In 1856, a street fight over a piece of watermelon began a process that would lead to the construction of the Panama Canal and the American domination of Central America for over a century.
"Hidden History" is a diary series that explores forgotten and little-known areas of history.
At the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848, the United States was awarded a huge swath of territory in the west, including what is now California, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico. When the California Gold Rush broke out in 1849, the area around San Francisco became one of the most important destinations in North America.
The problem, however, was that there was no good way to get from the populated cities of the American east coast to the gold fields in the west. Most of the central Great Plains were still held by Native American nations who resented intrusions into their land, and even where passage through friendly Native territory was possible, there were no continuous trans-continental railroad tracks yet, and a trip across the continent by stagecoach was long, difficult, and hazardous. The fastest and cheapest mode of transportation was by boat, but that would necessitate an equally long and dangerous voyage all the way around South America.
The obvious solution was to sail from American ports to the Isthmus of Panama at its narrowest point, cross overland by mule train, riverboat, or wagon, then board another ship and sail on to San Francisco. At this time, Panama was a part of New Granada (the modern nation of Colombia)—but the Panamanians, many of whom wanted independence, had already attempted several failed rebellions. So, the US and New Granada had a shared interest: New Granada wanted to keep control of its rebellious province, and the United States wanted a stable political situation which would continue to allow Americans to travel easily from one coast to the other. The US, which already had designs on Mexico’s western territories in 1846, had signed a treaty with New Granada in which the US pledged to defend Panama from any foreign interventions from Europe, in exchange for the uninterrupted right of transit across the isthmus.
With this agreement, American involvement in Panama skyrocketed. First, Congress helped pay for a steamship line, ostensibly to carry mail, which would run from the US east coast across Panama to the west coast. Then in 1848 construction (financed by a conglomerate of American companies) was begun on a “Trans-Oceanic Panama Railway” that ran from the town of Aspinwall on Panama’s Atlantic side to Panama City on the Pacific side.
It was an enormous undertaking, which would eventually take six years and cost the mind-boggling sum of three million dollars. Tropical fevers killed at least 10,000 of the construction workers, and local bandits became such a problem that the Americans sent a team of railway police headed by a former Texas Ranger named Randolph Runnels to root out the outlaws. So many bandits were captured and publicly hanged that Runnels earned the Spanish nickname “El Verdugo”—“the Hangman”.
When the Panama Railroad was finished, it reduced the travel time needed to cross the isthmus from several days to just five hours. Americans began arriving in droves, on their way to get rich in California. For the Panamanians, however, the economic effects of the railway were disastrous: not only were all of the local people who used to carry travelers by mule wagon now out of business, but the shorter transit time meant that Americans, who were the primary source of money, were now spending a lot less during their trip. In addition, the rebellious Panamanians began to suspect that the United States also had designs on their country, and many local people began to view the gringos as just as much an enemy as the central government in New Granada. Anti-American sentiments were rife, and tensions were high. They would explode because of a piece of watermelon.
On April 15, 1856, the steamboat SS Illinois dropped off about one thousand American passengers who were booked to take the railway across Panama and continue on to San Francisco. During their wait to embark the train in Aspinwall, a small group, including a man named Jack Oliver, decided to head to the local bar district (known, appropriately enough, as “Bottle Avenue”) and have a few, and when they left to get on board their train, they brought enough liquor along with them to continue the party for the five-hour journey. By the time they got to Panama City on the other end of the railway, they were rip-roaring drunk.
And then they ran into a problem. Although Panama City was the end of the railroad line, the water here was too shallow for large steamships to dock, so in order to catch their ride to San Francisco (on the steamer SS John L Stephens) they had to get to the little island of Taboga, about 12 miles offshore. But the ferryboat that was supposed to take the passengers out to the island could only make the trip at high tide, and that would not be for another four hours. So, Oliver and some of his drunken friends decided to wander around Panama City’s bar district in the meantime.
About an hour afterwards, the group, now completely snockered, encountered a Panamanian street vendor named Jose Manuel Luna, who was selling slices of watermelon. What happened next is a bit unclear. Oliver apparently helped himself to a piece of melon, but when the vendor asked for a nickel in payment, the Americans became belligerent. Luna, by most accounts, then pulled a knife from his belt and threatened them, and in response, one of the Americans appears to have thrown a coin in Luna’s face. Now, as a crowd began to gather around the altercation, Oliver pulled a pistol from his own pocket, leading a Panamanian passerby to tackle him and try to take away the gun. It went off, wounding another Panamanian bystander.
Now, an even larger crowd of Panamanians gathered round, and as Jack Oliver and his drunken friends ran inside the nearby railroad station for protection, the situation got out of hand. The crowd started to toss rocks at the railway station and break out the windows, and soon pistol shots were ringing out from both sides. The local police arrived and began to drive the crowd back, but at this point a shot was fired from inside the railway station, striking one of the police officers—and now the police joined with the mob. A full-scale riot ensued, with gangs of local Panamanians, most armed with clubs and sticks, roaming the streets: they burned down some US-owned businesses and beat up anybody they found who looked American.
Meanwhile, inside the besieged Panama Railway office, a telegraph operator was frantically sending out messages asking for help. After a short while, a train pulled up to the station, and out stepped a group of heavily-armed railway police led by the American Texas Ranger, “Hangman” Runnels. When they leveled their weapons, the crowd of angry Panamanians melted away and the riot ended. On the streets of Panama City, fifteen Americans and two Panamanians lay dead.
The political effects of that five-cent slice of watermelon, however, were immediate and long-lasting. US troops flooded into the city to “keep order”. The United States, worried that it might lose its ability to transit the Panama isthmus, demanded that the government of New Granada not only pay compensation for the deaths and the damages, but that it also transfer the railroad to American ownership and grant the US the right to permanently station military forces in Panama to protect the railroad and keep it open.
The “Watermelon War” also accelerated the idea of a trans-isthmus canal, which would make it even easier for American travelers (and naval forces) to cross from one ocean to the other, and more difficult for the local natives to interfere with the traffic. Within a few decades, the United States would arrange another rebellion by the Panamanians which separated the province from Colombia and allowed the Americans to build the Panama Canal. The US would own the Canal and the Zone around it for 100 years, and American intervention in Panama (and the rest of Central America), propping up those who protected American interests and pulling down those who opposed them, was almost constant until the end of the Cold War. The Canal was finally turned over to the Panamanians on December 31, 1999.
NOTE: As some of you already know, all of my diaries here are draft chapters for a number of books I am working on. So I welcome any corrections you may have, whether it's typos or places that are unclear or factual errors. I think of y'all as my pre-publication editors and proofreaders. ;)