Entrance to Abangares Gold Mine in Costa Rica. It is a museum today.Image.
As both the banana plantation system and the various mines, conceded by the Central American governments to the transnational UFC and their various divisions in the region, prospered the labor contest winner amongst the various races which competed for jobs would experience treatment that was even worse than the slavery from which they had emerged at the end of the XVIII century. Continue reading
The disappointments caused by the bankrupt projected French Canal caused a frenzied retreat of the Westindian working populace from the area of the country of Panama where these activities had originally been planned and executed. For a large number of the workers all was not totally lost since news of new projects and opportunities would travel quickly among the most intrepid of the group. And so it was that the new buzz became what they called “up the line” for this group who viewed the dispersion as yet another opportunity for adventure into the veritable unknown. Continue reading
Typical Caribbean plantation scene.
During this historic entrance of large groups of Westindians to the Isthmus of Panama, the region of the great Caribbean Ponto had become the setting for what was described as “legal slavery.” It was an awesome and cruel setting where the product, human lives, was plentiful, and yet the “trade” made no special concessions for human or social interaction. This was a crude system that had permitted the world’s most powerful people to declare human beings to be mere animals. Continue reading
The French hoped to duplicate what they had built at Suez.
The French purchased the Panama Railroad from the Yankees in 1881 at the start of their operations on the Isthmus of Panama. The railway, was after all, key in accomplishing their engineering ambition, which was to duplicate the feat of building a canal like the Suez Canal in Egypt. To all the engineers concerned if the railroad was not purchased, then construction of the new canal would be unthinkable. Continue reading
Posted in West Indian Panamanians
Tagged Aspinwall, Bocas del Toro, Chiriqui, Colon, Darien, indentured servitude, Panma Railroad, The French Canal
A certificate for 100 shares in the Panama Railroad dated 1871.
Image thanks to ookaboo.com
The real attraction of white American families of the period between 1900 and 1914 when the Americans regained supremacy over the region of Panama from the French was for them to have regained their place in history. The whole incident for Americans was to compensate for their earlier lack of vision on the idea of being able to build a Canal in the strip of land on the isthmus called Panama. Continue reading
This photo is of a derailment at Bas Obispo in 1886- the French Railroad days. Note the Jamaican workers.
The years between 1850 and 1855 would find the male population of the island of Jamaica, as it did other islands and areas of the continent feeling encouraged. The prospects of being employed in a place by the name of Panama awoke visions of freedom they could never before experience. The enthusiasm among the young black men of the island soared to its peak when the local rumor spread about “Panama Gold.” Continue reading
