His fascination is nothing new.“The Panama Canal is doing quite well,” Donald Trump beamed in June 2017 during one of his earliest meetings with another world leader. “I think we did a good job building it.

Hundreds of Panamanians marched on Thursday to mark the anniversary of a deadly uprising against U.S. control of the Panama Canal in 1964, with some protesters burning an effigy of President-elect Donald Trump who has threatened to retake the vital global waterway.

Few took the president-elect’s combative comments at face value, but they still sent a shudder through a country that the United States has invaded before.