Malaysia 1963-1965: A Rocky “Marriage of Convenience”, Two Years of Uneasy Federation

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Comparative politics, Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, Politics, Regional History
Image: constitutionnet.org

In September 1963 the Federation of Malaysia came into existence, merging peninsula Malaya and the British crown colonies of Singapore, Sarawak and North Borneo (Sabah)𝕒. Not quite two years later, in August 1965, the Federation was rent asunder when Singapore abruptly exited the Federation, albeit with some reluctance initially from Singapore but ultimately by mutual consent of the two governments and with (on the surface) little apparent rancour. The reasons for the transitory nature of the Malaysia/Singapore unification lie in the fragility and weaknesses of the new federation’s arrangements at its onset.

What was Kuala Lumpur and Singapore seeking to get out of the merger in the first place?
Significantly, aside from wanting to merge for security from communist expansion, Singapore and Malaya had distinctly different reasons to unify. The original impetus lay primarily with the Singapore side. From as early as 1955 politicians starting with David Marshall (foundation chief minister of Singapore) proposed the idea to Malayan leader Tunku Abdul Rahman. Initially the Tunku refused to countenance the proposal, his principal focus being to maintain the racial balance of the peninsula state in favour of ethnic Malays. By around 1960 Abdul Rahman had changed his mind. Following Singapore’s attainment of self-government in 1959, Kuala Lumpur, fearful that a future independent Singapore might fall under the sway of communist power, was more favourable to merging with the island-state to shore up Malaysian security𝕓. A secondary but undeniably important motivation on Malaya’s part was the economic advantages that Singapore could bring to the Federation𝕔 [‘Merger and Separation’, www.mindef.govt.sg].

Singapore’s incentive to merge
 Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew sold the concept of the union with Malaya to the Singapore electorate by persuading it that the island-state’s political and economic survival depended on unifying. Lee saw the benefits in establishing a federation common market with the opening up of greater Malaysia to Singapore goods. Lee’s push for the merger alienated the radical left wing element of his ruling People’s Action Party (PAP), which split off forming Barisan Socialis (“Socialist Front”)…this helped Lee and the PAP moderates consolidate their hold on Singapore politics by broadening the party’s electoral appeal [Leifer, Michael. “Singapore in Malaysia: The Politics of Federation.” Journal of Southeast Asian History 6, no. 2 (1965): 54–70. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20172797].

Source: New Straits Times

Unresolved seeds of disunity
After two years of protracted and difficult negotiations the merger came into effect in September 1963. Neither Malaya or Singapore were ever really satisfied with the compromise agreement. While Rahman by including Sabah and Sarawak in the union was able to roughly retain Malay ethnic parity with the Singapore Chinese, communal tensions within the Federation exacerbated after 1963. The Tunku’s desire to grant special privileges and rights to Malays—to appease the radicals in the mainland’s dominant party UMNO (United Malays National Organisation)—left him at loggerheads with Lee who was determined to fix the federal status of Singapore citizens. Lee counter-campaigned against Malay political hegemony with the slogan “Malaysian Malaysia”, a call for racial equality in the Federation[‘Singapore Separates From Malaysia and Becomes Independent, 9 August 1965’, HistorySG, www.eresources.nib.gov.sg]

Singapore aerial view, 1964 (Source: Pinterest)

1964, pivotal year
With the 1964 federal elections in Malaysia, Lee’s agenda for effecting change crystallised as he sought to redress Singapore’s disproportionate representation of only 15 seats in the federal legislature (the Singapore-Chinese population size warranted at least 25 seats). Lee entered PAP candidates in the mainland elections, hoping to win a foothold in the ruling coalition (Alliance) with UMNO by elbowing aside the Malaysian Chinese Association. The tactic backfired with PAP securing only one new seat and caused resentment and further suspicion from Malays. 1964 also witnessed the outbreak of racial riots in Singapore between the Chinese and Malay communities (with both the Malayan Communist Party and UMNO playing active roles in the fracas). The consequence of which was to widen the gulf between Singapore and the mainland and hasten the eventual break in 1965 [Milne, R. S. “Singapore’s Exit from Malaysia; the Consequences of Ambiguity.” Asian Survey 6, no. 3 (1966): 175–84. https://doi.org/10.2307/2642221].

Distrust across the causeway
 By 1965 relations between the Malaysian mainland and Singapore had deteriorated graphically. Divisions were widening with UMNO actively working to destabilise PAP’s position in the island-state. Both governments were dissatisfied with the way the federation was functioning. The Singapore government was frustrated by the paucity of its political clout at the federal level. Equally galling was the failure of the hoped-for economic benefits for the island to materialise. Singapore saw itself having to make a disproportionate contribution to Malaysian finances for very little return. Progress towards a viable common market was negligible, as was the promised pioneer status for Singaporean industries. Singapore retaliated by delaying the loans promised to Sarawak and Sabah, much to KL’s displeasure.

LKY, after signing of the Malaysia agreement (Photo: Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore)

Bilateral tensions and antagonisms played their part in perpetuating division between the two main constituent parts of the Malaysian Federation. Lee Kuan Yew’s personality and tendency towards unilateral action at times didn’t help keep a lid on those tensions, eg, Lee’s decision to unilaterally declare Singapore’s “de facto independence” in August 1963 ahead of the official proclamation by the Tunku didn’t win him friends in either Malaya or Britain.

Endgame: Schism, regrets and relief
 The split occurred in August 1965 after a separation agreement had been drafted, the lead-up to the event was kept very hush-hush (even the Malaysian deputy prime minister was not made privy to the process in train). Singapore was hived off from Malaysia in the end in a bloodless but nonetheless dramatic manner. The failure of the Singapore/Malaysia nexus, as Nancy Fletcher observes, ”grew out of differences in intention and expectation bound up in the very concept of Malaysia (shaped by) divergent economic interests, conflicting political ambitions, and brought to the point of conflagration by inter-racial fear” [Nancy McHenry Fletcher, ‘The Separation of Singapore From Malaysia’, Data Paper # 73, South East Program, Cornell University, July 1969, www.ecommons.cornell.edu.

Source: Straits Times

Footnote: ultimately both parties reached the conclusion that the status quo was beyond salvation but that was not completely the end of it. Rahman, prior to initiating the severing of Singapore from the Federation, first proposed to the Singaporese the alternate arrangement of a “confederation”. According to Janadas Devan, the Singapore government after consideration ultimately rejected the confederation idea, apparently on the “no taxation without (national) representation” principle𝕕[‘Singapore could have been ‘one country, two systems’ within Malaysia, not sovereign country’, Janadas Devan, Straits Times, 28-Jan-2015, www.straitstimes.com].

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 𝕒 Brunei was originally intended to be part of the new federation but withdrew prior to its formulation
 𝕓 a large concern for the Malayan leadership was a hostile Indonesia who were against the whole concept of “Malaysia” as a British “neo-colonial plot” [‘Why Indonesia Opposes British-Made Malaysia’ (1964), www.lib.ui.ac.id], culminating in the Konfrontasi episode between the two countries
 𝕔 Singapore was also attractive to the Malay Peninsula rulers for its strategic location and fine natural harbour
 𝕕 the British were also opposed to the confederation solution

The Malayan Emergency: A Last Hurray for Britain and Empire

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Comparative politics, Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, Military history, Regional History
◬ British Malaya 1948 (Image: NZHistory)

The Second World War and the occupation of British Malaya by the Japanese gave the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) an opportunity to take a more prominent political role in Malayan society. Britain’s feeble submission at the hands of the Japanese invaders put paid to any notions of invincibility felt about the British colonial regime. Into the British void stepped the MCP, it’s military wing, the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army, mainly composed of ethnic Chinese guerrillas, bore the brunt of armed resistance against the Japanese. After the Japanese surrender the MCP were afforded a brief taste of governing before the British returned [Richardson, Thomas. “The Malayan Emergency.” In Fighting Australia’s Cold War: The Nexus of Strategy and Operations in a Multipolar Asia, 1945–1965, edited by PETER DEAN and TRISTAN MOSS, 1st ed., 115–36. ANU Press, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv25m8dqh.13]. The MCP was also active in Malayan labour circles, embroiling itself in the vanguard of strikes and disturbances against substandard labour conditions and wages.The MCP increasingly targeted British-controlled industry in the country, especially the production of rubber and tin, the mainstays of the Malayan economy, putting it on a collision course with the British Malaya authorities.

◬ Advertisement: Guarding national assets against the “communist bandits” (Source: Pinterest)

Sungai Siput incident
 After three European planters were murdered by the komumis in Perak state in 1948, the MCP was proscribed as a political party and a state of national emergency declared in Malaya and Singapore. A protracted guerrilla war followed—for purposes of insurance it was not described as a war, hence the term “Malayan Emergency” (Darurat Malaya)a⃞—pitting Malayan Chinese communists against Britain, the Malay-dominated Federation and Commonwealth countries.

The combatants’ motives
 Britain’s motives for cracking down on the MCP radicals was transparent and twofold. First, it’s priority was to protect its economic and commercial imperial interests in Malaya…its prized reserves of tin and rubber representing “by far the most important source of dollars in the Colonial Empire”. In 1948 this was doubly important to the UK, having just lost its colonial possessions in India [‘British Imperial Revival In The Early Cold War: The Malayan’Emergency’ 1948-60’, Liam Raine, History Matters, 23-Nov-2020, www.historymatters.group.shef.ac.uk]. Secondly, in the bipolar context of the Cold War and as the US’ ally, Britain was doing its bit to keep South-East Asia in the capitalist camp by blocking an attempt to extend the communist imprint on the region. Conversely, the Chinese in Malaya, disaffected with British colonial rule and its monopoly of the country’s lucrative raw materials, were seeking to achieve Malayan independence and forge a socialist stateb⃞. The MCP’s military arm adopted a strategy of raiding mines and estates (industrial sabotage) and attacks on soldiers, police, colonial collaborators and high-ranking officials (even succeeding in assassinating the British high commissioner). When the British launched counter-raids, the communist guerrillas would retreat to jungle outskirts where they could be hidden within the Chinese community and receive crucial material support from a network of civilian supporters known as Min Yuen.

◬ Jungle patrol (Photo: Imperial War Museums)
◬ General Gerard Templer (Image: npg.si.edu)

Briggs Plan
To counter the guerrillas’ stratagem the British devised the Briggs Plan (Rancangan Briggs) to try to isolate the insurgents from their rural support base. Half a million rural inhabitants (including the indigenous minority, the Orang Asil), labelled “squatters” by the British, were forcibly removed from their land and resettled in “New Villages” (Kampung baru)c⃞. As well as physically separating the guerrillas from the Chinese community—thus halting the vital flow of food, information and recruits from the peasants to the insurgents—the plan included a campaign to win the “hearts and minds” of the rural population and lure them away from the communists. Separating the “fish” from the “water”, British intelligence called it. Education and health services including better amenities were provided for some of the New Villages. This second British objective was less successful as a force for achieving cohesion among rural Malayans. The new British initiative, under the new high commissioner Gerard Templer, while effective militarily, was ruthlessly heavy-handed in its approach. The strategy’s rigorous population control and punitive measures alienated the Chinese inhabitants, at the same time many Malays, jealous of the infrastructure afforded the new settlements, were disaffected.
[‘Briggs Plan’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wkipedia.org ].

◬ Chin Peng, “enemy of the state”

Decolonisation and independence
 The British counter-insurgency’s effectiveness in whittling away the guerrillas’ support prompting the MCP’s leader Chin Peng to try to negotiate peace, however talks failed due to the insistence by Malayan leaders, especially Tunku Abdul Rahman, that the guerrillas surrender unconditionally. The granting of independence to Malaya in 1957 was a critical body blow to the MCP’s hopes as thereafter the struggle was no longer an anti-colonial cause. Inaugural prime minister Rahman was now able to characterise the conflict against the communists as a “People’s War” and unify the majority behind him. Bereft of its raison d’être the guerrilla movement quickly dissolved with the last significant group surrendering in 1958 at Perak. Most of the other insurgents still at large including Chin fled north across the Thai border [DVA (Department of Veterans’ Affairs) (2021), The Malayan Emergency 1948 to 1960, DVA Anzac Portal, accessed 14 April 2022, https://anzacportal.dva.gov.au/wars-and-missions/malayan-emergency-1948-1960 ].

 MCP failings
 At the end of WWII the communists’ guerrilla resistance to the Japanese had won it a following among significant numbers of Malayan Chinese, however during the Emergency it failed to consolidate that hold. The MCP’s stated mission was to build a broad coalition uniting Malaya’s racial groups (Malays, Chinese, Indians), in practice it blundered but making no real appeal to non-Chinese segments, the party remained predominantly the domain of the ethnic Chinese community. Even more damning was its non-engagement with rural Chinese (>90% of the Chinese population), the party steadfastly maintained an urban focus, failing to take the concerns of Chinese peasants seriously. The British were able to exploit the MCP’s omission to lever significant grass-roots support away from the guerrillas.[Opper, Marc. “The Malayan Emergency, 1948–1960.” In People’s Wars in China, Malaya, and Vietnam, 173–204. University of Michigan Press, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.11413902.12].

◬ Chin Peng and Chairman Mao, 1965

Lurching into imperial irrelevance
In the twilight of Britain’s once majestic global empire, the Malayan Emergency was its fleeting, final hurray. The 1956 Suez Crisis nakedly exposed the limitations of Britain, foreshadowing a status as a spent international force. With decolonisation in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Oceania in full swing through the Fifties and Sixties, the Sun was setting on the British Empire after all.

Footnote: Peace delayed
 On 31 July 1960 the Yang di-Pertuan Agong (Head of the Malayan government) officially ended the Emergency. The communist guerrilla force, without their general secretary Chin Peng (by now a guest of the Chinese government in Peking) and shrunken to less than 2,000 men, continued the futile fight against the Malayan state from their border outpost. Armed resistance to the government in Kuala Lumpur from underground units resumed in the late Sixties, but the splintering of the MCP into three opposing factions and a series of internal purges further undermined the effectiveness of its cause. Finally, in December 1989 the Thais brokered the Hat Yai Peace Agreement between the Malaysian government and the MCP [‘Chin Peng, an obituary’, Anthony Reid, New Mandela, 05-Oct-2013, www.newmandela.org].

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a⃞ the MCP termed the conflict the “Anti-British National Liberation War”
b⃞ the MCP’s platform included progressive measures such as full equality for women
c⃞ in addition, 10,000 Malaysian Chinese suspected on being communist sympathisers were deported to mainland China

The Pan-American Highway: Part 2, Laying the Foundation for New US Markets and the Darién Gap

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Heritage & Conservation, Inter-ethnic relations, Law and society,, Political geography, Regional History

Before there was talk in the United States about a highway to span the full length of the American hemispheres, there was talk (as far back as the 1880s and even earlier) of a Pan-American railroad to make a direct connexion with its continental neighbours. This ultimately came to nothing but the idea of a Pan-American highway caught on in the 1920s. With the US pushing the proposal, the 6th International Conference of American States gave its approval in 1928.

ყą۷ıʑą (℘ɧơɬơ: ɛҳ℘ɛཞɬ ۷ąɠąცơŋɖ) 

⊹ ⊹ ⊹

Once work got started in the mid-Thirties on the first section of the highway—3,400 miles, connecting México to Panama1⃞—progress was slow due to multiple factors – disruption of war, the availability of money (the project increasingly depended on the injection of American funding), diplomatic issues, the problem of getting governments to cooperate. While México built and financed its own part of the section (opened 1950), the smaller Central American states required US aid to complete their’s (opened 1963)…and even then the Chepo to Yaviza (the Panama terminus point) stretch, a distance of 139 miles, took 20 years to build [Miller, Shawn W. “Minding the Gap: Pan-Americanism’s Highway, American Environmentalism, and Remembering the Failure to Close the Darién Gap.” Environmental History 19, no. 2 (2014): 189–216. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24690556.].

Road trippers on the PAH who make it as far as Yaviza find that the highway comes abruptly to an end where it meets to the Darién Gap, 66-mile strip of largely impenetrable jungle, rainforest, swamp and marsh land. If motorists want to continue on the PAH they must ship their vehicle by cargo ferry to Turbo (in northern Columbia) where the Highway resumes.

⊹ ⊹ ⊹

Natural barriers of the Gap
American road builders faced a Herculean task in attempting to construct a road across the Gap. Geography and climate were a constant impediment…swamps and jungles and incessant seasonal rain produced unstable soils, making highway construction in Darién virtually an engineering “mission impossible”. Compounding the extreme topographical landform were the inherent dangers from jaguars, snakes and other poisonous creatures. Topping it off, Darién Gap’s “no man’s land” status, outside of any controlling authority, made it a haven for dangerous anti-government groups (Columbian drug cartels, leftist (FARC) guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries).

⊹ ⊹ ⊹

Environmental focus
Later problems upped the degree of difficulty for the road builders. From the early Seventies they started to get a lot of heat from environmental groups. The California-based Sierra Club waged a successful campaign against the highway, raising environmental and health issues. Opponents of the road argued that it would cause irreparable harm to a sensitive area, eco-system damage, deforestation, pose biological threats and spread tropical diseases, and they were aided by the recent passage of US environmental impact laws.

Further thwarting the road builders’ plans was the realisation that the deeper threat of adverse change was not the building of a road through the Darién Gap per se. Establishing road infrastructure in the Gap would bring a raft of unwelcome by-products. Transportation access would facilitate the incursion of loggers, ranchers, farmers, cattle grazers, poachers of wild animals. Moreover, the highway would spawn the construction of many secondary roads throughout the Gap. The Sierra Club also voiced concerns for the culture of the area’s indigenous native communities—the Kuna, Emberá and Wounaan tribes—to safeguard their right to protection of their homeland (Miller).

Once the construction work on the Darién Gap actually commenced, the Atrato River Basin with its swampy wetlands proved a monumental stumbling block, the idea to build a very long bridge over it was eventually jettisoned after the failure to locate a solid earth foundation.

While the nature of the environment and taking into account the effect on local indigenous cultures were impediments to the Darién construction project’s progress, the crucial factor in the anti-highway legal case was the threat of foot-and-mouth disease being transmitted north from South America, sufficient for US federal judges to shut down highway construction for nearly two decades. The Sierra Club’s key argument was that “the Gap served as an essential prophylactic against dangerous microbes” (Miller).

Dariénistas
The absence of a road across the Darién Gap has never stopped adventurers (labelled Dariénistas) from trying to navigate vehicles over its forbidding terrain. A host of adventure junkies have attempted it with only a small number succeeding. The first automobile expedition to make it entirely overland used specialised vehicles and relied on winches, levers and help from indigenous peoples, a journey taking over two years to travel just 125 mi (Miller).

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“America’s greatest foreign development project”
Today, the PAH is somewhat of a sleeper among American history topics (with a negligible output of books on the subject cf. prolific number of narratives on that other great American enterprise overseas, the Panama Canal). A few historians recently have drawn attention to its largely-overlooked importance – at a time when America was still engaged in its official isolationist stance in foreign affairs, the PAH during the interwar period was the US’s largest global development project…more remarkedly FD Roosevelt allocated the money to kickstart the Central American highway project from New Deal funds during the Great Depression![Maureen Harmon, ‘The Story of the Pan-American Highway’, Pegasus, Summer 2019, www.ucf.edu]. US motives were mixed, PAH (together with the earlier Panama Canal project) is where “the ideals of Pan-Americanism intersected with an expansionist compulsion (by America) to reach new, foreign markets” Eric Rutkov, The Longest Line on the Map: The United States, the Pan-American Highway, and the Quest to Link the Americas, (2019)]. This duality runs through the history of the Highway…promoted as an example of good neighbourly cooperation and mutual advantage by successive American presidents, the blatant self-interest of the US was transparent. Making such a supra-state highway a reality was necessary to expand the lucrative market for American automobiles. The proposal by Washington to build the PAH came at a time (1920s) when the US was the dominant global force in motor vehicle production. The PAH from the American perspective was primarily about the selling of the country’s automobiles…and having the road infrastructure in place was the precondition for US automakers to reap the sales bonanza to come2⃞(Miller).

℘ɧơɬơ: ۷ıʂıɬƈɛŋɬཞơáɱɛཞıƈą.ƈơɱ 

⊹ ⊹ ⊹

Endnote: “Tricky Dicky” Nixon, fan of the Pan-American Highway
Richard Nixon made the PAH something of a personal project, first as vice-president he talked Eisenhower into boosting American funding for the project. “Cold warrior” Nixon saw its construction as good for regional stability and a way of guarding against the spread of communism in the Americas. As president Nixon got behind efforts to bridge the Darién Gap, even (unrealistically) calling for its completion by 1976.

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1⃞ known locally as the Inter-American Highway
2⃞ in the Seventies the US government cloaked its over-the-top endorsements of the PAH project in the guise of highway safety education programs

The Pan-American Highway: Part 1, the Western Hemisphere’s Long, Long Road Trip

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Political geography, Regional History, Travel

The Pan-American Highway is a Goliath of roads in the Pantheon of world famous highways. The Guinness Book of Records calls it the world’s longest “motorable road”. The Pan-American Highway’s fame is such as to earn it the sobriquet of “Mother of all road trips”. This road running north/south spanning the two hemispheres of the continental Americas, stretches approximately 30,000 km from Prodhoe Bay in Alaska to its extremity at Ushuaia (Argentina) on the tip of Tierra del Fuego①. And yet its much more than a singular, linear road, it is a network of many (in some cases loosely linked) roads.

Nomenclature: although the network of roads that comprises Americas’ iconic highway is known generically as the Pan-American Highway (PAH), particular sections in different countries have their own local designations for the roadway. In Alaska it starts off as the Dalton Highway and extends south as the Alaskan Highway. When the PAH crosses the 49th Parallel you won’t find many signposts saying it but the whole US interstate highway system is designated as the “Pan-American Highway”②. In México and Central America it goes by the moniker “Inter-American Highway” (Carretera Interamericana), as well as by local network names, Federal Highway 45/190, etc. In the South American countries locals use the generic La Panamericana while the Highway is also identified by its domestic descriptor, eg, Columbia: Route 55/66, Peru: Peru Highway 1, Chile: Ruta 5, Argentina: National Route 3/7. As a general rule of thumb, according to UCF assistant professor Eric Rutkow, “the Pan-American Highway is just Highway 1 or 2 of the national system in most of South America” The Longest Line on the Map: The United States, the Pan-American Highway, and the Quest to Link the Americas .

𝐼𝓃𝓉𝑒𝓇𝓈𝓉𝒶𝓉𝑒 𝟤𝟧, 𝒩𝑒𝓌 𝑀𝑒𝓍𝒾𝒸𝑜, 𝑜𝓃𝑒 𝑜𝒻 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓊𝓃𝑜𝒻𝒻𝒾𝒸𝒾𝒶𝓁 𝒷𝓇𝒶𝓃𝒸𝒽𝑒𝓈 𝑜𝒻 𝒫𝒜𝐻

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Unofficial routes
If you look at a map of the Pan-American Highway, one of the first things that stands out is that there is no one route for much of its journey. At Edmonton, Canada, the PAH forks, giving travellers the choice of an eastern route to the US via Winnipeg, bisecting America and entering México via Texas, or following the straighter route south through the Rocky Mountain states to Mexico. In South America also there are various spurs branching off from the PAH, eg, from Bogotá, Columbia to Venezuela; from Montevideo, Uruguay, up the Brazilian coast as far as São Paulo and Rio. When the PAH reaches the Chilean port of Valparaiso, it turns east and joins with Buenos Aires, from where it runs parallel to the Atlantic down through Argentine Patagonia.

𝑅𝑒𝒹𝑒𝑒𝓂𝑒𝓇 𝒯𝓊𝓃𝓃𝑒𝓁 (𝐼𝓂𝒶𝑔𝑒: 𝒲𝒾𝓀𝒾𝓂𝒶𝓅𝒾𝒶)

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Loftiest points of the PAH
The PAH winds its way through wide diversities of terrain, including many mountainous regions, which prove to be some of the most challenging parts for motorists. The highest points reached by the PAH are in Costa Rica where it rises to a height of 3,335 metres (the so-called “Summit of Death“), in Quito, Eduador’s capital, where the PAH climbs to 2,850 metres, and at the Christ the Redeemer Tunnel, a mountain pass in the Andes (linking Santiago, Chile, to Mendoza, Argentina), 3,200 metres.

Bifurcated highway
Just as the Great Wall of China took millennias to construct, the PAH was far from a rapid build, rather it evolved slowly and haltingly, stage by stage. Laredo/Nuevo Laredo (US/Méxican border) to Mexico City was the first stage completed, followed later by sections connecting Mexico to Panama and Columbia to Argentina. Also like the Great Wall, PAH remains unfinished, the Highway in its “nether regions” is not contiguous. The missing piece in the jigsaw of the road’s infrastructure is a 60-70–mile long “no man’s land” linking the southern part of Panama to the top of Columbia. It’s Spanish name is Tapón del Darién (lit. “Darién Plug”) but is better known as the Darién Gap, a narrow strip of inhospitable terrain, the severity of which has defied all attempts to construct a road through it. The saga of the Darién Gap—the “Achilles Heel” of the Americas’ super-highway—will be taken up in Part 2 of this blog, along with the US’s historic driving (pun intended) role in the development of the PAH.

𝒮𝑜𝓊𝓇𝒸𝑒: 𝓇𝑒𝓈𝑒𝒶𝓇𝒸𝒽𝑔𝒶𝓉𝑒.𝓃𝑒𝓉

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① traversing 14 countries
② though Interstate 25 at Albuquerque, New Mexico, is signposted the ”Pan-American Freeway”