Free Republic

PUNTA BRITO, Nicaragua — One of the largest engineering projects in history would start here, on this desolate and pristine crescent of dark-sand Pacific beach. From in front of the hammock-swinging shrimpers on the porches of their tin-and-wood shanties, the trench would run east in sinuous curves up through the mangroves and banana fields until it reaches the shores of Central America’s largest freshwater lake, then cut across the Caribbean highlands and through indigenous territory, ending its journey 172 miles away on the beaches of the Atlantic. They call it the Grand Inter-Oceanic Canal: an audacious $50 billion plan by an...

Colombia has announced it is negotiating with China to build an alternative to the Panama Canal. The proposed transport route is intended to promote the flow of goods between Asia and Latin America. The plan is to create a "dry canal" where the Pacific port of Buenaventura would be linked by rail, across Colombia, to the Atlantic Coast. Trade between Colombia and China has increased from $10m in 1980 to more than $5bn last year. The announcement came from the Colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos, who told the Financial Times that the project was "a real proposal... and it is...

Nicaragua has awarded a Chinese company a 100-year concession to build an alternative to the Panama Canal, in a step that looks set to have profound geopolitical ramifications. The president of the country's national assembly, Rene Nuñez, announced the $40bn (£26bn) project, which will reinforce Beijing's growing influence on global trade and weaken US dominance over the key shipping route between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The name of the company and other details have yet to be released, but the opposition congressman Luis Callejas said the government planned to grant a 100-year lease to the Chinese operator. The national...

Nicaragua's parliament is due to vote on Thursday on one of the biggest infrastructure projects in Latin America's history – a trans-oceanic canal that is to be built and run by a Chinese company. If it goes ahead, the $40bn (£26bn) scheme, which is twice as expensive as Brazil's Belo Monte dam and likely to be three times longer than the Panama canal, looks set to transform global shipping and jump start the economy of this Central American nation. As well as the waterway, the draft agreement between Nicaragua and a Hong Kong registered firm — Nicaraguan Canal Development Investment...

Nicaragua has approved plans for a mysterious Hong Kong-based company to build an estimated $40 billion canal across the middle of the country, Luis Manuel Galeano and Michael Weissenstein of The Associated Press report. The waterway, which would have to be roughly three times as long as the 50-mile Panama Canal, would be one of the largest infrastructure projects ever. The plan has some serious detractors: Environmentalists say it would devastate Lake Nicaragua, the country's primary source of fresh water, while shipping experts say that it may be an economically unfeasible power play by China. The company, HK Nicaragua Canal...

The recent border dispute between Costa Rica and Nicaragua is a sign of an ambitious plan by Venezuela, Iran and Nicaragua to create a "Nicaragua Canal" linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans that would rival the existing Panama Canal. Costa Rica says that last week Nicaraguan troops entered its territory along the San Juan River – the border between the two nations. Nicaragua had been conducting channel deepening work on the river when the incident occurred. Sources in Latin America have told Haaretz that the border incident and the military pressure on Costa Rica, a country without an army, are...