HOW WALL STREET CREATED A NATION, Ovidio Diaz Espino

Ovidio Diaz Espino
How Wall Street Created a Nation
J. P. Morgan, Teddy Roosevelt,
and the Panama Canal

One hundred years before the Iraqi invasion, on November 3, 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt sent warships and invaded the Isthmus of Panama to seize the former province from Colombia. Nearly paralleling George W. Bush's war proclamation, Roosevelt cited Bogota's cruelty towards Panamanians and the latter's desire for independence as the justification for war, even though his critics knew that he was unabashedly pursuing America's manifest destiny to control the most important commercial and military route in the world, just as America may today be securing a stable supply of the oil in the Middle East for generations.

As a native Panamanian, Ovidio Diaz Espino became obsessed with the knowledge that his country had been founded by Wall Street bankers in a New York City hotel. The Panamanian fight for independence and its schoolbook heroes were fabricated to cover up the shady U.S.-orchestrated deal that lead to American control of the Panama Canal. Diaz Espino spent four years researching and writing this chapter of his country's story. The result is How Wall Street Created a Nation, an important account of financial speculation, fraud, and conspiracy.

In 1914, more than three decades after Ferdinand de Lesseps (the visionary French promoter responsible for the Suez Canal) bankrupted himself trying to build the Panama Canal, the U.S. opened the link between the Atlantic and the Pacific. The search for a passageway had obsessed voyagers and speculators since Balboa in the sixteenth century. But it wasn't until President Theodore Roosevelt colluded with Wall Street tycoons to obtain the rights to build the canal — believing that an isthmian canal through Colombia under American control would make the U.S. the most powerful nation in the world — that the dream was realized. Fueling the dream, was a dark alliance between the bankrupt French Panama Canal Company and a secretive syndicate of Wall Street financiers aiming to remap the world to line their pockets.

Despite strong objections from Congress and the U.S. press, nothing could stand in the way of Roosevelt and his Wall Street opportunists. Fueled by financial and naval support, these conspirators redrew the Colombian map. When Colombia questioned the paltry settlement for this valuable property, the crafty speculators — led by lawyer William Nelson Cromwell — finagled a coup: revolution and Panama's secession from Colombia. The Panamanians welcomed the canal builders, and America's foreign policy precedent was set for the twentieth century.

With a fascinating combination of financial insight, historical expertise, and national heritage, Diaz Espino reveals never-before-seen evidence of American imperialism in Central America. How Wall Street Created a Nation is a timely account of how power can shape — and continue to affect — our world.

Ovidio Diaz Espino grew up in Panama. He was educated in the U.S. and England and has worked as a lawyer in several Wall Street firms, including J.P. Morgan. He lives in New York City and Panama.

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