AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

During Monday’s inauguration, Donald Trump repeated his threat to retake the Panama Canal. The U.S. controlled the waterway since the early 20th century, but in 1977 President Jimmy Carter signed a landmark treaty to give Panama control of its canal. This is Trump speaking Monday.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We have been treated very badly from this foolish gift that should have never been made, and Panama’s promise to us has been broken. The purpose of our deal and the spirit of our treaty has been totally violated. American ships are being severely overcharged and not treated fairly in any way, shape or form. And that includes the United States Navy. And above all, China is operating the Panama Canal. And we didn’t give it to China; we gave it to Panama. And we’re taking it back.

AMY GOODMAN: That was President Trump in his inaugural address, standing in the Capitol Rotunda, where Jimmy Carter just lay in state, who had given control of the canal back to Panama. I believe it was the first time in a century that a president in an inaugural address talked about seizing more land. Juan González, can you talk about the significance of this?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, Amy. I think not only was it audacious of Trump to claim he’s going to take back the canal, but he was — his statement, just before that clip, that 38,000 Americans died building the Panama Canal is grossly false. The fact is that during the construction of the canal, from 1904 to 1914, a far smaller number of people died, about 5,600. But most of those people were not Americans. They were Black West Indian laborers who were imported by the Panama Canal Company. Only about 350 white Americans died in the construction of the canal. That’s about a hundred times less than what Trump claimed in his speech.

And most importantly, very few Americans are aware that the federal government, specifically Teddy Roosevelt, had to engineer and bankroll the creation of the country of Panama. Panama was then a province of Colombia. But Colombia was refusing to grant the United States sovereignty over the Panama Canal Zone, which it demanded, and so Roosevelt actually bankrolled an uprising to create the country of Panama. And the first thing that the new puppet government of Panama did was to sign the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty of 1903 that gave the United States everything it wanted.

So, from the beginning, the Panama Canal was created at gunpoint by the United States. And it was only after massive protests in the 1960s by the Panamanian people demanding an end to that imposition that finally President Carter and the Senate agreed to return the land to Panama and allow Panama to actually operate the canal. So the entire myth that Trump has created is totally false and needs to be challenged.

AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, we’ll continue to cover this issue, but right now we’re going to turn to, well, perhaps a related issue.