The untold history of the Panama Canal--from Panama's point of view. Sleuth and scholar, Marixa Lasso has uncovered a long-overlooked story: to build their Canal, Americans displaced 40,000 Panamanians and erased entire cities, only to convince the world they had brought modernity to the tropics.--

Under the agreements concluded between the United States and the Republic of Panama in 1903-4 regarding the construction and operation of an isthmian canal, the United States acquired control of the Panama Canal Zone, a swath of territory across Panama that in most places extended five kilometers on each side of the center line of the canal. The residents of the zone were mainly U.S. citizens and West Indians engaged in the construction and operation of the canal. An Isthmian Canal Commission, composed of U.S. military and civilian officials, was formed to promulgate laws for the zone during the period when the canal was under construction. This volume, published in 1921, is a compilation of the laws enacted by the Isthmian Canal Commission during the entire period of its operation, from August 16, 1904, to March 31, 1914. It reprints the complete contents of an earlier volume containing the texts of the 24 acts enacted by the commission between August 16, 1904, and March 1, 1905, and it includes a new section with the texts of 23 ordinances enacted between April 27, 1907, and September 15, 1913. The acts concern organizational and administrative matters, such as the setting up of a judiciary and the organization of municipal governments, as well as the establishment of a penal code dealing with the full range of crimes against persons, property, and public order. The ordinances generally deal with lesser matters, including, for example, the sale of intoxicating liquors and the licensing and regulation of motor vehicles. Under the terms of two treaties signed by the United States and Panama on September 7, 1977, the Panama Canal Zone was abolished on October 1, 1979, and its territory turned over to Panamanian control.

Author/photographer Jeremy Snapp has produced a dramatic photo-essay of rare images that depict events in the decade preceding the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914. Original photos taken by Snapp's great-grandfather Gerald Sherman, a respected mining engineer of the day, deliver a technical perspective of this undertaking unlike anything previously published. Finally, as the U.S. ceded authority over the canal to the Panamanian government in 1999, Jeremy Snapp travelled to the canal zone with an antique cameratp capture images of the original buildings and construction relics that remained.