A new Panama Canal - without the canal?

I was interested to read that China and Colombia are talking to each other about a new transport route across central America. The BBC reports:

The proposed transport route is intended to promote the flow of goods between Asia and Latin America.

The plan is to create a "dry canal" where the Pacific port of Buenaventura would be linked by rail, across Colombia, to the Atlantic Coast.

Trade between Colombia and China has increased from $10m in 1980 to more than $5bn last year.

The announcement came from the Colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos, who told the Financial Times that the project was "a real proposal... and it is quite advanced".

There's more at the link.

This proposal has a whole lot of interesting - albeit unspoken - implications. First, what will it mean for FARC and the drug cartels? They've been fighting the Colombian government for decades. I don't think China will take kindly to attempts to 'tax' their railroad project, the way the narco-terrorists have done to local businesses and international companies for years. In fact, China might go so far as to provide its own security force - whether staffed by locals or Chinese is irrelevant at this stage - to protect its interests, and/or assist Government forces with weapons, training, etc. That might be very bad news indeed for local criminals, because China's likely to be a lot less sensitive about 'human rights' than the USA or its surrogates.

Second, the railway is apparently to run from the area of Buenaventura, on the Pacific coast, to a new port near Cartagena on the Atlantic coast, as shown in the map below.

The direct line between Buenaventura and Cartagena
(Map courtesy of the Nations Online Project)

The route runs through many natural obstacles (not least of which is disease!). It might be rather more difficult - not to mention expensive - to construct the railway through such terrain than might be apparent at first.

Of course, there's another obstacle . . . China's gung-ho, profit-oriented businessmen are about to be introduced to the well-known South American concept of 'manana'. That might just derail the whole project before it starts!





Peter