The Thousand Days War
The Thousand Days War (1899–1902) was one of the many armed struggles between the Liberal and Conservative Parties which devastated Colombia and Panama during the 19th century. This last civil war ended with the signature of the "Treaty of Wisconsin". However, the Liberal leader Victoriano Lorenzo refused to accept the terms of the agreement and was executed on May 15, 1903.
On July 25, 1903, the headquarters of the Panamanian newspaper "El Lápiz" were assaulted by orders of the military commander for Panama General José Vásquez Cobo, brother of the then Colombian Minister of War, as a retaliation for the publication of a detailed article narrating the execution and protests in Panama. This event damaged the trust of Panamanian liberals in the Conservative government based in Bogotá, and they later joined the separatist movement.
In 1903, the United States and Colombia signed the Hay-Herran Treaty to finalize the construction of the Panama Canal but the process was not achieved because the Colombian congress rejected the measure (which Colombia had proposed) on August 12, 1903. The United States then moved to support the separatist movement in Panama to gain control over the remnants of the French attempt at building a canal.
Read more about this topic: Separation Of Panama From Colombia
Famous quotes containing the words thousand, days and/or war:
“There was the murdered corpse, in covert laid,
And violent death in thousand shapes displayed;
The city to the soldier’s rage resigned;
Successless wars, and poverty behind;
Ships burnt in fight, or forced on rocky shores,
And the rash hunter strangled by the boars;
The newborn babe by nurses overlaid;
And the cook caught within the raging fire he made.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“Are not the days of my life few? Let me alone, that I may find a little comfort before I go, never to return, to the land of gloom and deep darkness, the land of gloom and chaos, where light is like darkness.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Job 10:20.
“We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)