The issue of the Interoceanic Canal is one of the journalistic signs with the greatest presence in the news media throughout history, especially during the negotiation of the Torrijos Carter treaties (1972-1977) and later when Panama assumed full administration of all the canal areas (1999). In this context we ask ourselves: What interpretants, from the interpretive and inferential semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce, generated these informative texts, and what relationship does history, semiotics and journalism have? Therefore, the methodological approach used consisted, in the first instance, of a content analysis, and then of a semiotic analysis, for which the triadic relationship of the Peircean sign and its phaneroscopic categories of firstness, secondness and thirdness were taken into account.In addition to readings of news texts by readers, and in-depth interviews with journalists who are part of the academy. The objective of this article is to reveal the immediate, dynamic and final historical interpretants that generated the journalistic texts. According to the readings, contributions of the interviewees, and the analysis, this sign regains relevance, given the historical meaning of its nature as a journalistic sign.
