A Return to Panama After 62 Years

Posted on 10/01/2017 Updated on 10/01/2017

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Panamà as we pronounce it would be Pànama…  a metaphoric  inversion for history expressed by  the different accents.  I first went there as an  intern in 1954-55,  not yet age 22, interested- vaguely- in tropical medicine but more concretely in adventure. Among my 8  colleagues,  half  were preparing for missionary work,  one for public health, one for psychiatry.   Before 1903, Panama was an  isolated part of Colombia, an oligarchy run by four or five families.  It was inaccessible  by land across the Darien.  The  current sometimes road, actually highway 5,  or the Pan American Highway,  is still  often  impassable.

A canal had long been considered to facilitate travel between the Atlantic and Pacific, which required a long sea voyage around Cape Horn or difficult overland  Balboa took across the isthmus of Panama.  A French venture acquired permission to build the canal under the direction of  Ferdinand deLesseps  ( Suez Canal,  desert, flat,  no locks). He wanted to cut a similar sea level swatch across Panama. But 40,000 French (and French colonials)  died there due to that  miscalculation,  graft, malaria, yellow fever, poor nutrition and dysentery; it was abandoned.  But in 1903  the US  felt it could big crazy things. Teddy Roosevelt tried to arrange a canal treaty with Colombia and failed. But because of the isolation of the isthmus from Colombia the locals felt like colonists, and resented their voiceless circumstances and  distant and neglectful rulers, like the rebellious British Colonies  in North America.  They  found common cause with Teddy Roosevelt who wanted a canal, and revolted, assisted by U S  gunboat diplomacy.

The US Canal Zone  was about 10 miles across and some 50 miles long. Panama is Water, and water is the Power that could  operate the locks of a  canal.  A dam was required to store that water, and also control the swampland created by the ever flooding Chagas River; and thereby  to control mosquito borne diseases.  Incredibly the huge project was completed by 1914!  The original locks still operate unaltered, today.  Overall, The US Army Corps of Engineers and Black Caribbean laborers really did the heavy lifting: John F. Wallace conceived the engineering of the canal but became a victim of the terrain, disease, and the political bureaucracy; he survived there for less than one year. John Stevens, a famous civil engineer,  took seriously the yellow fever/malaria problem. The largest earthen dam ever built controlled the Chagas River, and drained the swamps; which controlled the mosquitoes, malaria and Yellow Fever, and provided the gravity flow water power to operate the canal locks. Col. George Washington Goethels was finally  given unrestrained authority, and was able to complete the job over the next 7 years. William C Gorgas, a U S Army physician who understood the relation of malaria to mosquitoes, convinced the Army to drain the swamps, making it possible from a medical standpoint to build the canal. A second canal was started  but abandoned because of WWII;  now it has been completed, arguably  by China, who also had studied the  sea level alternative as across Nicaragua but abandoned it.

In 1954 the canal was still operated by the US civil Service.   There was segregation of several  sorts.  First, upper level administrators and U S military had the option to  live on base, with typical military housing and   commissary privileges with access to US goods and food.  Most privileged long term US citizen employees of the Canal Company lived in bungalows.  Second,  short term US citizen employees like MD  interns, lived in curious multi family wooden apartment buildings, each apartment located upstairs from a parking area below.    The apartment buildings were oriented with long sides facing the sea breezes.  They were two story wooden structures with space for parking underneath, and 12 ft high ceilings. There were no internal doors;  the  kitchen, dining and bedroom were in one  line so that that the sea breeze, could flow through open screens placed above 8 ft.  Each apartment had a bathroom off center and a  heat closet to keep clothing dry.  Construction was so light that people learned to speak quietly, even quarrel in harsh whispers. Sexual revelry was often audible, though as invisible as  the morning alarm clock,  flushing of toilets.

The third level of segregation was provided to ‘local raters’ whose situation devolved from the building of the canal.   The US Army had recruited English speaking workers among blacks of the Caribbean.   Communication was more practical in English, and the work performance was superior to indigenous workers. ( Only the Spanish had managed to induce los indios  to work through a brutal choice made clear in a statue at a Mission in Baja CA: a priest holds a bible in one hand and a skull in the other. Believe or die. Work now to live, and die for the glory of God and the Catholic Queen. But the Caribbean blacks were different, perhaps in part because, though paid less than US citizens, and they had significant inducements:  Local raters’ were provided decent liveable wages,  living quarters, medical care, and allowed to buy US imported  goods at a reduced rate from a local rate commissary.  In the long run, however local raters felt abandoned after September 7, 1977, when  President Jimmy Carter gave the Canal to Panama; a long standing local resentment of blacks with special privilege boiled over. Soon many ex local raters had nether  job, nor any apparent citizenship.    Yet there was, and is, a  Black American Atlantic Coast and black Caribbean island archipelago; it may be largely invisible to most of us in the USA, though it consists of many black communities which are the source for much unique American and Brazilian   music, art, dance, custom, and language.  Therefore, the abandoned  black local raters of Panama, did not live in limbo; they have adapted or relocated. It’s instructive to kindle and google the many American Black authors, and the Quaker beginnings of the emancipation movement. The very first American revolution was black: Haiti. * Like most US citizens I  often focus only on the Northern Hemisphere.  We tend to forget that we are  all Americans: one continent, one hemisphere,  with a shared history, indigenous, immigrant past, and present.

I visit Panama City in late 2016. Much has conspired to make it the commercial and banking center of South America, rivaling  Miami. The canal had been gradually  and totally transferred to Panama  control by 2000.  Panama has  retained the $US as their currency, which stabilized the economy; despite many problems it became a place where people with means could find refuge from chaos at home, or for various thieves to hide money, including drug money. The head of the militarily, Manuel Noriega had been a  former cooperator with the CIA but then became de facto dictator and drug lord.The US invasion to depose him in 1989-90 was  complex, and became the source of many true lies:  afterward there was an election at the insistence of the US; but the winning candidate was assaulted and Noriega declared the election null and void.   While US invasion was widely supported by the populace, it was  real warfare against a well prepared military,  deadly and destructive. It was hugely condemned, as customary, in Europe and the UN;  The Panamanian military was dissolved.  However, the emergence  of Panama as a commercial and banking center, and a repository for suspect money, continues. The second canal has been completed, financed largely by the Chinese, and led to continuing growth in the past few years.  The downtown is modern. A Trump hotel, shaped  like a huge sail, looks like a twin to one in Dubai. A metro was completed last year. The upscale barrios and yacht harbors,  rebuilt old town tourist area, and expensive restaurants  flourish. As to the currently  strong US dollar, Panama is something of an exception,  comparable to Chile.  Most other countries today are,  by comparison, a bargain.  It is usually cool at night,  when the ocean breeze is up.   In the 50’s that meant street dancing to Lucho Ascarraga’s wild electric  organ: Cha Cha Chas, with  typical flat foot moves,   keeping the  whole foot including the heel on the floor and moving The Rest… none of that  heel-high stuff.  That, happily, is the same today.

Ancon Hill is the highest spot overlooking the Pacific entrance of the canal, with old gun embankments at the top,  set among tropical forest. Several hundred yards down hill is the site of  Gorgas Hospital where I interned in 1954. My oldest daughter was born there. I visit the  grounds of the old Gorgas hospital, of French design. It had a stolid central administration building surrounded by a series of white one story buildings  in colonial French style, connected by covered walkways,  among tropical gardens. Now only the  relatively modern cement Admin building remains,  among curious administrative buildings. It stands silent, empty, looking down darkly past the  surrounding neglected  padlocked wire fenced approach.  I return to visit  the barrack-like employee housing  where I lived in 1954 which had been scheduled to be to be torn down; last I was there my old apartment was open, vacant and neglected. I invaded and kicked at the dust of memory briefly. But today, it is still there, though hardly recognizable.  Ancon Hill is Location;  and the infrastructure of streets, paving, and utilities remained. So the old apartments have been bought up, remodeled to a condition almost beyond recognition.  It is heartening to see it all alive and well, transformed, into some degree of elegance.  elegant it is hard to recognize; like  Pànama has been transformed  into Panamà.

*You may want to kindle and google the many black  authors of the Americas,  the John Woolman and the Quaker beginnings of the emancipation movement, and the first American revolution, which was black: in Haiti. Like many US citizens I  often focus only on the Northern Hemisphere.  But we are Americans: one continent, one hemisphere,  with a shared history, indigenous, immigrant past, and present.

* * There is a  645 pp third edition of a book Americas by Peter Winn. But frankly, it seems to me  simply a compulsive compilation of the ‘news’ we read in the US. Whenever the author treats places and peoples I know very well, the omissions and commissions of errors really rankle me terribly. My bias is this: The record of a people and a time are found in between the lies, and lines; and in fiction, poetry;  in other words in Literature. Usually what we call News or  History is moribund  fiction without flesh or soul.