Talk:Philippe Bunau-Varilla

Copy-Editing, etc.
This page was flagged for copy-editing. It was mostly just incredibly awkward wording, and I changed a lot of that around. I got rid of the flag, but there might still be some need for editing.

Also, if anyone wants to look over it and make sure the new wording doesn't diminish the accuracy of any statements, that'd be good, but it should be fine.

-D. O'B. 3/18/07 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by DrawingOnBathroomWalls (talk • contribs) 04:26, 18 March 2007 (UTC).

I would like to bring up a very important issue to the information given on this page. Philippe Bunau-Varilla is considered a persona nongrata by the country of Panama because he manipulated many people in order to be able to negotiate the Panama Canal Treaty with John Hay. He made a lot of money from the US$40 millions paid by the U.S. in order to transfer the assets from the French company, which had been building the Canal.

A Panamanian delegation was on its way to Washington DC when Bunau-Varilla managed to get appointed as Ambassador of the country in Washington, even though he was not a Panamanian citizen. He was told not to sign any agreements until the negotiating delegation arrive at the U.S. capital, but he did what he wanted thus making a lot of money and also giving away the Panama Canal area to the Americans.

This man was not the honorable person your article described and there are many sources to prove it (i.e. http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9018067/Philippe-Jean-Bunau-Varilla. Even though he had a great deal to do with the American intervention to build the canal in Panama and not in Nicaragua, he did it out of greed and he used any means available to make his own money regardless of the consequences of giving a lease to perpetuity and giving away land that was not his.

I encourage anyone reading this article to look for more information. Unfortunately, many sources giving information about this man do not have their facts straight. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jaime Fields  (talk • contribs)


 * He has a point. See The Path Between the Seas, the chapter "Adventure by Trigonometry", for a historian's view on Bunau-Varilla. He was quite a character, somewhere between a lobbyist, a promoter, and a con man. --John Nagle (talk) 05:34, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

flag?
In Theodore Rex, Edmund Morris mentions that, prior to the independence of Panama, Bunau-Varilla designed and had sewn a flag for the new nation, but it was never used. Any idea of what the flag looked like? Kingturtle (talk) 12:32, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Inaccurate, incomplete
While Bunau Varilla was certainly a controversial character, and today it may very well be impossible to ascertain the truth about his actions and motivations, the article is full of unnecessary inexactitudes, to put it mildly. From end to beginning:

1. He was in fact appointed by cable, and that cable, with the Southern Telegraph seal, served as his credentials, given to Roosevelt in an envelope which he didn’t open, knowing what it contained. 2. After being signed by Hay and Bunau Varilla, the treaty was sent to Panama, where it was ratified by the signatures of all members of the provisional government. 3. Bunau Varilla didn’t just lack consent from the government of Panama to sign the treaty, he was explicitly barred from doing it in the same cable. 4. He wasn’t invested by Manuel Amador Guerrero, who didn’t have the powers to do any such thing at that moment. It was instead the provisional government of Panama that invested him (by cable alright). Amador wasn’t a part of that provisional government, since he was sure to be president in the first de jure government. It is true however that he was influential in that decision. 5. The first American ship arrived to Panama on the Atlantic side, NORTH of the Isthmus. The Chinese laborer, Wong Kong Yee, died in consequence of a cannon shot from the Colombian ship Bogota, anchored in the Bay of Panama in front of Panama City, on the southern side of the Isthmus. The American ships arrived only days later. 6. The flag was indeed rejected because it had been designed by a foreigner, but also because it was preposterously ugly. The constitution was also rejected, because it was practically a carbon copy of the Cuban constitution. 7. The total amount offered by Bunau Varilla was $100.000.00, hardly enough to “float the entire government”. It was instead destined to give the Colombian garrison in Panama City their pay, several months due, and thus conquer them to the separatists. … 8. At the time of the events, Roosevelt had been appointed President, and was not elected until 1904. Besides being inexact, this article is incredibly incomplete.

Philippe Bunau Varilla’s life was much more than his extraordinary adventure in Panama, and in spite of his famed conceit, he was indeed a man of great genius, whose several contributions (including the design of the Panama Canal locks) deserve to be known by Wikipedia readers. He is also portrayed as being self-serving and is accused of having stowed away the 40 million paid to the New Canal Company. He most probably did make money on this transaction, but the final destiny of that money, divided in myriad small sums among the thousands of shareholders, is duly registered in the French Archives. Resourceful, visionary, idealistic: all these qualities pertained to Bunau Varilla as much as conceited, and, probably, self-serving. If someone decides to rewrite this article, I hope it is done more impartially, with deeper insight into a character that combined contradictory qualities to an extreme degree. (-- Thamus joyfulnoise  04:58, 3 September 2012 (UTC))

Election of Roosevelt?
Article contains this line:

"U.S. President Grover Cleveland, an anti-imperialist, avoided the canal issue. With the election of the more supportive President Theodore Roosevelt, canal planning resumed in the United States."

Roosevelt was not elected president until 1904, *after* the intervention in 1903 and the establishment of the Panama republic. McKinley was elected in 1900 and was assassinated shortly after taking office in 1901, which made Roosevelt president as his vice president. But the statement as it reads now is incorrect. It should be reworded to remove "election" from the statement. Aapold (talk) 13:07, 7 March 2018 (UTC)