A look at the human toll of the construction of the Panama Canal

La Brega: Campeones

Futuro Media

Music, History, Society & Culture

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2026

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, we’re sharing an episode from our friends at Code Switch.

President Donald Trump says he wants the U.S. to take back control of the Panama Canal. The Canal has been dubbed the greatest engineering feat in human history. It's also (perhaps less favorably) been called the greatest liberty mankind has ever taken with Mother Nature. So how did we get here?

Today on the show, we're talking to Cristina Henríquez, the author of the novel, "The Great Divide." Her book explores the making of the Canal. It took 50,000 people from 90 different countries to carve the land in two — and the consequences of that extraordinary, nature-defying act are still echoing through our present.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, listeners. I'm here to share an episode with you from our friends at Code Switch, a podcast about race from NPR. In fact, they're more than friends. They're like our cousins, because they've been big fans of our show since the beginning. And we're big fans of theirs, too. If you like La Brega, we think you'll like Code Switch. You can find them wherever you get your podcasts.
0:23.1	And there's an episode that they put out that sounded super relevant to us here at La Brega,
0:28.1	a way for us to reach beyond our shores and our community
0:31.1	while still learning something critical about our history.
0:35.0	This is an episode about the history of the Panama Canal. It's a history that,
0:40.8	as you'll hear, yes, involves Puerto Ricans, but it's also the history of the role the U.S.
0:46.2	has and has had in Latin America. After all, President Trump has said that he'd like to take the
0:52.5	Panama Canal over, and there's a conflict going on right now between the U.S. and China about who runs ports in the canal. So I'm going to leave you here with this episode of Code Switch about its beginnings and what race had to do with it. Here are co-hosts, Gene Den and B.A. Parker. Bye.
1:11.7	What's good, y'all? You're listening to Code Switch, the show about race and identity from NPR.
1:15.8	I'm Gene Demby. And I'm B.A. Parker.
1:18.1	As part of the second Trump administration's everything, everywhere all at once approached the governing,
1:23.2	the president has leaned in a good old-fashioned territorial expansion. He's floated the idea of turning
1:28.7	Canada into the 51st state and to their east, he's talked about annexing the vast, mostly empty
1:35.9	country of Greenland. But to our south, the president has said he wants to take back the Panama
1:42.7	canal, which makes so much global trade possible.
1:47.3	And he signaled he's willing to use the military to do that.
1:50.9	Can you assure the world that as you try to get control of these areas, you are not going to use military or economic coercion?
2:01.7	No.
2:01.9	And can you tell us what is the strategy?
2:04.2	I can't assure you, you're talking about Panama and Greenland.
2:07.7	No, I can't assure you on either of those two.
2:10.2	The Panama Canal was over 100 years old, but what it took to build it and the human
	...

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