Panama

The isthmus that joined two oceans and two Americas, from Balboa's South Sea to the canal returned.

Panama is the narrow land bridge where the Americas meet and where, in 1513, Vasco Nunez de Balboa first sighted the Pacific from the New World. Under Spain the isthmus became the artery of empire, its Pacific terminus at Panama Viejo and its Caribbean ports of Portobelo and Nombre de Dios carrying Peruvian silver to the fleets of Seville. After winning independence from Spain in 1821 it joined Gran Colombia and remained a province of Colombia until, with United States backing, it separated on 3 November 1903 and granted the rights that built the Panama Canal, opened in 1914. The twentieth century was defined by the struggle over that canal, from the 1964 Flag Riots and the 1977 Torrijos-Carter Treaties to the 1989 U.S. invasion and the canal's transfer to Panama on the last day of 1999.