{"id":16702,"date":"2019-07-08T12:36:34","date_gmt":"2019-07-08T12:36:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/pegasus\/?p=16702&post_type=story"},"modified":"2025-03-13T15:19:00","modified_gmt":"2025-03-13T15:19:00","slug":"pan-american-highway","status":"publish","type":"story","link":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/pegasus\/pan-american-highway\/","title":{"rendered":"The Story of the Pan-American Highway"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summer 2019 | By Maureen Harmon<\/em><\/p>\n

[lead]It was a footnote in a random book in Central America that sent Eric Rutkow \u2014 lawyer, author and UCF assistant professor of history<\/a> \u2014 on one of the biggest journeys of his life. The footnote was a nod to the construction of the Inter-American Highway \u2014 3,400 miles of road that stretches from Mexico to Panama. But what Rutkow found so interesting was the mention that this stretch of highway was the United States\u2019 largest global development project between the world wars.[\/lead]<\/p>\n

Even though he was deep in graduate work at Yale and had been studying U.S.-Latin American relations for years, this was news to him. And, really, it was news to most who consider large-scale U.S. global development programs \u2014 from the Marshall Plan to USAID \u2014 as wholly post-World War II phenomena, save the Panama Canal, which got its start in 1903.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d never seen that anywhere,\u201d says Rutkow. \u201cI always get excited when things don\u2019t fit the narrative. The U.S. was supposed to be very isolationist in the 1920s, and then the Great Depression happened. So this really shifted the whole narrative.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rutkow\u2019s original plan was to use that footnote as a starting point for his grad school dissertation, which would make the case that the U.S. was bridging infrastructure relationships with South America long before we thought. But the project soon became a network of tales \u2014 100 years\u2019 worth.<\/p>\n

\u201cI discovered that it was just the center of a huge story that had been totally missed, which is that, for a century, it had been U.S. policy \u2014 sometimes at the highest, most overt levels, sometimes in complicated ways involving private actors \u2014 to try to connect North and South America,\u201d says Rutkow.<\/p>\n

With the assistance of the Yale library, the National Archives in Washington, D.C., the American Heritage Center in Wyoming, and oral histories and diaries from several countries, Rutkow wrote his dissertation, and eventually his book The Longest Line on the Map: The United States, the Pan-American Highway, and the Quest to Link the Americas<\/em><\/a>. In it, he tells the tale of the political battles, the economics, the terrain that made it nearly impossible, and the unfinished road that exists today.<\/p>\n

But this isn\u2019t the story of Rutkow\u2019s book or a road. It\u2019s the complicated history of what the Pan-American Highway symbolizes: a century\u2019s worth of hemispheric relations \u2014 and where we are today.<\/p>\n

[callout background=”#f0ede3″ content_align=”left” affix=”false” css_class=””]<\/p>\n

\"An<\/div>\n
\n

\u201cWe may assume that \u2026 the volume of our trade with South America will soon grow\u00a0to large proportions. These means are: Adequate transportation facilities<\/a>, such as\u00a0steamship lines, railroads, and isthmian canal; reciprocal trade relations; participation\u00a0in the business of banking, and a corps of commercial travelers specially equipped\u00a0for Latin-America trade. It is not impossible that, following such development,\u00a0the magnificent conception of an international railroad connecting the United States\u00a0with the remotest parts of South America may at last be realized.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

President Theodore Roosevelt<\/strong>, October 1901<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

[\/callout]<\/p>\n

The plans for land travel between the Americas started on a boat. The idea was hatched by a seasick Hinton Rowan Helper, the U.S. consul to Argentina, as he traveled from Buenos Aires to New York in late 1866 by way of the Lord Clarendon<\/em>. It was the spark of an idea \u2014 an intercontinental railroad \u2014 that would launch 100 years of planning and politics and policy to bridge the continents, opening room for trade and mutually beneficial relations between the Americas.<\/p>\n

Contrary to what historians have believed so far, says Rutkow, America\u2019s first steps toward globalization found their footing on this railroad dream. \u201cPan-Americanism is not simply just this naked excuse for imperialism. It\u2019s a very complicated phenomenon,\u201d says Rutkow. \u201cIt\u2019s very real, and it\u2019s America\u2019s first international relations of any consequence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The relationship over the past century has been complicated, to say the least. For some parts of Latin America, the relationship with the U.S. was diplomatic. For others, not so much.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it comes to Pan-Americanism,\u201d says Yovanna Pineda, UCF associate professor of history, \u201cLatin America is a very different place. In Central America, Pan-Americanism is seen as imperialistic, but as you get into Brazil and Argentina it becomes more diplomatic.\u201d<\/p>\n

[photo id=”17052″ title=”The-Lost-Highway-Web-v2″ alt=”An illustration of the Pan-American highway” position=”right” width=”410px”][\/photo]<\/p>\n

And many of those U.S.-Latin American relations started with a railway dream. That railway never came to pass, but it led to a new route to connect the Americas: what would become known as the longest road in the world, stretching 19,000 miles from Alaska to the tip of Argentina.<\/p>\n

Yet it\u2019s the Panama Canal that gets all the Pan-American\u00a0attention in the history books.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know 10 books right now all on the Panama Canal,\u201d says Pineda. \u201cIt was such a huge venture, and also from the Latin\u00a0American side, you see how many people actually died during the making of it. In a way, it was kind of like building the Great Wall of China.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the midst of all the literature on the canal \u2014 the politics, the race relations, the tragedies \u2014 the Pan-American Highway got lost.
\n\u201cThe road rarely received more than a passing mention in any of the literature,\u201d says Rutkow, \u201cand the more I searched, the\u00a0more elusive the road seemed to become.\u201d<\/p>\n

There exists no clear definition of the Pan-American Highway, and the United States doesn\u2019t officially recognize it today as such (though\u00a0that\u2019s what most travel bloggers and National\u00a0Geographic<\/em> writers will call it). Even travelers of\u00a0the road don\u2019t always know they\u2019re on it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you travel between capital cities, basically anywhere in Latin America, you\u2019ll often find\u00a0yourself on the Pan-American Highway,\u201d says\u00a0Rutkow. \u201cGenerally, the Pan-American Highway\u00a0is just Highway 1 or 2 of the national system in\u00a0most of South America.\u201d<\/p>\n

Information about the road itself is limited.\u00a0Aside from the length of the road and the variety\u00a0of terrains it crosses (from jungles to deserts to\u00a0mountains to beaches), and the types of cultures\u00a0you might encounter along the way, it is simply\u00a0a road traveled, and certainly not often in its\u00a0entirety. Some label the road as \u201cthe ultimate road\u00a0trip.\u201d As one travel blogger puts it: \u201cWhy settle for an ordinary road trip when you can drive across\u00a0the Americas?\u201d<\/p>\n

But the road, for Rutkow, represents something\u00a0much larger: The Pan-American Highway is the\u00a0end result of negotiations, policies and ideas that\u00a0started with a railway in the 1800s. Today, for\u00a0Rutkow, the highway is a concrete example that\u00a0we were wading into, and funding, international\u00a0infrastructure decades before we thought.<\/p>\n

Rutkow\u2019s book, argues Gilbert Joseph, Farnam\u00a0professor of history and international studies at\u00a0Yale and Rutkow\u2019s dissertation advisor, details a\u00a0\u201cmissionary impulse to connect the hemispheres\u00a0by roads, by railroads and then byways. \u2026\u00a0[Rutkow] is giving us many ways of looking at\u00a0U.S. power that is personified by the Pan-American\u00a0Highway.\u201d<\/p>\n

The footnote that Rutkow discovered in that\u00a0book in Central America became a thread on\u00a0which he pulled to unravel the plan for a railway\u00a0and eventually the creation of the highway. And\u00a0the discoveries Rutkow found along the way were\u00a0surprising. The road itself was partly funded\u00a0by New Deal funds, for example \u2014 a deal most\u00a0consider a domestic policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cFranklin Roosevelt ended up having such an\u00a0important role in pushing this forward right at a\u00a0moment when it had no need to be,\u201d says Rutkow.\u00a0\u201cI mean, it\u2019s the Great Depression, and he\u2019s the\u00a0one demanding this happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

America had created the infrastructure for\u00a0roads, and the automobile industry fueled that\u00a0infrastructure \u2014 and now the government and\u00a0private entities wanted to expand their reach.\u00a0That reach is evident in American mega\u00a0industry sites \u2014 spots of private enterprise\u00a0sprinkled along the route.<\/p>\n

[callout background=”#f0ede3″ content_align=”left” affix=”false” css_class=””]<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Pan-American Highway\u00a0is the end result of\u00a0negotiations, policies and\u00a0ideas that started with a\u00a0railway in the 1800s. Today, for Rutkow, the highway\u00a0is a concrete example\u00a0that we were wading into,\u00a0and funding, international\u00a0infrastructure decades\u00a0before we thought.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

[\/callout]<\/p>\n

“Some of those sites have since been abandoned,” says Rutkow, “some\u00a0have changed hands.” But the site he found\u00a0most fascinating on his own journey was the\u00a0Chuquicamata copper mine north of Santiago,\u00a0Chile. “At one time, it was one of the biggest\u00a0physical holes in the world and is still one of the\u00a0major copper producers,” he says.<\/p>\n

But for Rutkow’s interests, the most telling\u00a0nugget of information is that the mine \u2014 a\u00a0three-mile-long hole that\u2019s been dug for a century\u00a0\u2014 was privatized by the Guggenheims before\u00a0World War I. American private industry in a\u00a0spot that history \u2014 up until now \u2014 has largely\u00a0overlooked.<\/p>\n

The Pan-American Highway was 30 years in the\u00a0making after the Americas tried and failed to\u00a0create the intercontinental railway system. It\u00a0took five Pan-American conferences, a world war,\u00a0the birth of the automobile industry in the U.S.,\u00a0and the knowledge of the infrastructure required\u00a0to get the autos from place to place before the\u00a0American highway system could begin to snake its\u00a0way south. But the ride wasn\u2019t always smooth.<\/p>\n

Even after 100 years of Pan-American relations, the road \u2014 with all the political wrangling, private\u00a0enterprise, and hopes and dreams that went into\u00a0it \u2014 is still incomplete. The Dari\u00e9n Gap \u2014 about\u00a060 miles of territory located between Panama\u00a0and Colombia that has been shrouded in mystery,\u00a0danger, and now very tentative tourism for those\u00a0who want credit for passing through one of the world\u2019s most dangerous areas unscathed \u2014\u00a0remains unfinished.
\n[callout background=”#fff” content_align=”left” affix=”false” css_class=””]<\/p>\n

\n

The Dari\u00e9n Gap<\/span><\/h2>\n

Between Panama and Colombia lies 60 miles of territory shrouded in mystery, danger and very tentative tourism for those who want credit for passing through one of the world\u2019s most dangerous areas unscathed. As part of his research, Rutkow visited the veritable no-man\u2019s land to gather live interviews with indigenous people and Panama\u2019s Security Force, among others, in order to tell the story of this still-incomplete stretch of the Pan-American Highway.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

[photo id=”17064″ title=”Darien-Gap-Web” alt=”An illustration of a jungle” css_classes=”img-responsive” width=”100%”][\/photo]
\nIllustrations By John S. Dykes<\/span><\/div>\n

[\/callout]<\/p>\n

The terrain \u2014 and the jaguars and snakes that inhabit\u00a0it \u2014 has kept the area unpaved. And the absence of cars,\u00a0infrastructure, highway and trade has given way to\u00a0guerillas, drugs and migrants willing to risk the journey.\u00a0In all the idealism that brought the road this far, U.S.-Latin\u00a0American relations now, in many ways, sit in the gap.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a fabled, legendary no man\u2019s land that\u2019s bedeviled\u00a0the most storied adventurers, members of the American\u00a0military and legions of would-be migrants. But it doesn\u2019t\u00a0put them off. Even today, tens of thousands of migrants a\u00a0year risk their lives to cross it,\u201d wrote Adam Yamaguchi for\u00a0CBS when he ventured to the gap to make the trek with a\u00a0migrant named Shahab Shahbazi.<\/p>\n

There are some who come to the gap in the road for\u00a0adventure. And some, like Shahbazi, who come for much\u00a0more: the promise of a better life in the U.S. \u2014 a country\u00a0embattled in its own interior war of allowing people like\u00a0Shahbazi in or keeping people like Shahbazi out.<\/p>\n

Rutkow knows this road like no one else. He knows the\u00a0lengths that the United States went to make it happen\u00a0both publicly and privately. He has traveled to the Dari\u00e9n\u00a0Gap to talk with the people who live nearby, to gather oral\u00a0histories, to walk the land, and to befriend the hikers and\u00a0adventurers he met along the way.<\/p>\n

The tale of the longest\u00a0line on the map, he says, isn\u2019t just the tale of a road. It is the tale of every deal and policy made between the Americas,\u00a0from those initial talks about a railway all the way to\u00a0President Barack Obama\u2019s move to warm up diplomatic\u00a0relations with Cuba and President Donald Trump\u2019s plans\u00a0for the future.<\/p>\n

It is the tale of a road, yes, but also the tale of a railway,\u00a0a canal and now, perhaps, a wall.\u00a0Rutkow isn\u2019t necessarily interested in the political\u00a0arguments for or against such a project. He certainly has\u00a0an opinion as an American, but as a historian, it\u2019s simply\u00a0another note in history \u2014 a new twist in the road of\u00a0U.S.-Latin American relations.<\/p>\n

And we will see where it takes us.<\/p>\n

[callout background=”#f0ede3″ content_align=”left” affix=”false” css_class=””]<\/p>\n

\n
\n

By The Numbers<\/h2>\n

A look at a few facts and figures that make up the Pan-American Highway.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
[photo id=”17121″ title=”BTN-Prudhoe-Ushuaia” alt=”Dotted lines show a trail from Prudhoe Bay to Ushuaia” width=”100%”][\/photo]<\/div>\n
\n

19,000<\/span><\/p>\n

The estimated number of miles covered by the Pan-American Highway, which starts in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, and stretches to the tip of Argentina in Ushuaia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
[photo id=”17128″ title=”BTN-Classic-Map” alt=”A circle cutout that shows a map of Central America” width=”100%”][\/photo]<\/div>\n
\n

14<\/span><\/p>\n

The number of countries through which the highway runs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n

60+<\/span><\/p>\n

The number of miles of the Pan-American Highway that remain incomplete. This dangerous section of the route is called the Dari\u00e9n Gap.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

[photo id=”17165″ title=”Carlos-Santamaria-Cyclist-376×260″ alt=”Carlos Santamaria” position=”left” width=”390px”][\/photo]<\/div>\n
117<\/span>
\nThe number of days cyclist Carlos Santamar\u00eda Covarrubias logged to own the Guinness world record for \u201cfastest cycle journey of the Pan-American Highway.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
2<\/span><\/div>\n
\n

The number of U.S. entry points on the original route of the highway. Early travelers accessed the Pan-American Highway in the north through Washington and in the south through Texas.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n

[photo id=”17183″ title=”Cerro-Muerte-Web” alt=”An illustration of a hiking on a trail” position=”center” width=”100%” inline_css=”margin: 0;”][\/photo]<\/p>\n

11,322<\/span>The elevation on what is considered one of the highest points of the road in Costa Rica. This peak is called Cerro de la Muerte<\/em> \u2014 or Summit of Death, a throwback to early crossings before the highway made travel a little more accessible.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n

2,426<\/span><\/p>\n

Number of days George Meegan logged to earn the Guinness world record for traveling the road fastest on foot.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

[photo id=”17187″ title=”Old-Gas-Pump” alt=”An illustration of an old gas pump” position=”center” width=”150px”][\/photo]<\/div>\n
\n

$2,415<\/span><\/p>\n

Cost, in gasoline, to travel the road in its entirety (assuming a $3 per gallon cost)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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