Instead, Roosevelt’s government encouraged Panamanian nationalists to secede from Colombia, and then he negotiated for a small zone in which to build the canal. The U.S. lease was perpetual, and within the zone, the treaty gave the United States “all the rights, power, and authority” it would possess “if it were the sovereign of the territory.” But, as in Guantánamo Bay, the United States wasn’t the sovereign—technically.
