• Approaches
    • Blog
    • Traders and Priests
    • Something like a theory
  • Corridors
  • Devices
    • Definitions
    • Glossary
    • The FTZ-Device
  • Narratives
    • Mud Lake
    • Wetlands to Tar Sands
  • Walks
    • Walk of the Divides
    • Resiliency and Hope in South Chicago
    • Port of Chicago / Lake Calumet
    • Energy Walk
    • Remember Kalamazoo – BP Protest in Whiting
    • Choking Points in the Supply Chain
    • Ottawa Sands
  • Maps
    • Map Archive
    • Foreign Trade Zones
    • Southwest Corridor (all)
  • Contributions
    • Sarah Lewison
    • Steve Rowell
    • Laurie Palmer
    • Sarah Ross
  • Events
    • Calendar of excursions & workshops
    • Project Room at ThreeWalls
    • First ideas
    • Sketches
  • Bios & Links
01 Terminal de Balboa
02 KCS-intermodal-yard
03 Torrijos-Carter
04 Noriega
05 Ruins
06 Panama_City
07 Yachts
08 Pilots
09 Canal Administration Building
Map-of-Canal-Zone1
Map-of-Canal-Zone2
20 Cranes in trees
21 Balboa port
22 Post-Panamax
23 Navigation software
24 Container ship
25 Small boat
26 Mount Kibo
27 Mount Kibo
28 Mount Kibo
29 Mount Kibo
30 lock
31 lock
32 lock
Pilot's view
33 Pilot's hand
34 Mt Kibo
35 bridge

this is where we return to
Imperial Infrastructures


Panama Canal

With uncanny precision, the exclusion zone around the canal recalls the Indian Boundary Lines imposed on either side of the Chicago Portage. Here again we cross a continental divide. Constructed for military ends in 1904-14 (just after Chicago’s Sanitary and Shipping canal in 1900), the Canal is an imperial infrastructure. It articulates the flows of global commerce. A quick route to China and a southern passage to all the western oceans.