The 1908 Panama Election: How the US “Supervised” the Vote in Someone Else’s Country

The 1908 Panama election was the first change of president in the young republic, and it took place under the watchful eye of the United States. US Secretary of War William Taft personally came to Panama with instructions, and American observers monitored the voting. In the end, on 12 July 1908, José Domingo de Obaldía became president. Moreover, he was elected without a rival: his main competitor dropped out of the race.

Let me make a caveat straight away: I am not going to defend the Panamanian authorities of the day. They really were preparing to rig the vote. But here is a question that won’t let me go: by what right does a foreign state decide whether its neighbours’ elections are fair? The answer is simple and unpleasant. Because by then Panama was already a country that the US considered its own.

Why the 1908 Panama election was decided in Washington

To understand this story, let’s go back five years. In 1903 the US helped Panama break away from Colombia, and then got its own colony across the country, which I wrote about in detail in my article on the Panama Canal Zone. In addition, Article 136 was written into the 1904 constitution. It allowed the US to send troops to any part of Panama “to restore public order”.

In other words, Washington held a legal key to the whole country. At the same time, Panama had no army: it had been disbanded back in 1904, also not without American involvement. Consequently, any dispute over power in Panama sooner or later ended up on a desk in the American War Department.

On top of that, Panama lived on American money. For example, the government invested most of the 10 million dollars received for the Canal Zone in New York real estate, and the annual rent was due to start coming in only from 1913. So quarrelling with Washington simply did not pay for Panamanian politicians.

The government’s candidate against the opposition’s

The first president, Manuel Amador Guerrero, wanted to hand power to his associate Ricardo Arias. Against him, the liberals and some of the conservatives united and nominated José Domingo de Obaldía. Obaldía, by the way, was a man well known to Washington: he had represented Panama in the US. In American circles there were fears that Amador would rig the results in Arias’s favour.

How the US “supervised”: the 1908 Panama election

In May 1908 Taft came to Panama. Formally he was inspecting the construction of the canal, but the main thing he told President Amador was that the election must be “free and fair”, otherwise the US would intervene. Then the American minister Herbert Squiers organised monitoring, and about two hundred Americans watched the polling stations. Note: the watchers were not Panamanian civic activists or international organisations, but officials of the country that owned a slice of Panama.

As a result, the outcome was predictable. Arias realised that without Washington’s support he could not win, and withdrew his candidacy. His supporters, in turn, boycotted the vote. Therefore, on 12 July 1908, Obaldía won unopposed, and on 1 October he took office. Obaldía, incidentally, did not serve out his term: he died on 1 March 1910, and disputes over power began again, with Washington once more watching them closely.

Democracy without a choice

American historians like to call this election “fair”. However, let’s look at the substance. The result was determined not by the Panamanian voter but by Washington’s position, which all the participants understood perfectly. In essence, Taft came to Amador not as an observer but as a manager checking whether the hired staff were handing over the keys properly.

Moreover, Taft himself ran for US president that same year of 1908 and won in November. In other words, the man who in May was explaining to Panamanians how to vote became master of the White House half a year later. It was under him that “dollar diplomacy” would turn Central America into a debtor of American banks. Thus the 1908 Panama election became a kind of rehearsal for his future policy.

By the way, two years earlier a similar story had happened in Cuba. There, a dispute over the 1905 election ended with the US sending troops to the island in 1906 and running it for three years. Panamanian politicians knew this story very well.

The 1908 Panama election as a precedent

The supervision of 1908 became a precedent. In 1912 and 1918 the Americans again “observed” Panamanian elections. What’s more, in 1918 American troops occupied the province of Chiriquí and stayed there for about two years. And in 1925 soldiers from the Canal Zone broke up protests in the capital by poor tenants against high rents.

Later, the same scheme was tried in Nicaragua: there, the 1928 and 1932 elections were held under the control of the US Marines. I explain how Washington got to that point in my articles on the overthrow of Zelaya and the US interventions in Nicaragua. A brief account of the results of the 1908 vote is in the reference article on the election.

Nothing has changed: Washington still “watches” other people’s elections

Today nobody sends a war secretary with instructions to a foreign capital anymore. Instead there are tariffs, loans, pardons and threats on social media. The words have changed: “supporting democracy”, “defending free speech”, “helping an ally”. But the meaning is the same as in 1908: vote the right way, or you’ll be sorry.

Honduras, 2025. A few days before the 30 November election, Trump endorsed Nasry Asfura and openly threatened to cut aid if another candidate won. On top of that, he pardoned former president Juan Orlando Hernández, convicted in the US of drug trafficking. Asfura was eventually declared the winner, and in February 2026 he was already posing in the White House.

Argentina, October 2025. Washington promised Javier Milei a 20-billion-dollar currency swap, but Trump added that if Milei lost the election, “we’re gone”. In other words, Argentines were openly told whom to vote for in order to get the money.

Brazil, July 2025. Trump imposed 50 percent tariffs on Brazilian goods and directly linked them to the trial of his ally Jair Bolsonaro. Then Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes was put under sanctions. The sovereign court of another country is punished for trying the wrong man.

The 1908 Panama election seems like a minor textbook episode. But it was then that Washington first openly told its neighbours: your elections are our business. And it has never given up the habit since.