- by Graham Holton
- The Guardian
- Issue #2133
Panama Canal. Photo: rawpixel (CC0)
President Donald Trump has claimed the Panama Canal is American as 35,000 Americans were killed during its construction. His figures are false. The great majority of the 25,000 killed were West Indian and Southern European workers.
Under the 1903 Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty, the United States took over the 10-mile-wide Canal Zone, paying a one-time US$10 million payment to Panama, and an annual annuity of US$250,000. In 1904 the US government acquired the uncompleted French Canal and its rolling stock for US$40 million. The Panama Canal was used extensively for the transport of war materiel and troops during the Korean and Vietnam Wars. After the Zone lost its political usefulness, the US handed over sovereignty to Panama in 1999. The US has no legal or moral right to the Canal.
The Canal Zone was placed under the US Army engineer, Colonel George W Goethals, known as the “Czar of the Isthmus.” The Canal was a colossal US engineering achievement; the American press called it the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” What was not told was the racist system the US introduced into their Canal Zone.
The US government refused to bring down white American labourers to work on the Canal, fearing American prestige would suffer if whites worked alongside Black workers. Nor would they ship down thousands of America’s Black workers, as this would have increased the cost of agricultural labour back home. The Canal workforce originally consisted of European workers – Spanish, Italian, Scandinavian, French, English – and American overseers. The Canal officials found the Europeans were too radical for wanting improved working conditions. They turned to the plentiful supply of cheap West Indian unskilled labour, mainly from Barbados and Jamaica, which were paid less than a Black cotton field hand in America.
The British and American governments agreed that the US would return the West Indians when the Canal was completed. Instead, 25,000 West Indians were left to languish in a country different in culture and language from their own. They settled in the port of Colon, known as the “Whiteman’s Grave,” and Panama City, which was described as reeking of filth and disease. The Americans took control beyond the Canal Zone, to ensure there were no “foul Spanish Negro Indian camps of disease at either end of the Canal.” In the shantytowns of Colon, Cristobal and Panama City, West Indians formed the “Protestant ghettos of Catholic Panama,” described as “some of the nastiest slums” in Latin America.
John Foster Fraser describes in Panama and What it Means (1913) how British ships picked up workers at Barbados and took them to Colon. The West Indians came aboard with their families and their worldly possessions jammed into every allotted corner of the ship. Men wore ragged work clothes and women wore brightly coloured garments of bright yellow, red and blue. At Colon their eyes were checked for ophthalmia and then they were vaccinated against smallpox, at a rate of twenty persons per minute.
The West Indians contributed 60 per cent of the physical labour to build the Canal. Frederic J Haskin writes in The Panama Canal (1913) that workers were divided into “gold employees” and “silver employees.” The white American officials, clerks, construction and skilled craftsmen were paid in gold dollar coins. They received free housing, free medical care and food at near cost price. A steamer arrived daily with a mountain of food. Nothing was grown in Panama, it was all shipped from the USA, three thousand kilometres away.
The US minted Panamanian silver dollars, having half the gold coin’s value, which were paid to the 35,000 manual workers. Unable to live on their paltry wage, thousands took to the forest with their families, building huts from old planks and discarded corrugated iron. Although poor, the West Indians were proudly British and had great self-respect. This was something white overseers were not used to. In retaliation for their racist remarks West Indians worked slower. To improve productivity, Colonel Goethals posted notices warning any foremen who used offensive language to their gangs would be instantly dismissed.
By the time the SS Ancón made the first passage through the Canal in August 1914, many US citizens had far more money than most Panamanians. They bought up land or stores and became even wealthier. They were disliked by the Panamanian ruling class, who saw them as unsophisticated. Today Afro-Panamanians still live in the slums, speaking English and Creole; a tragic consequence of the USA’s Panama Canal.
