Afro-Latin@ Project - Canal "Diggers": In Their Own Words

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Canal "Diggers": In Their Own Words

Book Cover: No Black in the Rainbow

The story of West Indians and the Panama Canal has been told by several prominent authors. Their migration to Panama between the years 1850-1914 is superbly narrated by Velma Newton of the University of the West Indies; Gerstle Mack, David McCullough, George Westerman, and Michael Conniff, provides valuable information and analyses on the social and economic conditions of the group in the twentieth century, and in the late 1970s Panamanian born Roman Foster wrote, directed and produced “Diggers”, a documentary that spoke eloquently to the cultural life and legacy of West Indians on the Isthmus. Based on a study of over 4000 autopsies of West Indian Canal workers, Dr. Gil Alberto Sanchez documents and analyzes the causes of death—malaria, yellow fever, tuberculosis, bacterial infections and accidents—of the thousands of black workers who gave their young lives during the construction period of 1904-1914. His scientific finding is amply corroborated by the three personal stories of Albert Peters born in the Bahamas 10 February 1885, James Ashby who came to the Isthmus on April 1, 1909, and Harrigan Austin who arrived at Panama on 9th October 1905.

This is an excerpt of the above title to appear in George Priestley and Alberto Barrow's No "black" in the rainbow: Essays and Reflections on Racial Exclusion and Resistance in Panama.

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Afro-Latin@s (our spelling incorporates a combined o and an a at the end to include masculine and feminine identities) currently occupy a crucial place in racial and ethnic relations in the United States and internationally.

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