Black Labor on a White Canal: Panama, 1904-1981 (Pitt Latin American Series)

By Michael L. Conniff

Two major themes dominate Black Labor on a White Canal. The first is the settlement of over 100,000 black West Indians in the small Central American republic of Panama. Many of these people were hired as the unskilled work force for the isthmian canal that the United States began to build in 1904. The second is U.S. labor policy on the canal from that date until the United States began to relinquish its control over the waterway by the Carter-Torrijos Treaty of 1977. Each in turn forms part of a larger f the concern. The West Indian experience in Panama has been a microcosm oof the African diaspora in which blacks have been scattered abroad by the forces of slavery, poverty, and white supremacy. Canal labor policy was likewise a key element in the colonial relationship between the American colossus and its tiny Panamanian client-state. Black Labor on a White Canal traces the history of the West Indian predicament on the isthmus under Indians both American and Panamanian masters. The climax came when West and Panamanians began to come to terms with one another and of when Washington acknowledged that its prized outpost at the crossroads of the Americas was an anachronism in a largely decolonized world.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0822935090
• ISBN13: 9780822935094
• Release Date: January 1985
• Publisher: Univ of Pittsburgh Pr
• Length: 221 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.8" x 1.0" x 6.5"