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For me the real test of manhood would arrive at a time in my life when I would be looking to form relationships with girls that would provide a future wife. I had hopes that among the girls I was growing up with there could be that special girl and that we would both fall madly in love. But, as the days wore on I wasn’t even close to making that love connection.
I had become somewhat fearful, in fact, that I would be joining my Westindian predecessors and become obsolete in my thinking in an age that was quickly catching up with us in which there were worldwide battles over new ideas.
At hand were such political ideals as communism which, for me, was something that was never discussed by Westindians. I was more concerned or afraid, as it was with all that community of Blacks, that we would be ending our days without any idea of how it was to be a Black person fully assimilated into a Panamanian culture that still abhorred us.
Still, it was still seen as a perfectly viable way of life to be “scuffling” in those days, and although I was still too young to be officially employed, I was already convinced that I was already assimilated; proof of that was my ability to communicate, both written and verbal in both English and Spanish. For most of the males of my Westindian race, however, their perception of existence in Panama was of continued harassment and as assimilation as something out of the question.
By the same token, to be a Westindian and assimilated was for me to consider not having a Westindian girl for a wife. Nevertheless the battle of ideals for a male Westindian child, who had always felt disregarded by his own family, if not by his community, I was making serious plans for what I was to become in the near future. Those secret ideas and philosophies of the life I was leading and wanted to live were well kept since I had never found anyone with whom I could discuss them.
Like it or not, however, it was time to become part of being a true Westindian. For me who, in fact, had barely attended English School, it was self evident that I really lacked the inside know-how that should have made up my storehouse of understanding of a growing boy interested in becoming part of his people in Panama and on the Black Canal Zone.
Yet, it was an issue, this business of knowing what it was to be a real westindian, and it would be something I would have to contend with for most of my adult life. Even in those days I would have to acknowledge my feelings of being a representative of what it was like to be a Black Spanish speaking Panamanian. It was not yet time, however, in which it would be a proven honor to be such representative of Black Panama.
Ironically, however, I felt no rejection from most of my Criollo friends at school- even the girls accepted me pretty much the way I was and on my terms. As I matured and noticed that Spanish speaking girls found me attractive and sought me out, the thought of taking up stakes and moving to the good old United States was less and less appealing to me. What I could not know was that this way of thinking, that tendency of viewing going to live in the states as the answer to all their troubles amongst Westindian Panamanians, had been prevalent since the early 1930′s.
And the times seemed to dictate that Westindians would be on the move again, and en masse, and my father had been no exception in that substantial exodus of Panamanian Westindians to “the states” that had already started, and the way was already paved for us, the younger generations, to follow if we were so led.
**The rare portraits of the Silver Weddings of the 1930′s and 1940′s we have featured on this post were elegant and highly celebrated affairs in Panama.
Images provided by G. W. Westerman
This story continues.
