The announcement could be the begining of the end of America's two-centuries old dominance of Central America or it could be the beginning of a colossal swindle, either way the proposal to award a Chinese-based company a 100 year concession to build an alternative to the Panama Canal has raised some eyebrows. President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua has boosted approval of the concession to HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Co. Ltd. He hopes to submit the proposal to an initial assembly vote today with final approval by the end of the week
according to AP. The Chinese are no strangers to massive earth moving and construction projects. Even so, this canal project is large by international standards. Experts think it could take eleven years to build, requiring digging about 130 miles of waterway through mountainous jungle. If built, it will be bigger than the Panama Canal in all its critical dimensions and be able to carry container ships double the size of ships able to pass even the expanded Panama Canal. The cost is estimated now to be $40 billion. he Sandinistas who split away from Ortega in 1995 want more information about the developers while questioning Ortega's rush to approve the project. The Sandinistas said it a statement, "we can assume this is a swindle, a deal with a front company to get a concession, and then sell the rights to someone else." The Hong Kong company director, Wang Jing, is also listed as the director in 12 other existing or dissolved Hong Kong companies. There are also sensitive environmental issues to consider. Costa Rica and Nicaragua almost resorted to armed conflict in 2011 over Nicaragua's dredging of the San Juan River to improve navigation. Still, Ortega and his allies control the national legislature, so project approval is expected.
About 42% of the work is completed on massive new locks that upgrade the Panama Canal to allow modern ships too large to use that waterway now. The Canal has also been deepened with the dredging of the trans-divide Culebra Cut finished in March. The $5.25 billion project is behind schedule and needs to be completed soon if a larger competitor is on the drawing boards. A ship pays about $400,000 to cross the Panama isthmus. Maersk Line, the world's largest container shipping line, stopped using the Panama Canal and switched to the Suez Canal for Asian sailings bound to the east coast of the United States. Some shipping experts do not think there is enough traffic to justify two canal crossings. The Nicaraguan Canal has a projected opening date of 2019.
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| proposed route, 1902 |
The Nicaraguan canal idea has a history dating to New Spain. Nicaragua granted industrial baron Cornelius Vanderbilt a twelve year canal concession in 1846, but a Nicaraguan civil war prevented construction. Only a temporary rail and stagecoach trade route operated successfully. The route though Lake Nicaragua lost out to the Panama isthmus because the United States was able to purchase the existing French Panama project cheaply. An extensive hydrological study was completed in 1899 which concluded the water route via canal up the San Juan River to Lake Nicaragua and another canal across the narrow Rivas isthmus was feasible at a total cost $138 million. An interesting sidelight to the debate over which route to use was the lobbying efforts of William Nelson Cromwell on behalf of the French Canal Syndicate. Cromwell littered the Senate with leaflets showing the Momotombo volcano erupting. But it was the Saint-Pierre eruption in Martinique which killed 30,000 that convinced Congressmen to vote for a Panama canal over a Nicaraguan one. Nevertheless, Cromwell was paid $800,000 for his efforts.
