To understand the affair truly, the reader
must remember that Panama had long been the chief source of
wealth to the Republic of Colombia. The mountain gentry who
conducted the Colombian Government at Bogota treated Panama like
a conquered. province, to be squeezed to the utmost for the
benefit of the politicians. There was neither community of
interest nor racial sympathy between the Panamanians and the
Colombians, and, as it required a journey of fifteen days to go
from Panama to the Capital, geography, also, added its sundering
influence. Quite naturally the Panamanians, in the course of less
than half a century, had made more than fifty attempts to revolt
from Colombia and establish their own independence. The most
illiterate of them could understand that, if they were
independent, the money which they received and passed on to
Bogota., for the bandits there to spend, would remain in their
own hands. An appeal to their love of liberty, being coupled with
so obvious an appeal to their pockets, was irresistible.
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