About 100 persons protested outside the US Embassy in Panama on Tuesday after President-elect Donald Trump threatened to take back control of the Panama Canal if the price of tolls for US ships was not reduced.
"Trump, animal, hands off the canal," chanted the demonstrators, who burned portraits of the Republican president-elect and the US ambassador to Panama, Mari Carmen Aponte.
Slogans such as "He who sells the canal, sells his mother" were also chanted by the demonstrators, who had answered a call from the local construction union and other left-wing organisations.
The Panama Canal, built by the United States and inaugurated in 1914, passed into Panamanian hands on 31 December 1999 under treaties signed in 1977 by then presidents Jimmy Carter of the United States and Omar Torrijos of Panama.
"Panama is a sovereign territory, there is a canal here and it is Panamanian," said construction union leader Saul Méndez. "Donald Trump and his imperial delusion cannot claim a single centimetre of land in Panama."
Trump threatened on Saturday to regain control of the inter-oceanic waterway if the canal administration did not lower the tolls for US ships, even though the tariffs are determined by the capacity of the ships and type of cargo, not by country of origin.
The US president-elect accused China of being behind the operations of the canal, which, however, is managed by the Panama Canal Authority, an autonomous Panamanian public body.
"The sovereignty of our country and our canal are non-negotiable," Panama's President, José Raul Mulino, said on Tuesday in a statement co-signed by three former Panamanian presidents.
