15 Vol. 6:1 Panama Fever: Colombian Fears of Secession on San Andrés and Providencia Islands, 1903–1913 Sharika Crawford ABSTRACT In this essay, I explore the impact of Panamanian secession and lost canal rights on Colombian domestic afairs. In particular, I focus on Bogotá oicials’ eforts to assert greater control over the nation’s only insular Caribbean territory: the archipelago of San Andrés and Provi - dencia. hese islands are located less than one hundred miles away from the Canal Zone and their populations have a long history with coastal Panama. hrough an examination of oicial correspondence, newspaper publications, travel accounts, and published memoirs; I put forth a two-part argument. First, I contend that the loss of Panama and rights to the canal forced central authorities in Bogotá to reengage generally with their frontier populations—and more speciically, with the English-speaking Afro-Caribbean populations of San Andrés and Providencia. Second, the historically loose commercial, cultural, and even kinship ties to mainland Colombia weakened central and local functionaries’ claims of territorial sovereignty to these islands, which in turn forced functionaries to compare island agitation, mobilization, and demands for political autonomy with the earlier eforts of nine- teenth- and early twentieth-century Panamanians. On August 15, 2014, Panama and the United States will commemorate the centennial anniversary of the completion of the Panama Canal—a transisth- mian route between the Atlantic and Paciic Oceans. his architectural feat was the culmination of seven decades of geopolitical struggle and domestic maneuvering, resulting in the separation of the Department of Panama from Colombia in 1903, costing 5,000 lives and $350 million. he commemoration