference sessions at the American Association of Geographers, American Historical Association, American Society for Environmental History, Columbia History of Science Group, History of Science Society, North American Society for Oceanic History, Rochester U.S. Historians, Society for the History of American Foreign Relations, and Society for the History of Technology.
Many thanks to Ira Rubinoff, Alan Covich, Wayne Clough, William Newman, and other historical participants for sharing their insights with me. Any mistakes are of course my own.
For their generous hospitality in Panama, muchas gracias to Noris Herrera, Susan Brewer-Osorio, Ariel Espino, Dan Norman, Stanley Heckadon-Moreno, Egbert Leigh, Rachel Collin, Héctor Guzmán, Harilaos Lessios, and Mark Torchin.
Many archivists, librarians, and interlibrary loan officers provided crucial sources, for which I am most appreciative. Thank you also to the program officers and support staff of the Smithsonian Institution Archives Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend Program, Lyndon B. Johnson Foundation Moody Research Grant Program, and Eisenhower Foundation Abilene Travel Grants Program for providing critical funds and for believing in my project. I am also very grateful to the Rochester Institute of Technology College of Liberal Arts Miller Fellowship, Faculty Research Fellowship, and Publication Cost Grant Programs, and to the RIT Departments of STS and History.
Deep thanks to my fantastic high school teachers and college professors for setting high standards of mentorship to which I have always aspired, especially Zeleana Morris, Rod Wallace, Kenneth Zachmann, Esther Iglich, Christianna Nichols Leahy, and Carole McCann.
I am very blessed by my supportive family: Sonia, Matt, AJ, Greg, Dana, Ethan, Andrew, Samuel, Gabriel, Gary, Helen; my aunts, uncles, cousins, and late grandparents; and my wonderful mom, Vera. Thank you ADK for the loan of many history books! And the greatest thanks of all to my dear and loving husband, Darren Lacey. This book is dedicated in memory of Jim Keiner, taken too soon from us all by pancreatic cancer.