From “Punks” to Geopoliticians: U.S. and Panamanian Teenagers and the 1964 Canal Zone Riots

In 1964, U.S. civilian teenagers managed a rare feat by sparking a major foreign policy crisis. Even more remarkable, they were abroad when they did it, and they caused the crisis out of what many considered too much patriotism. The riots that rocked Panama beginning on 9 January of that year started as a scuffle between Panamanian and U.S. high school students in front of Balboa High School (BHS), a “Zonian” institution mostly for U.S. citizens. The immediate circumstances were complicated: teenagers from Panama City marched into the town of Balboa in the U.S.-controlled Panama Canal Zone to protest the fact that BHS was not flying the Panamanian flag. Balboa High students, in turn, were already demanding that their flag continue to fly. President John Kennedy had ordered that both nations' flags be hoisted in the Zone, but implementation was slow. Then, local administrators decreed that neither flag would fly at BHS. The flag dispute seemed trivial, but its resolution could change which nation enjoyed sovereignty over the Zone. On 9 January, in the scuffle between Panamanian and U.S. students, the Panamanians' flag was torn. Then came the crisis. Within hours of the altercation, thousands of adults unleashed a bloody violence that lasted four days and killed twenty-one Panamanians and four U.S. soldiers. The U.S. Army took control of the Zone and Panama suspended diplomatic relations with the U.S. government. Panamanians further insisted on the scrapping of the 1903 Treaty that had established U.S. control over the Canal Zone. After years of negotiations, these riots led to the Panama Canal treaties in the 1970s and to the transfer of the Canal from U.S. to Panamanian hands in 1999.