Migration, Protest, and Resistance: Transnational Sources of Class Formation on the Isthmus of Panama, 1904–25

This paper examines transnational sources of class formation on the Isthmus of Panama during and after the construction of the Panama Canal. Its emphasis is upon the tens of thousands of West Indians who worked to build and then maintain the canal, and the ways in which their class strategies were linked to, and sometimes in conflict with, other individuals and social movements on the Isthmus of Panama, the United States, Europe, and across the Caribbean and Central America. The paper focuses on three key periods of class formation. First, during the decade of canal construction (1904-1914) U.S. officials adopted a system of segregation and labor surplus combined with deportation or imprisonment for anyone not working productively. These policies turned the white, U.S., workers in the Canal Zone into enforcers of a racialized system of labor management which suited their interests. In this context West Indian workers found it difficult to engage in organized strikes. Yet, they relied on subterranean and transnational strategies of resistance. Secondly, in the era of WWI, transnational influences became even more accessible to West Indians on the Isthmus. Many served in the military during the war, developed stronger ties with labor activists and Caribbean intellectuals in the United States, and felt the influence of Marcus Garvey in the war’s aftermath. Thirdly, in  1920s, the West Indian community continued to be nourished by a variety of transnational influences. Migrations home to Caribbean nations or onward to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Cuba, or the United States strengthened ties between those West Indians still living on the Isthmus of Panama and a large global community. The paper concludes by showing that the rent strikers’ actions reflected in particular the influence of a broad diasporic community stretching from Panama, across the Caribbean, and onward to the United States.