Following the September signing of the Panama Canal Treaties by President Jimmy Carter and Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos, the U.S. Senate opened contentious hearings that would stretch into 1978. The treaties promised to hand over control of the canal to Panama by the end of the century, ending nearly 75 years of American administration of the strategic waterway carved through the isthmus.
The Panama Canal had been sovereign American territory in all but name since 1903, a ten-mile-wide zone patrolled by U.S. troops and governed by U.S. law, an arrangement many Panamanians regarded as a colonial humiliation. Riots in 1964 had left dozens dead and pushed the issue to the top of hemispheric diplomacy.
Carter's negotiators, working through the mid-1970s, produced two treaties: one guaranteeing the canal's permanent neutrality, another setting a firm date, December 31, 1999, for full transfer to Panamanian control. Ratification proved brutal. Conservative senators, led by Strom Thurmond and cheered on by a rising Ronald Reagan, argued the U.S. was surrendering vital strategic ground. Carter spent enormous political capital defending a deal he considered a matter of basic justice.
The treaties squeaked through the Senate in spring 1978 by exactly the two-thirds margin required, 68 to 32. Panama took full control of the canal at noon on December 31, 1999, exactly as promised, a rare case of a treaty's fine print outliving the political storm that nearly killed it.