Security· Banana Wars
Panama Intervention 1918
A routine protective deployment from the Canal Zone garrison, of the kind that recurred throughout the period.
Amid political unrest in Panama in 1918 and after, Marines from the Canal Zone were sent into Panama City and out to Chiriquí province to help stabilize the situation and protect American interests during disturbances surrounding the country's politics and elections. The deployment was protective rather than a campaign of battle, the Marines standing guard and overawing the trouble rather than fighting a sustained action, and the cost was slight. It was characteristic of the constant low-level work that fell to the Canal Zone garrison, where the strategic value of the canal made the United States quick to put Marines ashore at any sign of instability in Panama. These Chiriquí and Panama City deployments drew little notice, but they were part of the steady American military presence that guarded the isthmus through the Banana Wars.
Podcast episodes on Banana Wars
Record no. 10