ColÓn Man

Caribbean men migrated to Panamá to work on its railroad (1850–1855), French-supported canal (1881–1898), and the successful United States canal (1904–1914). These Colón Men, taking the name of Panamá's port city, were defined by their migration to and work in the Central American country. Appearing in historical, literary, lyrical, and personal narratives, the figure's cockiness, possessions, cosmopolitanism, canal-forged masculinity, and even the illnesses he contracted distinguish him. Because of the significance of one of the Caribbean's largest internal migrations and the construction of the Panamá Canal, the Colón Man has come to signify the real and imagined possibilities of both.

This migration's import can be seen in the figure's dynamic representation in nineteenth- and twentieth-century narratives, representations that include the poorly depicted Caribbean worker in early histories, the thwarted lover in folk songs, and the ancestral figure in pan-Caribbean literature. The differences between these narratives suggest that Colón Men occupy both "factual" and "imaginable" spaces in the Caribbean imaginary. Thus, maintaining the collisions and parallels inherent in the various depictions of these laborers offers details about migrants and isthmian migration, about the ways canal work influenced these laborers, and about the communities shaped by these men's absence and presence.

Fictionalized Colón Men are cosmopolitan, ladies' men, Pan-Africanist, and rich; importantly, they are also unsuccessful lovers, loyal colonials, poor, and a mixture of all these characteristics. This ambivalence suggests that creative narratives make accessible aspects of the canal enterprise that are "undocumentable"—that is, inaccessible and/or devalued—in some canal histories. Colón Men went to Panamá to profit from their employers, but they also traveled with desires that had little to do with the United States or canal construction.

Historical narratives about the Panamá Canal reference workers from Jamaica and Barbados; songs that were popular during the construction period also prominently feature men from these two countries. Literature and workers' letters, however, feature migrants who traveled from Guadeloupe, the Bahamas, St. Lucia, Trinidad, Antigua, Grenada, Dominica, and St. Vincent. That this isthmian migration mainly comprised Afro-Caribbean men makes this pan-Caribbean national representation more startling. Of course, women, East Indian, Chinese, and other peoples occupied the region at the time, but very few migrated to Panamá, or inadequate documentation makes their presence hard to reconstruct.

Although economic reasons—both on the isthmus and within the Caribbean—partially explain migrants' reasons for leaving home, the range of Colón Man stories reveals more complex motivations. The chance to make money was a definite draw; however, the uses to which the money was put appeared to be more significant. Whether Colón Men used their "Panamá Money" to purchase shops, buy or improve property, or sport the latest jewelry and fashions, they were determined to project an image of a successful (though mostly mythic) migrant. In many cases this image was more important than the money.

For another population of Panamá Men, migration served as a form of resistance. When facing post emancipation laws designed to limit the franchise, employment, and movement of formerly enslaved plantation workers, they left for the isthmus. Plantation owners pressured their governments to impose taxes on would-be migrants to stem this tide; however, this merely changed the character of migrant populations: more affluent, urban, skilled, and white-collar workers displaced rural, peasant, and unskilled ones.

Finally, the lure of adventure and the desire to accrue characteristics believed to be "manly" pulled Caribbean men to the isthmus. Former canal workers described their desire for "adventure and experience" and to test their "adult" status by challenging their parents, comments that speak to the power that these more-than-economic reasons held, as they often diminished the impact of stories about diseases in the Canal Zone. Even after confronting for themselves Colón's inadequate sewer systems, diseases, work-related injuries and deaths, and North American racism, Colón Men remained on the isthmus, went home to show off their finery, and returned to Panamá when their money ran low.

The U.S. Isthmian Canal Commission (ICC) hired Colón Men for various jobs. For example, Caribbean men worked as water or messenger boys, pick-and-shovel men, carpenters, plumbers, subforemen, machine operators, and in various white-collar jobs. Yet because of the ICC's rigidly held "color line," few black workers rose to the highest levels of employment; even those who did were subject to its silver/gold payment scale: white, U.S. citizens were paid in gold currency, and all others were paid in silver (hence the designation of "Silver Men" for the over-whelmingly black workforce and "Silver City" for the town where many of them lived).

See also Panama Canal

Bibliography

Conniff, Michael L. Black Labor on a White Canal: Panama, 1904–1981. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985.

Cramer, Louise. "Songs of West Indian Negroes in the Canal Zone." California Folklore Quarterly 5 (1946): 243–272.

Frederick, Rhonda D. "Colón Man a Come": Mythographies of Panamá Canal Migration. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2005.

Lewis, Lancelot. The West Indian in Panama: Black Labor in Panama, 1850–1914. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1980.

Newton, Velma. The Silver Men: West Indian Labour Migration to Panama, 1850–1914. Mona, Jamaica: Institute of Social and Economic Research of the University of the West Indies, 1984.

Petras, Elizabeth McLean. Jamaican Labor Migration: White Capital and Black Labor, 1850–1930. Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1988.

Richardson, Bonham C. Panama Money in Barbados, 1900–1920. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985.

Senior, Olive. "The Colon People." Jamaica Journal 11, no. 3 (1978): 62–71; 12, no. 4 (1978): 87–103.

Stuhl, Ruth C., ed. Letters from Isthmian Canal Construction Workers. Balboa Heights, Panama: Isthmian Historical Society, 1963.

Thomas-Hope, Elizabeth. "The Establishment of a Migration Tradition: British West Indian Movements to the Hispanic Caribbean in the Century after Emancipation." In Caribbean Social Relations, edited by Colin G. Clarke. London: University of Liverpool-Centre for Latin American Studies, 1978.

rhonda frederick (2005)