Yankin

Our transformation into “Spanish” Panamanian Westindians was undoubtedly leaving its mark not only on kids like me but in the field of world labor relations. Westindian laborers had united with their Panamanian Spanish speaking counterparts to confront the mighty U.S. Army brass and the Panamanian political machinery that had traditionally collaborated until the mid 1920′s to stifle all laborers’ claims.

This, in fact, had become the model to follow in the country of Panama as the Banana Plantation workers regained some of their age old claims to better working conditions. (You will read about our Silver ancestor’s labor struggles on the banana plantations out in Bocas in future posts.) The climate in the country of Panama was showing minimal changes in handling human rights questions at the same time that the right to sovereignty was becoming politically charged in a rapidly advancing latter end of the 20th century.

However, the flavor of the times had left a bitter taste in the memory of a Panamanian Silver child like me. I now understood that, despite my assimilation into the “Spanish” culture, I belonged to the Silver men and women as much as my first generation cohorts had belonged. It seemed to make very little difference in the way we were being treated in school.

The first generation of our Silver people had taken the approach of waiting quietly and patiently, expecting to see justice flow from the entrails of the Motherland, a “Christian” Panama that was in reality ignoring them. So, from my standpoint, a second generation youth and an intellectual at that who pretended to hide himself in his “Spanish-ness,” I was feeling trapped in the folds of a racist elementary education system. The sting of rejection was hurting so much, in fact, that to be a Panamanian Westindian Youth as such meant being a virtual loner most of the time.

And I can safely say that I wasn’t alone in these feelings. I would observe other Westindian kids of my age group and how they evidenced signs of this type of isolation often acting aggressively towards one another, exhibiting even violent emotions towards each other. This was manifested also in subtler forms of self-hatred and putting each other down, constant inane elbowing and a foolish, competitive attitude when an attitude of cooperation would have increased all our chances for survival and have gotten us further ahead.

The only thing that diminished these feelings of despair so common in my age cohorts for me was that I was always mentally working on an escape plan. If only I could reach the rows of the University of Panama I figured I’d have it licked as education meant one of the best forms of escape for me. Although at the time I hadn’t heard much about the University of Panama and I wasn’t even sure of where it was located, I knew that it existed and that it meant a good opportunity for me.

The other form of escape, however, the form most of the youth of my generation and even older would take was immigration or, should I say, self exile, as a mass exodus out of the country they all loved had already begun by the time the Second World War had ended. Some alarmed observers of the time both Spanish and Westindian looked on with preoccupation as many of them saw it as a tragic “brain drain” of Panama’s valuable human resource- a loss of its most gifted intellects.

About this time I remember meeting a young man by the name of Everton whom I knew was of Barbadian parentage. I had befriended his mother through, of all things, our mutual interest in the sport of baseball. The bitter truth of the kind of future that awaited me visited me one sunny day as I sat accompanying Everton’s mother, Mrs. Agard, in listening to an exciting baseball game between Spur Cola and some other local team. Mrs. Agard’s one-room was right at the corner of “M” Street and Fourth of July Avenue (at the Crossroads to the entrance of the Canal Zone) and very close to the stadium; so close, in fact, that you could hear the roar of the crowd as their team got closer to winning.

Mrs. Agard and I had often talked baseball like real fans, comparing opinions about different players and making predictions. That day, however, I was unaware of who the young man was who had come to visit us in Magnolia Building from the States. The young visitor, Mrs. Agard’s son, acted as though he knew me and even greeted me in a familiar way. “Hi Junior!” he said as he entered the room that day and sat talking in this Yankee twang which had always been distasteful to me. “Yankin” the Westindians called it and just hearing it always rubbed me the wrong way.

It was not only distasteful because the visitor was black and it seemed so “out of sync” with him but, it triggered some really bad scenes in my memory. I recalled an incident in which I was standing around as some white Canal Zone high school boys played baseball on the field just beside the Ancon Laundry where my grandmother worked. I recall distinctly how those white boys had completely disregarded me as I stood there and they made no move to even invite me to join in the game. They embodied that stolid white American attitude that made people of other races, especially Black people, feel totally disregarded.

I acted shy as the young man continued to chatter, trying to disguise the bitter taste that remained in my mouth. I somehow knew I was facing a future that I would definitely not care for if I had to “adapt” the language and nuances of the white people from the states who hated us so much. The Silver Child in me also knew that, although this “Yankin” was something envied by most black Canal Zone youngsters, as they strove to be more American than Panamanian, it was going to be a feature of adaptation that would definitely catch in my craw.

This story continues.