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Decades have come and gone since the first and larger groups of eager laborers arrived on the Isthmus of Panama to survive the harshness of the climate and the overpowering burden of laboring daily from before the break of day until long past sundown.
We will soon see, as we enter the canal construction era, that the earlier period brought untold sickness and death among the laborers both on the area of the railroads, banana plantations and the Inter Oceanic Canal projects, all without the proper recompense for time and the type of labor. Whether it took human power or with the assistance of heavy machinery, the planned projects drew from the presence of all groups of coolie labor.
It would seem that destiny has left it to our rapidly changing times for us to be able to see such changes occur, particularly the medium we have gotten to know as the Internet. For us who have braved total illiteracy and many other obstacles and have sought to find, through this medium, that bonding agent with a powerful agglutinating force is a miracle of untold value. Indeed, to be present in these historic times and to continue in the hope that we may witness any unifying event that would bring together the remnant of all the Diasporas of our peoples from the four corners of the world is extraordinary in and of itself. We eagerly, and lovingly, share our prayer that our people here in the country of Panama, related as human beings, if not by blood, then by historical events, would, for once, come together united.
We who belong to the groups of foreigners at the turn of the 20th century in Panama and took part in the major projects of construction designed and aimed at making our world more tolerable for all people, cannot help but remember that we were targeted for expulsion and derision. Despite the best of governmental intentions and political propaganda, our world today remains a myopic one, still as confusing as the times when our forefathers disembarked on the beaches and docks of our country.
As wrong as it may seem, we remain as lost as separate groups of citizens alienated from the country’s political scene as we are of one another, having nothing to do with one another. We, as second and third generation Panamanians, however, who have been blessed to be born citizens of a great patrimony, should, during these crucial times, come to the light of the matter and adopt one another as people who “shared” ancestors during the same historic times.
It was our ancestors who were decimated by the arduous labor that took most of them to their graves and left their traces buried in this land which became their adopted home and which was, and still is, visited by the spirits of all our ancestors. It is time enough for us to come to terms with the indisputable historic facts and that our existence in this part of the planet earth is directly related to the “feelings” our ancestors had about freedom and justice. Of such ideas and ideals, can we second guess the insight of our beloved ancestors? If not, then we must strive to understand that we have a direct line of inheritance to claim on unpaid labor that our ancestors could not even dream of demanding payment for.
Such a debt cannot be perceived as a token recognition but, together as one force of the Panamanian citizenry, we can demand that such a debt be paid. At this moment in time we owe it to our Black, Chinese and Hindu ancestors to demonstrate the awareness required and learn to reject what today is the traditional mode of “relating” to one another reflecting negative attitudes that still persist in our midst. We should unite to reach out to each other as powerful groups, as our ancestors would have dreamed of doing, forsaking the old attitudes of those who are not willing to accept themselves and our ancestors as being a part of our Panamanian cultural heritage.
Our aim should be to reeducate our people to desist from accepting attitudes encouraged by even our present society. We do well to join the spirit that abhors racial discrimination and even go as far as rejecting that present way of thinking found among most people of Asian ancestry in our country who possess a standoffish attitude towards us, the heirs and remnant of West Indian Blacks. They still refuse to remember that we descend from our ancestors who shared the same pains of those historic times and were joined with their brethren in labor struggles. We must underscore that attitudes can be changed although we have felt such attitudes coming from among our Asian counterparts for decades.
In all candidness, however, we Blacks have been rather naive as history goes, always willing to share and to use whatever we had at our disposal to communicate to all factions of the “Arrabal” community of the country of Panama our particular abilities. We cannot, in fact, say the same for our Asian counterparts who have rarely been willing to communicate with us, or share the leanings and teachings of their language and culture with us who did share our history of Panama with them. The time now is ripe, a time for us all to come out of that quagmire of what has been keeping us apart, virtual strangers in our country.
We may site many examples and there remain with us people willing to give witness to personal accounts of our Black Antillean teachers who gave wholeheartedly of themselves. These were individuals who, in those early years, used their meager resources towards the cause by turning Panamanian children, sons and daughters of neighbors and friends, into functionally literate persons; into persons who could ultimately compete with official school graduates, and hold positions as qualified professionals. Often, these products of the West Indian school masters were very able and literate in both English and Spanish.
It is our humble view that we are in need of each other, for we each have views to make public of what has been kept us from realizing that dream of our ancestors, to keep that dream they had alive to be free and able to come and go like the ships that transit daily from Asia to Panama and vice versa. No one who has been knowledgeable of the Panamanian Westindians could accuse us of being a people that are not willing to share the changes of our times. The facts have always proven our case, and they continue to even today and, today, with the aid of the tools of cyberspace we challenge the old, callous and misguided attitudes.
This story will continue.
