Panama Canal

On August 15, 1914, the Panama Canal opened its doors to world commerce, significantly reducing the distance between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and making it possible for the United States to emerge as a regional and world power. While volumes have been written in praise of the French and the Americans who designed and financed the building of the canal, much less recognition has been awarded to the tens of thousands of West Indians who sacrificed life and limb from the 1880s through 1914 to build the Panama Canal. Neither the United States nor the Republic of Panama has built a significant monument in recognition of the importance of black West Indian labor to the building of the waterway.

However, the story of West Indians and the Panama Canal has been told by several prominent authors. The migration of West Indians to Panama between the years 1850 and 1914 is superbly narrated by Velma Newton of the University of the West Indies in The Silver Men (1984), while Gerstle Mack, David McCullough, George Westerman, and Michael Conniff provide, in separate volumes, valuable information and analysis on the social and economic conditions they faced. In the late 1970s, the Panamanian-born Roman Foster wrote, directed, and produced Diggers, a documentary that speaks eloquently of the cultural life and legacy of West Indians on the isthmus.

Who were these West Indian canal workers? What was life like for them during the construction period, which lasted from 1904 to 1914? What has been their contribution and legacy? According to George Westerman, 45,107 contract laborers were hired to work on the Panama Canal during this period, and 31,071 of these workers immigrated to Panama from the West Indies, the vast majority from Barbados. This figure does not include the many thousands that came to the isthmus during this period without a prior contract, but who nevertheless found work upon arrival. These contract workers, classified as "unskilled," were placed on the "Silver Roll," meaning they were paid in local currency. They were supervised by white Americans (far fewer in number), who were on the "Gold Roll" (they were paid in U.S. dollars). President Theodore Roosevelt sanctioned this arrangement while recognizing the centrality of black Canal workers. For example, in November 1906, on his way home from Panama aboard the Louisiana, he wrote in a letter to his son: "with intense energy men and machines do their task, the white men supervising matters and handling the machines, while the tens of thousands of black men do the rough manual labor where it is not worthwhile to have machines do it." (McCullough, 1977, p. 498). Hence, in what Raymond Davis calls a "split labor market," cheap black labor from the West Indies significantly lowered building costs while increasing the physical and psychological toll paid by these black workers.

Afraid of dying from malaria or yellow fever, whites abandoned the isthmus in droves. Union leaders in the

United States were "opposed (to) any wholesale shipment of men to 'that deathtrap' and particularly after an inspection team from Japan … reported the Isthmus was unsafe to risk the lives of their men" (McCullough, 1977, p. 473). Such work was therefore left to blacks recruited from the West Indies, who were thought to be suited by nature and habit to withstand the punishing isthmian climate.

In spite of Panama's reputation as a "pest hole," thousands of West Indian youth continued to arrive there to work under dangerous and segregated conditions. Their personal histories reveal the enormity of their sacrifices and the nature of their class exploitation and racial oppression. In 1963 the Isthmian Historical Society held an essay competition designed to elicit the personal stories of those who had worked on the Panama Canal prior to 1913. Albert Peters of the Bahamas, the winner of the competition, described the nature of life and work during the construction period.

Peters was born in the Bahamas on February 10, 1885, and like many other Caribbean youngsters affected by economic hardship and eager for adventure, he left for Panama in 1906 at the heights of the canal construction. His parents were against the idea, for they knew of the ravages of yellow fever and malaria in Panama. Peters, like tens of thousands of Caribbean youngsters, disregarded the admonition of parents and friends and sought work and adventure as a "digger" of the Panama Canal. What Peters and the tens of thousands like him found in Panama during the first years of the 1900s, however, was drenching rain, mudslides, yellow fever, malaria, typhoid, bad food, repressive labor conditions, and low pay.

Peters "arrived in Colon 31 August 1906, at twenty-one years of age. [I] was surprised at board walks for streets. My nice clothes and shoes that I brought was not for down here in the heavy rain and mud. I sold my clothes and black derby, took the money and bought high top boots and blue dungaree suits then I started on the job. The pay was fifty cents a day or two balboas. I got malaria after a month" (Foster, 1985). His first time in the hospital, which he says was high on a hill, the man next to him

died. After five days on quinine, he was back to work. But, in "fifteen days I was back in there again for eight days this time. The latter part of November I left Tabernilla for Colon, got a job feeding mules. Got Malaria in Colon too and went to the hospital with a fever 104" (Foster, 1985).

The majority of the diggers who participated in the Isthmian Historical Society competition listed malaria and yellow fever as major threats to life during the construction period. Working conditions, especially during the first years, were especially hard, as the men cleared forests and fumigated against yellow fever and malaria carrying mosquitoes, built or refurbished housing for the laborers, dynamited the earth, and endured police repression (especially those who were charged with vagrancy).

Despite dangerous and unhealthy working conditions, unequal pay, no sick leave or pension, and separate and unequal facilities, West Indian canal workers were central to the building and maintenance of the Panama Canal and to the modernization of Panama. Their story deserves a more prominent part in the histories of the Panama Canal and the Republic of Panama.

See also Colón Man

Bibliography

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

Davis, R. A. "West Indian Workers on the Panama Canal: A Split Labor Market Interpretation." Ph.D. diss, Stanford University, 1981.

Foster, Roman, director and producer. Diggers, documentary film, 119 minutes. Roman J. Foster, 1985.

Mack, Gerstle. The Land Divided: A History of The Panama Canal and Other Isthmian Canal Projects. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1944. Reprint, New York: Octagon Books, 1974.

McCullough, David. The Path between the Seas. New York: Touchstone, 1977.

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

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

Westerman, George. Los Inmigrantes Antillanos en Panama. Panama: Instituto Nacional de Cultura, 1980.

george priestley (2005)