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Land grab
After the failure of the De Lesseps venture, a new French company was formed to try to keep the project going but little extra progress was recorded. The remaining investors realised that they could not hope to complete the work and the whole asset would have to be written off, unless they could find a purchaser for the, by now, quarter finished canal. They turned to the United States government as the only feasible body and employed intermediaries (what we would today call lobbyists) to petition the administration in Washington. They were helped by the advent of Teddy Roosevelt to the Presidency after the assassination of McKinley in September 1901. While regarded as a progressive Republican in domestic issues, Roosevelt was one of the new breed (and still historically one of the most important) of American imperialists who rose to power at the turn of the 20th century. At the outset, the new President decided that absolute American control over the canal zone would be necessary for success. This was opposed by the authorities in Bogota, who would only grant a lease arrangement that respected ultimate Colombian sovereignty. In a move that would be repeated many times in years to come, the US sponsored an independence movement amongst the top levels of society in Panama which was also supported by people with a financial interest in the canal. A successful coup against the small local Colombian garrison took place. This could have been subsequently suppressed by Bogota but crucial American intervention took the form of warning the Colombian government off. A pliant administration was formed in the newly independent country and in fact the US obtained decisive control over internal Panamanian politics for decades to come. One of the first acts of the new government was to cede the canal zone (a strip about fifteen miles wide) to the US government in perpetuity. The United States had total control over the zone and appointed a series of Governors and Special envoys to the region. While such a naked land grab was clearly unpopular with nationalists in Central and South America, it also provoked a backlash in America itself. Critics claimed the country was behaving more like an Empire than a Republic; defenders of the move replied that such operations were essential to the economic future of the United States and such arguments proved hard to refute in the Age of Imperialism.
From
the start in 1904, the US effort was much more substantial than the
French, backed as it was by the enormous resources of the American
government. It was also free of the constraints to continually raise
capital on the stock markets. The US army took effective control over
the project, operating as a quasi-autonomous government and the
military oversaw most aspects of workers’
lives in the canal zone. Undesirables could be immediately deported
from the zone with the police given almost unlimited discretion as to
who constituted an ‘undesirable’.
Everything (health, housing, schooling, canteens, entertainment) was
provided or organised by the state and at the time the project was
viewed as having all the characteristics of paternalism and ‘welfare
socialism’. So much so that a member of
the then US Socialist Party working on the canal was asked by a
visiting journalist whether this was the type of society he wanted to
see in the future. He replied, ‘government
ownership don’t mean anything to us
working men unless we own the government. We don’t
here – this is the sort of thing Bismarck
dreamed of’.
Diseases
It was recognised that one of the main reasons for the failure of the French attempt was the crippling effect of disease on the white administrators and black workforce. Using prevailing medical advances and knowledge gained from conditions that faced US troops in the recent war in Cuba, the Americans were in a position to eradicate yellow fever and control malaria. This was accomplished by a massive sanitary campaign against the mosquito transmitters of both diseases. The huge resources put into this campaign were also seen to have wider strategic advantages in permitting safe settlement of the tropics by Caucasians. In actuality, pneumonia was a much bigger killer of black labourers but was almost unknown amongst the white work force. Malaria affected the success and efficiency of the project more significantly, both because this disease affected whites mainly and because, being generally not fatal, it resulted in expensive hospital treatment. Thus virtually nothing was done against pneumonia compared to the large programme to minimise malaria. This bears out the socialist view of the ultimate purpose of state-run health systems: they are financed precisely to the amount where the cost of dealing with the consequences of not having then would exceed the cost of having them. Hence hospitals were not constructed and maintained for workers’ benefit but as a judicious investment to ensure the profitability of the enterprise.
As with the French effort, the supply of an adequate labour force was seen as essential. The skilled workers and foremen would of course be white Americans but as regards manual labourers, white US workers were regarded as too expensive, too unionised and susceptible to tropical disease. Black Caribbean labourers were again seen as the most suitable being English speaking (thus able to understand instructions) and having some immunity to tropical diseases (to reduce hospital and sickness costs). More importantly they would be ‘cheap’ in all senses of the word. The island of Barbados was this time identified as the best source. The island was overpopulated with descendants of sugar plantation slaves who were now landless labourers and there was a tradition of emigration. Over the course of the first decade of the 20th century, Barbadians in their thousands were shipped in cattle boats to Panama. Technically of course these were all voluntary migrant labourers though because of economic pressures, the real situation was little different to slavery. It highlights the socialist case that slavery can exist long after its formal abolition which is something those proponents of ‘Apology for the Atlantic Slave Trade’ could do well to remember. In many cases, the Barbadians were victims of racism from the local Panamanian police and from their American supervisors.
While conditions for the black workers were materially better under the Americans (principally because of a major reduction in the death rate and appreciation of the cost benefits of maintaining a healthy workforce), compared to the French era, there was much more rigid colour stratification. The first decade of the 20th century marked the approaching apogee of the Jim Crow system in the southern US states. Intermingling of the races was seen as undesirable and was actively prevented; there were separate schools, canteens, bars, churches for blacks and whites. Not surprisingly living quarters and canteens, etc. were of a much lower standard for black workers. They endured conditions such as working in the rain 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. Black workers (unlike their white colleagues) did not have paid sick leave and could lose their jobs if they became ill. The West Indian workers were three times as likely as other workers to die from disease or accidents. Furthermore, to weaken worker solidarity and to prevent the occurrence of strikes (of which there were very few) the authorities had a scheme of periodically bringing in labourers from different European countries to lessen solidarity amongst the manual workers. Spain, Italy and Greece provided the majority of these extra men who were given double the wage rate of the black workers. This was a deliberate and successful Divide and Rule policy by the authorities.
Less important
The canal eventually opened under the Wilson Presidency in the summer of 1914 just as World War I started. It remains a busy trade route to this day. As it happens one of the main military reasons given for its construction, namely to permit US warships more rapid movement between the East and West coasts of the US was soon rendered redundant. The huge and permanent expansion in the US navy in the 20th century to police America’s global commitments made it necessary to have separate Atlantic and Pacific fleets and the development of aircraft carriers (too large to pass through the canal) as the crucial naval warship made the canal militarily less useful. Hence it was important but not vital to America in World War II and the Cold War. Increasing Panamanian resentment at the permanent ceding of a portion of their territory to the United States led to the signing of a revised treaty in 1977, in spite of vehement opposition by American conservatives. This set in motion the process of the return of ownership of the canal to Panama which was fully completed in 1999.
Would
the canal have been built if socialism existed? In my personal
opinion, yes,
though clearly
with a careful analysis of the costs and
benefits to humanity. Instead of the needless and pointless diversion
of time and resources into raising finance, political manoeuvring,
wining and dining the people with influence, maintaining confidence
etc, the focus under socialism would be on the engineering aspects of
the project, its environmental impact and the health and safety of
the people involved. The story of the Panama Canal serves as reminder
of the totally avoidable waste that occurs under capitalism and the
bizarre priorities of the money system. The fever for profit that
gives the book its appropriate title was fundamentally the cause of
the devastation wreaked upon the workers by exposure to the yellow
fever and malaria fever on the Panama Canal.
KEVIN CRONIN
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