Too many Guyanese? How the Panama Canal transformed Barbados.

De Standpipe is pleased to share yet another informative and thought-provoking article from Bajan Free Press.De Standpipe Crew

http://bajanfreepress.wordpress.com/2008/01/22/too-many-guyanese-how-the-panama-canal-transformed-barbados/

In recent years Barbados has seen an influx of Guyanese workers coming to this country. Some are here legally and some are here illegally. Some are black and some are Indian. With Barbados being a predominantly black majority country, the black Guyanese immigrant (like any black Caribbean person who travels to another Caribbean country) is not as easily noticeable as his (or her) lighter-skinned and straighter-haired fellow citizen. There can be no denial that the presence of these newcomers has created some level of unease and discomfort among the native Barbadian population. The view is frequently expressed that there are “too many Guyanese” in Barbados. It is hoped that a future article will focus on that issue, even if only to explain why the children of these immigrants will all become “true-true” Bajans. This article, however, is not about race relations in Barbados. It is about history… our Bajan history.

The reasons why there are so many Guyanese in Barbados today are largely economic. People will migrate to where the money is. And 100 years ago, in the same way that Guyanese are flocking to Barbados to look for work today, black Bajans were leaving this island in their numbers to work on the Panama Canal.

Did you know that between 1904 and 1914, one-third of the Barbadian population, or approximately 60,000 people, were estimated to be working in Panama?

Many young Barbadians (as well as some not so young) remain unaware of how the construction of the Panama Canal some 100 years ago transformed Barbados. There are still a number of older Bajans who remember those days. Please read the selected excerpts below to understand the linkage between the Panama Canal and the gradual but steady shift in economic control from whites to blacks in Barbados.

This is one story which must be told because we as a people must never forget where we came from, what we went through, and how we got what we have today.

Read your history below and think about it very carefully. And try and remember it whenever you see another Guyanese person trying to make a living in Barbados.

Bajan Free Press

Escritos Historicos de Panama

http://www.alonsoroy.com/aroy/book01_01_03.html

Construction took on a new impetus, as did the increase in the number of workers, which was estimated at 24,000 by end of 1906.

Of this number, which represented almost every nation in the world, the great majority were blacks from Barbados–contrary to the popular belief that the Jamaicans were the majority.

Bygone Barbados – Ann Watson Yates – ISBN: 976-8077-64-6

Thousands of Barbadians emigrated to work on the construction of the Panama Canal. Between 1904 and 1914, one-third of the Barbadian population, or approximately 60,000 people, were estimated to be working there. The Canal was constructed between 1880 and 1914 as a vital facility for increased international trade. The Canal saved ships from having to sail thousands of miles through treacherous seas around Cape Horn (the furthest point south on the South American continent.)

The workers were employed by the United States-controlled Isthmian Canal Commission and theirs was a life of hard work, most of it done with a pick and a shovel. The conditions were very poor, the workers suffered discrimination and a high death rate from accidents and disease, especially yellow fever. In spite of all this, they were able to earn higher wages than in Barbados, and some survived to return home with money to buy houses, land and businesses. This enabled their families to be independent of the plantation system, but more importantly it allowed many to qualify for the right to vote. The franchise which allowed this was based on property ownership and income, among other things, and these newly qualified people would start to change Barbadian politics forever.

Two-thirds of the workers did not return to Barbados; many settled in Cuba, the United States and Canada; some stayed in Panama where they form a unique addition to that population. The real work on the Canal started during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, and on a visit to Barbados in 1913, he publicly thanked the Barbadians for their help in its construction, emphasizing the service it would render to mankind in general.

A History of Barbados – Hilary Beckles – ISBN: 0-521-35879-5

Panama Money and Migrants

Emigration had long been conceived by the worker as a major strategy for socio-economic betterment. The economic depression of the late nineteenth century, however, had the effect of expanding significantly that pool of potential migrants. But the emigration outlet that irrevocably changed Barbados and widened the horizons for the black Barbadian appeared in 1904. In that year, the United States renewed the construction of a canal across the Isthmus of Panama. Labour was required, and Barbadian male workers having never experienced employment on a large scale in a non-agricultural sector, saw the opportunity to reject sugar planters and plantations, and pursue an autonomous path. When, in 1905, the Panama Canal Agency established a labour recruitment office in Bridgetown, it was obvious that persuasion was not necessary.

The initial reaction of sugar planters was that the surplus unemployed labour was being siphoned off the economy which could only lead to better labour relations. By the end of 1906, however, their vision had changed as the flow of migrants was unexpectedly large and eroding their labour supply. The steamers which sailed between Bridgetown and Colon had taken over 10,000 by the beginning of 1908, and by 1914, at least 20,000 men had been contracted and had departed for the canal. it was the largest wave of black migration in the colony’s history, and the impact upon economy and society was considerable. It has been estimated that the total number of non-contracted and contracted migrants amounted to 45,000, in spite of legislative attempts to contain it in 1904 and 1907. The censuses show that between 1911 and 1921 the island’s population fell from 171,983 to 156,312, a decrease of some 15,671. Though many factors contributed to this net reduction, there can be no doubt that the Panama emigration was the chief cause.

The migration opportunity was undoubtedly seen by blacks as a chance finally to cast off the yoke of plantation domination. J. Challenor Lynch, for instance, reported to the Legislative Council that before boarding, blacks would abuse whites and aggressively denounce them. It was also considered, by those who wanted to stay behind, as an instrument to strengthen their hand on the labour market in bargaining for better wages. Bonham Richardson has recalled that labourers would chant the following song during industrial disputes.

We want more wages, we want it now,

And if we don’t get it, we going to Panama

Yankees say they want we down there.

We want more wages, we want it now.

Whereas the drastic reduction of male labourers on the estates should have led to wage increases, planters were able to prevent this by employing women to do what had become ‘men’s work’ at wages below what men generally obtained. As a result, wage levels in the plantation sector did not increase. Black women, who took opportunities to remove themselves from some of the more physically arduous tasks on estates after the abolition of slavery, found that they were unable to refuse the wages which field labour offered and continued to be the dominant sex in field gangs, as well as in the factory.

But it was the remittances of money to Barbados from Panama, and the capital brought back by returnees, which were to have a profound impact upon the island. While in 1910, for example, the merchant community had advanced £80,000 to planters to assist their sugar industry, in the same year official sources show that black Barbadians brought and sent back £83,000. Though many migrants died in the canal zone (one respected estimate is 15.5 per cent), some of those who returned with capital were able to achieve considerable social and economic mobility. In 1906, 3,501 returnees declared £18,000, and in the following year 3,525 declared £26,291. Between 1906 and 1915, some 20,326 returnees declared a total of £171,641. The ex-field hands had hopes of buying land, opening shops, learning a craft or obtaining an education for clerical and business professions. There certainly was a startling appearance of village shops and corner stores in the suburbs that can be attributed to ‘Panama’ money.

Postal remittances sent from the Panama Canal Zone to Barbados, 1906-20

Year – No. of Postal Orders – £ Value

1906 – 3,613 – £7,509

1907 – 19,092 – £46,160

1908 – 26,360 – £63,210

1909 – 31,179 – £66,272

1910 – 31,059 – £62,280

1911 – 24,968 – £51,009

1912 – 28,394 – £56,042

1913 – 31,851 – £63,816

1914 – 22,619 – £39,586

1915 – 14,210 – £22,874

1916 – 11,241 – £17,539

1917 – 10,430 – £15,194

1918 – 8,777 – £12,680

1919 – 7,747 – £12,591

1920 – 5,782 – £9,173

Total – 277,322 – £545,935

Many planters, by sheer necessity, sold off their properties to ‘Panama men’ in small lots, and by 1930 the pattern of landownership had changed significantly. In 1897, for example, the Royal Commission was informed that there were only 8,500 proprietors who owned only 10,000 acres, while in 1929 the number of small proprietors had increased to 17,731. This was not approved of by the dominant white community. In 1910, for example, Dr. E. G. Pilgrim, Assemblyman for St. James, sold a large proportion of his estates at Carlton, Sion Hill, Reid Bay and Westmoreland in small lots to ‘Panama men’. For the first time, black were making significant inroads upon the land-ownership pattern of the island.

Under the influence of the sudden supply of money, land prices rose dramatically, and even in the outlying parishes the price of £125 per acre in 1925 was normal. At these prices only successful returnees could purchase land, and many struggling planters took timely opportunities to speculate on the land market by putting their marginal lands up for sale. By all criteria, most returnees had been able to attain a better quality of life, though for the majority of the labouring poor, conditions worsened during the 1920s, as the wartime boom in the sugar economy had collapsed by late 1920. Panama money, then, had an effect of heightening differences in the material and social standing of black workers; those who struggled to make a living saw the Panama men as symbols of success, and seemed prepared to confront the established order in ways they knew best, for the attainment of a more secure livelihood.

Black Self-Help Organisations

The injection of ‘Panama money’ into working-class communities allowed them, for the first time, to develop islandwide financial institutions, designed and managed by themselves. The friendly society movement was revived, transformed and popularised as the leading force within the financial culture of the labouring classes during the early twentieth century. Societies allowed workers, on the weekly payment of about ten to twelve pence, to insure for sick and death benefits. Located in rural villages and in the towns, their accounts were managed by treasurers who were bound by law to deposit all funds at the National Savings Banks.