What was the Thousand Days' War, and how did Colombia lose Panama?

The Thousand Days' War and the loss of Panama

La Guerra de los Mil Días y la separación de Panamá

October 1899–3 November 1903. Colombia's last and bloodiest civil war of the nineteenth century began in October 1899, when Liberals rose against the Conservative government.

Draft: not yet checked against its sources.

Where: Central America, The Spanish Caribbean, Colombia, Panama, United States

What happened

Colombia's last and bloodiest civil war of the nineteenth century began in October 1899, when Liberals rose against the Conservative government. It spread from Santander and Cundinamarca to Panama and the coast, with forced conscription, ruined trade and, by the usual estimate, about 100,000 dead. Peace came in late 1902 with the treaties of Neerlandia, Wisconsin and Chinácota, the second signed aboard a US warship. The state was exhausted, and when the Colombian Senate rejected the Hay–Herrán treaty for an American canal in 1903, the United States backed a separatist junta on the isthmus. On 3 November 1903 Panama's council voted for separation, US warships kept Colombian troops away, and the new republic was proclaimed the next day. Colombia protested in vain; its grievance was settled with a payment only in the 1920s.

Say it

Después de la Guerra de los Mil Días, Panamá se separó de Colombia en 1903.

After the Thousand Days' War, Panama separated from Colombia in 1903.

Why it matters

The war and the loss of Panama shaped modern Colombia's fear of civil war and its mistrust of the United States, and gave Spanish America one more country. García Márquez's Colonel Aureliano Buendía fought his thirty-two wars in this one.

Read about it

Connected

Sources

  1. La Guerra de los Mil Días en el Archivo Señal Memoria — Señal Memoria (RTVC, Colombia)
  2. Separación de Panamá, 120 años después — Señal Memoria (RTVC, Colombia)
  3. Building the Panama Canal, 1903–1914 — Office of the Historian, US Department of State