The Panama Canal Zone Police- Part II

The Penitentiary at Culebra 1908
Image thanks to the U.S. National Archives

There have been several theories suggested for the relative peace and order that existed in the Canal Zone. The “effectiveness of the police forces and the low level of serious crime”, according to Michael Conniff,* could have been linked to “the British claim to have taught their subjects respect for law and order. Secondly, the work regime of 60 hours a week kept the men under close watch during their waking hours and left little time or energy for getting into trouble afterwards. Third, the summary,” and, many times, arbitrary,” justice meted out by U.S. and Panamanian courts was so harsh as to be a ‘positive’ restraint.”*

The Canal Zone police also spent a great deal of time involving itself in labor issues. An early planning document (1904) proposed that “the enforcement of contracts with these ignorant people will be very difficult matter, unless the power exists somewhere of arbitrarily controlling imported contract labor.” The Canal Zone police carried out this purpose through the use of spies, deportation, strikebreaking, intimidation, and diplomatic intervention. One of their popular techniques was to encourage the Panamanian police to arrest unemployed men and threaten them with incarceration or deportation if they did not sign up for work on the canal.

Since in 1904 the Panamanian government disbanded its army all together, the police force was effectively weakened especially during these construction years when there was a sudden explosion in population in both Panama City and Colon. It is said that the police relied greatly on the predictable and “good behavior of the West Indians,” and, when that was not possible, on the “intervention rights of the United States.” It seems that in 1905 an incident in which the Panamanian police attacked protesting Jamaican laborers in Panama City brought out their close relationship to the Canal Zone police. It is said that this episode embarrassed U.S. officials and further curtailed, if not prevented, the recruitment of Jamaicans.

The Panamanian police also had a rather predatory attitude toward the West Indians under their jurisdiction. They viewed them, as many Panamanians viewed them, as foreigners and a “temporary inconvenience” caused by the canal construction. They often extorted money from them, harassed and intimidated these “outsiders” to flex their own power as intermediaries in the existing pecking order. The British minister, with whom many West Indians filed complaints and lawsuits, finally induced Panama to hire West Indians to police their own neighborhoods, which eventually proved somewhat successful.

Physical and verbal abuses of blacks by the Canal Zone whites were frequent and often went unpunished or even unsanctioned. In 1906 the Police Chief had listed 9 cases in which white Americans were fined for “accosting” blacks. Since the U.S. government had decided not to use juries in the Zone courts because of their, according to officials, “ineffectiveness” in handling racial violence in the South, this opened up another avenue for the perpetration of injustice in matters relating to racial issues. Whites still managed to intimidate witnesses, white or black. An observer of the times noted in a letter written in 1907, “Race feeling…is at a fever heat and is liable to develop seriously at any moment. Every man who resorts to the courts, or is a witness in any case, is immediately discharged.” In 1908, jury trials were finally introduced, and in several notable cases whites were acquitted for having murdered blacks.

The everyday and frequent verbal (and often physical) abuses by whites, however, never really made the headlines. Most of the Silvermen of that era recall the intimidating treatment they received as “niggers.” One Westindian remembered these days in seven painful words; “Life was some sort of semi slavery.” The Canal Zone police had a grand part in enforcing and often creating this atmosphere of fear, intimidation and injustice in the American Canal Zone for the West Indian blacks. The Canal Zone police was finally disbanded on December 31, 1999, the year the Panama Canal was reverted to the Republic of Panama.

“Black Labor on a White Canal- Panama, 1904-1914, by Michael L. Conniff, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985.

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The Panama Canal Zone Police- Part I

The Canal Zone Police at Empire about 1913
image thanks to czimages.com

Joaquin Beleño, authof of
Gamboa Road Gang
Image thanks to El Siglo

The need for order and control was an obvious requisite if the goal of constructing the canal was to be met. The Panama Canal Police force, established by the Canal officials, was empowered by the administration to enforce social control in the numerous ways at their disposal. In the early years three different police units existed. There was the “elite” group, one might say, comprised of about a hundred white American policemen. Amongst their duties was the coordination of security services, the gathering of intelligence through the use of plainclothesmen, the supervision of black officers, maintaining liaison with other (security) agencies, and administering and maintaining the jails.

There was an equal number of Westindian police in charge of patrolling streets and work camps. Their job consisted in controlling their “own people,” as it was within this sector that most of the conflicts or troubles might be expected to arise. This is an interesting point, however, since, from all historical and personal accounts, the peaceful and non-aggressive behavior of the Westindians was one very notable feature of life in the Canal Zone as well as in Panama proper. In fact, White Americans have left no record of fearing any violence from the Westindians. From all historical accounts the Canal Zone Police was intimidating and they often took credit, although undeservedly so many times, for the reigning peace in the Zone.

The third form of police driven social control was the Panamanian Police force, which, more often than not, was supervised by the Americans, thus extending the power and control of the Canal Zone police into the country of Panama.

Gamboa Road Gang, a novel written by Joaquin Beleño, was based on a real life case pointing to the abuses and the injustices behind the Panama Canal Police force. Ata, a young Westindian, is incarcerated in the Gamboa jail condemned to serve a fifty year sentence. His crime: falling in love with a white Zonian girl. Tormented by the injustice of his captivity and by his beloved’s betrayal at obeying the dictates of her family and “people,” the white Americans, when she backs away from her involvement with him, he falls in a suicidal confrontation with his jailers who riddle his body with bullets.

Criminal activity, in fact, or activity worthy of incarceration was quite minimal for the amount of people who lived on the Zone. By today’s standards one would recall these days with certain nostalgia. The majority of individuals arrested usually received fines or short jail sentences. The year 1912 was probably the peak year for arrests when 7,000 arrests were made. Americans and Panamanians made up about 9% each of the total, Jamaicans made up 19%, Barbadians made up 24% (the largest group arrested) and Martinicans 4%. The crimes most cited were disorderly conduct, loitering, petty larceny, and vagrancy. Fines were deducted from the wages of the employees. For more serious crimes there was the army-administered penitentiary (Gamboa) reserved for those serving longer sentences.

The year 1913 was perhaps the year in which the largest number of convicts was recorded; there were 133 convicts according to the records and it was never again matched throughout the history of the Canal. Westindians, Americans, and Panamanians made up the bulk of the inmates and were confined to separate cellblocks. Thereafter the prison population steadily decreased after the construction of the Canal.

In our next post we will take a closer look at how the Zone Police also created conflicts and developed predatory and abusive tactics to exercise their control.

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Social Control and the “Silver” Schools

Images are of gold roll (top ) and "silver" schools (bottom)
between 1910 and 1912. Note the marked contrast.
The black children have no playground equipment in their yard.
Images thanks to www.czimages.com

As the Canal activities expanded and the growth of the Silver townships became a bigger factor in the evolution of the Canal Zone, methods of social control of the ever larger West Indian population in and out of the Zone became a greater issue to Canal authorities. One manifestation of this need to control was in the educational system for the Westindian children. During the early years, with the frenetic task of construction taking place alongside worker camps and residential areas, children playing near work sites could cause serious problems in the form of accidents.

It was from the very beginning of the building of the Canal, then, that the municipal authorities in the Zone began operating schools for the worker’s “dependents.” Initially, “five schools accommodated 140 white children and over 1,000 black children in racially mixed schools with segregated classrooms.”** Most of the children used the train to get to school. In order to appease the ever looming discontent amongst the U.S. workers, the Chief Engineer, John Stevens, supported an “administrative decentralization” in 1906 and the municipalities were discontinued. The schools were placed under a superintendent from the U.S.. By the middle of that year four schools had all white student bodies and the remaining twenty-three were predominantly black.

Following an American curriculum throughout its history, the public school system in the Panama Canal Zone hired American teachers who employed American teaching methods, used American textbooks, and introduced American songs, literature, and history which, in the short and long run impressed the children with American culture and ideals, and, of course, American patriotism. From the very beginning, however, the “black” schools were an impoverished “appendage” of the white system, and the color line was ever present and quite rigid.

By 1908, in a measure to further “improve” workers’ morale among the white American parents, the superintendent increased the number of white schools to twenty-eight; few white children, therefore, had to ride the train to school the schools were close to home. Black schools, however, dropped to nineteen although the “Silver” schools had five times the enrollment.

Noted for educational excellence the Jamaican school teachers dominated the ranks of the “Silver” teachers. Those candidates for teaching jobs with three or more years of high school or normal training received $60.00 a month on the gold roll, compared to the U.S. rate of $90.00 to $100.00 earned by the American teachers. Class size for the “Silver” schools, however, averaged a whopping 115 students of varying ages which created a stressful and extremely challenging situation for both students and teachers.

By 1910 and 1911 the superintendent of schools recruited teachers in Kingston, Jamaica, and by 1915 the average class size still hovered at around 65. Even at those levels school attendance amongst the “Silver” population was not made compulsory since they could only accommodate half the number of school age children.

While white children were oriented for college preparation, the Black children had to make due in painfully overcrowded classrooms, using surplus school supplies from the white schools, if they could get them. Since school administrators assumed that the Black children were intellectually deficient, they put “Silver” schools on a 12 month schedule- no vacations. The Westindian schools masters added to this atmosphere of total control by emphasizing rote learning, discipline, oration, and manners. This, in effect, kept the Black children under year-round adult supervision.

Historians versed in the subject have concluded that “educational policy for colored schools…became one of preserving the status quo…of keeping the West Indian and his progeny in positions of common labor.” By the end of the construction period, school officials had begun to set up vocational studies for Blacks so that they could occupy the lowest rungs of the employment ladder.

Just as a note, few people are aware of the fact that Westindians and Panamanians, but not Americans, paid the taxes that maintained all of the Canal Zone schools. In other words, the West Indian and the native Panamanians paid for the “quality” education of the white children while their own children received inferior education. This was hardly an example of the “civilizing” influence of the Americans since the system had become an instrument of social control paid for by, of all people, the controlled.

**Much of the data for our post was taken from Michael L. Conniff’s book, “Black Labor on a White Canal- Panama, 1904-1981.”

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Social Control and Coping Mechanisms for the Silver Roll

The chain link fence around the "American Cemetery" in Corozal today is
reminiscent of the chain link fence of the Canal Zone

As our history of the Silver People unfolds these crucial times would become marked by a first generation of Westindian youth that would seek to develop their own coping mechanisms for the progressively tighter and systematic forces of social control imposed by the Canal Zone authorities. Since they had been born into a system that rejected them from birth to the grave they found some creative as well as direct and indirect ways of countering these negative forces in their lives. Many countered, if they could, by simply refusing to work on the Canal Zone.

The “Silver Roll” brand of separation that degraded and limited them as persons had been a treatment the older folks and their parents had experienced first hand since the 1850's. But, by the time this first generation reached adolescence during the 20th century many were not so willing to accept this double standard treatment, especially as they noticed how the white adolescents their same age on the American Canal Zone seemed to enjoy watching their degradation.

The Panamanian side of the fence would not be much different in their view of the Blacks who they, the “Latinos,” had made little effort to know or understand- people who had been in their midst, working, raising families, living with them as neighbors, contributing largely to their economy, worshipping with them, etc., since before the Republican Era.

Westindian Blacks from both sides of the “fence”- the legendary chain link fence that the American Canal Zone governance had constructed around their Canal Zone parameters- visited and joined each other’s Lodges, Churches, Sports and Social Clubs and other entertainment and social activities. Since we are talking about youth, dances and parties on both sides of the fence (Panama side and Canal Zone) hosted Black youths who would, much later in the century, find themselves attending the same Panamanian public educational system.

In the meanwhile the American segregationist system had control of all the U.S. Armed Forces and the Court System and had placed the Panama Canal Zone under their respective policies of control and governance. This system would use all its powers to segregate the much needed Black employees, much more than they did with any other persons of color from any other part of the world who sought to be employed under their system. Racial segregation became a way of life on that Zone, a system designed especially for the degradation and control of Black Americans and Westindian professionals.

By now, the successive governments had allocated economic resources for educating the White American children in the Gold Roll schools while the Black Silver schools also began emerging within the Black townships of the Canal Zone at about the same time. In our next post we will delve into the evolution of the “Silver” schools as part and parcel of social control in and around the boundaries of the Panama Canal Zone.

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Blacks Living the Affluent Life- An Emerging Social Network

The Sojourner's Hall (today restored)
on "P" Street in Panama City

The Christian Mission Church,
today is the home of the
Westindian Museum in Panama City

Silver Clubhouse and Dispensary

Throughout the late 1920's and during the decades of the 30's and 40's Westindian Blacks in Panama, Colon and the Canal Zone began to organize, seeking any means of channelling their social energies that would serve as an agglutinating force. The local Canal Zone Silver Clubhouses became the centers for dances sponsored by the clubhouse staff. In Panama City and Colon local Westindian groups, social clubs and community groups started to flourish. The Jamaican Society and the Sojourners, some of the first social/ cultural groups had large enough halls that served as ballrooms, concert halls and meeting places for all kinds of local Westindian groups.

The churches figured prominently as institutions that brought the Westindian people together such as the Christian Mission Church (Baptist) of Elder James W. Burke of Barbados. St. Paul Methodist Episcopalian Church also became one of the religious beacons for a people hungry for direction. Led by the Venerable A.F.N. Nightingale, Rector and Archdeacon of Panama, was prelate of that church for more than 40 years. The Salvation Army, a protestant religious and socially conscious organization, also became an important institution at this time. It held Sunday services and ran an after school music school which, for more than 50 years, served the Westindian and local barrio Spanish speaking groups of youths in the Marañon Barrio of Calidonia. Then there was the United Methodist of Mission Salem in Colon founded in 1932 and presided over by the Reverend Clarence Sealey.

As for the Catholic Church, by 1934 the Catholic branches of the English speaking churches aimed at the Black Westindians were founded to permit individuals to become involved in community work with the “Silver” youth through their C.Y.O, or Catholic Youth Organization Clubs. These clubs were especially for Black Catholic youths, who were very few in number at the time, resulting in a rather strange mix of Catholic Churches as this brand of the church was imported from the U.S. to serve the heretofore unknown Black Catholics among the Westindians of Panama. From this point on there existed in Panama basically three Catholic churches, the Canal Zone Catholic Church for White people, the Panamanian Catholic church for the Spanish speaking people and the Westindian Catholic Church for the English speaking Blacks.

The growing number of Black Westindian youth also created their own entertainment such as house parties with parental consent at their homes. Dancing couples could be seen on spacious balconies at these homes with music provided usually by record players with recorded music popular at the time. These dance affairs usually took place on the balconies of the two and three storied, wooden tenement buildings which were very popular in the cities at the time. If a record player was not available the rhythms coming from the local English speaking programs on the Spanish radio station would suffice to bring entertainment and cheer to the younger age groups that were not able to attend the dance halls.

Picnics and excursions organized by families and friends, especially on trains of the Panama Railroad, also became another source of wholesome diversion that would develop into a tradition as well as a peculiarity amongst the Westindians. The excitement generated within the well packed railroad cars teeming with well dressed blacks, would bring the cities at both ends of the waterway alive, as youth from both Panama City and Colon met to get acquainted at least once a year. It became quite an interesting sight as the trains left the stations, usually in the morning hours, with groups of people shouting and waving to each other, as if the rides were longer and more involved than the hour and an a half each way. These train rides to and from the terminal cities became very special events for especially the young providing an occasion for sharing gossip, news, information and a great deal of showing off of new fashions such as the gleaming gold buckles that were becoming so chic at the time.

“Going to Colon” for the Blacks of that era became a big event in those times as Colon had developed a reputation for having good clubs, entertainment centers and just plain style. The annual 4th of July celebration was particularly cherished since the end of the traditional picnic was usually followed by well attended house parties and even all night dancing at some local dance hall.

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A New Generation and a New Culture

Carnaval Street Scene of 1912 attended by a an
enthusiastic and well dressed
Westindian multitude

Images thanks to Mr. Oswald Baptiste,
Editor of the Rainbow City H.S. Newsletter

Initial relationships between neighbors were strained as the people learned to live within communal oases that were inadequate for the sudden influx of new tenants that were populating the cities. During the first years the new Westindian arrivals would become reclusive in the cities even though they were Panamanians. They felt more foreign, these new arrivals, than the Black Westindian neighbors of Colon and Panama cities, people who had been living in the same tenements since they were built back during the construction years, and who had taken part in the sanitation of the cities.

This first generation Westindians were accustomed to living alongside other foreigners from all parts of Asia, Europe and Latin-American. They also, unfortunately, adapted to harsh labor relations often tolerating cruel and domineering bosses whose exigencies threatened to change their own nature. So that with some “quiet dereliction” of family duties, most Westindian men and women of the times treasured holding on to their employment to the detriment of everything else. Employment, it would seem, became paramount in their list of cares, and in most cases they structured their lives around an often degrading labor relationship. Family life then became for its members a series of reunions that, in most cases, were bereft of Christian values.

For the members of the Westindian community funerals became an important part of their social life. With death and a sense of transience all around them the burial grounds became a familiar meeting ground where they listened to eulogies and reunited later to catch up on gossip, family and friends. I will go into further detail about the “Silver” cemeteries and the social life that emerged around the Silver people, however, in later posts.

We can safely say that during the greater part of the 20th century, however, the Black Westindian community in Panama could be still considered the largest of any of the foreign communities present at any time in the country. The era would meet them living in the same republic and yet in stark contrast with the mostly rural and invisible Black Spanish speaking community, still mostly an agricultural class of people and still showing great timidity regarding venturing into the growing urban centers.

Nevertheless, instead of dwelling on the politics of the Canal Zone or the country that hosted it, the Westindians centered their attentions on Clubhouse activities, Commissary shopping, family picnics and imitating the colored lifestyle of the U.S., involving regular and numerous meetings at the Lodges or other quasi Secret Societies so common in the segregated lifestyle of Blacks in the United States.

Soon, as they gained a real presence in the urban centers they began to develop their own social gatherings and what could be termed local cultural nuances. The newly celebrated "Carnivals" (carnavales) yearly filled the streets of the cities with costumed personages who attracted the Westindian youths who delighted in joining in the street merriment. In fact, their participation gave the festivities their own style and color introducing unique musical rhythms as well as an inimitable Caribbean flavor.

Thus for the Barrio Westindians, who with their newly arriving interiorano (farmers) neighbors from the central provinces of a still backward country, their cultural contribution would provide some kind of culture for the locals and the tourist. It was during these times also that Westindians would become acquainted with Panamanian folk traditions and even intermarry with people of the interior, starting to mix family ties and become more Panamanian.

Their mutual interest in sports, however, such as the games of Baseball Soccer and Boxing, would give rise to tournaments and meets between neighborhoods. Even the Blacks on the Canal Zone would meet and get involved with each other.

In the years to come the youth of this generation and beyond would seek to teach each other the rudiments of sports and games at an Olympic level, which would eventually become a positive change in their lives. The cities and neighborhoods would change for the better as the youths would identify with “their” Barrio. Low income Barrios such as the popular ones like Calidonia, Chorrillo, San Miguel and Marañon would inevitably become known for their unique Westindian cultural flavor which would later become an integral part of local traditions.

These are the times that I would also call the beginnings of a notable affluence in the style of the Black Westindian Panamanian society; an era in which the Westindian community was viewed as rich and resourceful- up and coming. The years between 1924 and 1934 for me would mark another benchmark for the emerging Westindian youth, the first generation Panamanian Westindian citizens.

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The Silver Commissary- My Memories

The above images, all borrowed from wikipedia,
symbolized my Canal Zone experience at the ages of three and four.

While I’m on the subject of the Commissaries, while they are still quite fresh, my memories of these unique shopping establishments stir very pleasant feelings within me, even today. Just shopping in the Panama Canal Zone Commissaries, perhaps some of the largest stores that anyone had ever seen before anywhere in the American hemisphere, made one feel rich and “privileged.” I remember, as a small boy, being dragged by my young, adolescent aunts who would urge me to walk faster on the way home as I savored a sweet, large (gigantic by today’s standards) "Baby Ruth" candy bar which they’d bought me at the commissary.

My reminiscences of those days are as sweet and heavenly as memories could get for a three-year-old kid who would later have a totally different perhaps more intimidated view of the Canal Zone “experience.” In my innocence, however, my early shopping excursions to the Commissary/Company Store in the Zone were pleasant treks into the realm of “The Zone”- a world that was a frequent topic of conversation for the adults and children in my life.

What’s more, the various political factions and elected Panamanian governments of the time (1930’s-1940’s) had occasion to complain, however, and complain they did to the U.S. government Canal Authorities claiming that it was an unfair commercial advantage taken by the Americans against the Panamanian merchants, who because of the large numbers of employees who worked for them and shopped at the well stocked Canal Zone Commissary Stores, had secured for themselves a captive clientele.

At any rate, the Westindian Blacks, having reached the status of “preferred serfs,” displayed this sense of having “arrived” in that the Silver Commissaries almost reflected the "separate but equal" status the Blacks in the U.S.A. had so much battled for throughout the 20th century. Silver Commissary stores were located where Black people with certain “privileges” could readily have access to them. The first Silver Commissary that I can recall was the one near the Silver Employee complex right outside the city of Colon where I was living with my grand parents and their daughters.

"You remember everything!" my young aunts would tell me. Even today my surviving aunts never cease to be amazed when I gently confront them with some of the things that I remember at the tender age of three or four. However, the things which have become imprinted in my memory, things that never changed for me as a baby boy, are indelible and were reserved for the chronicler of the Silver People of Panama. Little did I know that my keen ability to “remember” the older people of our clan and their experiences would be converted into the raw material for a unique oral history.

The Commissary in Colon, at the time, was stocked with a bewildering variety of dried goods as well as food- a variety that was awe inspiring to the average adult let alone a tiny boy. There was all manner of clothing, some hardware, books and magazines, post cards and candy- that luxurious offering of sweets and chocolate goodies that could not be equaled except by the Americans. Nothing in my young eyes could get me moving faster than the idea of walking away from the Commissary with an almost foot long Baby Ruth, or an Almond Joy, or a Hershey Bar. From there my aunts would often have me tag along to enjoy a movie at the Clubhouse where I could catch snippets of American culture in the images of Popeye the Sailor, Betty Boop and Felix the Cat and some exciting movies like "Black Cats." These simple but treasured moments were enough for me to arrive home tired but satisfied and impressed with these images of a life and time gone by.

The Silver Commissary at Cristobal, one of the Black settlements on the Atlantic side of the Great Waterway was, basically, my introduction to one of the first institutions on the Canal Zone and would serve me greatly even after the great fire of 1940 in Colon which destroyed much of the city of Colon and caused my family to settle in the City Panama.

We will continue in later articles describing some of the events which impacted our lives as we, the first and second generation Westindians, joined the strange mix that would emerge as a totally different part of the Panamanian population. Like it or not, we, the Westindian Blacks, would eventually be called upon by Providence to become an integral part of the affluent American Society.

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Between the Zone and the City- Transitions

A commissary book of the type
used in the Panama Canal Zone Commissaries.
Many Westindians with commissary
privileges shopped in the commissaries with
similar coupon books issed in different
denominations. courtesy of czbrats.com

Empire garden school for "Silver Roll" children about 1910;
probably the first school gardens in the entire Republic.

For the Westindian the times seemed propitious by now for them to begin to enjoy the first wave of euphoria of being persons of independent thought and action. Life in the Barrios afforded them a focus for that much needed social integration into Panamanian Society. The youth of the first generation had begun seeking an education either in the Westindian “Silver” schools of the American Canal Zone, or the Westindian Schools- The English Schools- of the cities of Colon and Panama. Schools founded and run by Jamaican teachers at first and later on some by Barbadian teachers held out the distinction of being the first schools in the Republic of Panama.

The Westindian youth would go on to enter the social life of the nation or become Panamanians and/or enter the first government sponsored primary and secondary schools for the first time almost at the age of older adolescents. Many youth had to make drastic adjustments along with their families as the Canal Zone’s “Big House” Plantation lifestyle had been the center of most Westindians until the real essence of a “Jim Crow” administration took hold with its policies of security and control of budget which eventually caused thousands of Blacks to have to move into the Barrio tenements.

Still, with the loss of hospitalization and housing privileges, life in the big tenements in the cities of Colon and Panama would manage to retain that Canal Zone flavor so important to every Westindian household. Such moves into the cities were not only caused by changes in employment status. Some of the forced moves were caused by Black secret informants in the Silver housing complexes. Breaking housing rules such as having too many guests for too long, or an accusation of contrabanding commissary goods could get whole families deported and banned from entering the Canal Zone.

The continual policy and regulatory changes coming from the Canal Zone administration had caused the uprooting of countless Westindian families creating a definite burden on the Republic of Panama’s meager and taxed resources. To make matters worse, the central government would receive little compensation from the Canal Zone for taking up the slack of their “Silver” work force and their growing families. In fact, many of the younger Westindian youth up to the second generation would be born not in the Canal Zone sponsored William Gorgas General Hospital "Silver" wards but in Santo Tomas Hospital "for the poor and needy people of Panama."

For the “fortunate” group of Westindians, however, who considered themselves part of the affluent Canal Zone Society, the times seemed to mark their lives with prosperity. Unlike the affected Westindian Panamanian group living outside the “Zone,” as long as they were still employed, they had grown accustomed to the Canal Zone held privilege of the “Silver Commissary Book,” which permitted them to shop at the Commissary or Company Store.

During these historic days in the relationship between the Westindians and their Canal Zone Bosses and, in general, with the Gold Roll or the preferred White American citizens, would transform them into the all preferred “serfs.” It was all too clear that the Westindian Blacks were possessed of a special knowledge. They knew how to speak both English and Spanish well by now and they were well acquainted with the peculiarities of the country of Panama as well as the demands of the Gold Roll Canal “Zonians.”

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