Did the Chinese Relate to the West Indians?

A Chinese Coolie circ. 1900
Image thanks to www.wikipedia.com

Since the earliest days of the rail road and the Banana Plantation development in the Central American and Caribbean region of our continent, the Chinese have appeared alongside the Black West Indian slaves. So close did they labor and relate to each other that studies have shown the African serfs to have adopted some of the nuances of the Chinese culture in their day to day folk ways and even in their outlook on life.

However, in the Panamanian and Central American Theater, very little has survived the long gone days of coolie contracted laborers to be of any noticeable influence in our cultural life derived from the Chinese interaction with us. We, especially, that are taking a closer look at that bygone age can find very little of the black West Indian influence in the Panamanian Chinese culture of today.

Today, from our globalized perspective we can allow ourselves a closer look at what has become of such a close relationship between the two largest groups of the most segregated of human beings in the country of Panama. If we hang on to the premise that humans are rational beings sharing some of the same moral and ethical values, then we must review our common human values for proofs that those moral precepts have the same meaning for all of us, the heirs of our planet. We can argue, then, that since the Panamanian West Indians shared common experiences with the Chinese and Hindu, then we should have fostered a strong alliance.

In fact, Panamanian history reveals that the Asians and West Indians, despite being the key to the making of the country called Panama, have suffered shameful episodes of expulsion and the derision of being declared “prohibited immigrants.” Even as late as the 1940’s, during a time of relative peace in our country, a period of potential for economic and social progress, there did not appear to be any agglutinating force or sentiment that would make those three groups of foreigners remain together as an invincible force in one of the most backward countries of the hemisphere.

Nothing, in fact, could be further from my most idealistic notions, since of all of the most noticeable factors to emerge during those years that they shared as a community of laborers, very little has survived to demonstrate that there would have been any sharing at all with those communities of Asian people. I’ve often asked myself, “Was it the intransigence of the Black West Indians that promoted that shameful separation?” However, as a participant observer I can emphatically testify that it was not so, since the respect for the Asian civilization that our ancestors felt was passed down to us, the remnant of the West Indians, even today. Our ancestors, upon the arrival of the Chinese, knew that they were a wrenched people coming from a long and illustrious culture.

Although we have our thoughts as to whether our ancestors were aware of that venerable Chinese teacher, thinker and philosopher, Confucius, whose teachings have deeply influenced Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese life and thought, we still look back in amazement at finding a surviving ancestor in the person of Luisa, a West Indian mother of the Pueblo Nuevo area of the city of Panama, who had been married for over 70 years to a former Hindu coolie man. I further wonder how often this phenomenon actually occurred and if these examples of the union of our cultures were all as successful as Luisa and Jack’s union.

Still, until the times of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, our people the Westindians, kept arriving in Panama, as did the Chinese and Hindu, and as immigrants to Panama faced one overriding possibility- death. Between the years 1848 and 1906, when most of our ancestors arrived, some under contract and others paying their way to obtain employment, our people became the salvation of most of the people who arrived later, since most of them met their death as soon as they arrived in these parts.

Today, as we witness the rapid disappearance of our peoples’ influence upon all of these other groups of survivors from the four corners of the globe, we continue to ask what are the real traces we have left in our small nation.

With the passing of time we also see how we, the West Indians, have always been on the less favored end of the scale of prosperity and that we, despite our century old coexistence with the Asians, have not retained any significant bond with our former coolie neighbors.

This story continues.