Black Women and their Trailblazing Panama Canal Achievements
By Guest Contributing Writer Marc S. Friedman
Official Government and academic narratives about the construction of the Panama Canal claim that women, and especially West Indian women, were wholly ancillary to this monumental project.
"The Silver Women: How Black Women's Labor Made the Panama Canal" by Joan Flores-Villalobos, an Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California, is a seminal work that brings to light the pivotal yet historically marginalized role of West Indian women in the construction of the Panama Canal.
Based on her rigorous research, Flores-Villalobos offers an in-depth examination of the lives, labor, and resilience of these women, challenging the traditional, male-dominated accounts of the canal's history.
Flores-Villalobos begins by placing the migration of West Indian women within the broader context of Caribbean labor movements in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As the plantation economies of the Caribbean declined, many women sought new opportunities, which led them to Panama.
Unlike their male counterparts, who often had formal labor contracts and government housing, these women migrated without such opportunities. They had to pay their own way, find their own housing, and find employment without government support.
On one hand, these brave women lacked the jobs and housing provided to male migrant workers. On the other, these West Indian women had autonomy and flexibility since they were not under the thumb of the Isthmian Canal Commission (known as the ICC) that governed the Canal Zone. But they had to make their own way.
As Villalobos carefully explains, these West Indian migrant women built their own economy in the orbit of the Canal Zone that made completion of the project possible. The book meticulously documents the various roles these women undertook—as laundresses, housekeepers, sex workers, and informal entrepreneurs—highlighting their significant contributions to the daily operations and social fabric of the Canal Zone.
Many administered medications to West Indian men suffering from tropical diseases including cholera and yellow fever. Some opened hotels, rooming houses, laundries, and other small businesses outside the Canal Zone, exercising a high degree of resilience, creativity, and entrepreneurship.
Flores-Villalobos portrays these women as active agents who navigated and resisted the oppressive structures, including economic and racial discrimination, imposed by both U.S. colonial authorities and Panamanian society. Even the cemeteries surrounding the Canal Zone were segregated.
As the author explains, skilled workers, almost entirely White Americans, were placed on the “Gold Roll.” They were paid wages equivalent to those of workers in the United States performing the same jobs, and they were paid in gold American dollars.
The “Silver Roll” consisted of 150,000 migrant West Indian men who were paid vastly lower wages and in local silver coin, usually Columbia silver pesos. Hence, the book is titled “The Silver Women” because West Indian women, too, were paid much lower wages than their American counterparts, and in local silver currency.
Flores-Villalobos also delves into the personal and communal lives of these women, illustrating how they built supportive networks and maintained their native cultural practices despite the adversities they faced. Their ability to create and sustain such networks was crucial for their survival and success in a hostile environment.
The book further explores the intersectionality of race, gender, and labor, highlighting the compounded discrimination these women faced. For example, Villalobos discusses the racism in the relationships between white employers and their Black domestic employees in and near the Canal Zone.
White women, while dependent on Black women's labor, often regarded them with a mix of contempt and fear, policing their behavior and bodies through a racialized lens of purity and propriety.
Moreover, Flores-Villalobos contextualizes the anti-Blackness experienced by West Indian women within Panama's national identity formation. The Panamanian notion of mestizaje, which celebrated a mixed European, Indigenous, and African ancestry while negating pure Blackness, further marginalized these women.
They were seen as "Triple Others"—Black, English-speaking, and Protestant—by a Panamanian society that was itself grappling with the effects of U.S. imperialism and interventionism.
The author summarizes the important contributions of West Indian women to the Panama Canal project (and other large construction projects), as follows:
“West Indian laundresses, cooks, and tavern and lodging housekeepers provided for the labor force of migrating West Indians who worked in the mines, on the plantations, and at construction sites across the region. The economic and social relationships these women built helped ease worker morale, lubricated the flow of material goods to otherwise isolated labor camps, and made imperial projects [like the Panama Canal] possible.”
"The Silver Women" is a critical addition to the historiography of the Panama Canal, offering a richly detailed and nuanced perspective that focuses on the important contributions and mighty struggles of West Indian women who came to Panama to escape the economic circumstances at home.
Villalobos persuasively refutes the historical narrative that West Indian women were minor players in the construction of the Panama Canal.
"The Silver Women" is a groundbreaking work that enriches our understanding of the Panama Canal's history by bringing to the forefront the experiences of West Indian women. It is an essential read for those interested in labor history, women's history, Caribbean studies, the construction of the Panama Canal, and the impacts of colonialism and imperialism on marginalized communities.
Mr. Friedman was a trial lawyer for five decades and is now an Executive Coach (see www.mastermethod.co). He graduated from The Johns Hopkins University with a B.A. in Philosophy and from The George Washington University Law School with a Juris Doctor degree, with Honors.
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Thanks for sharing this book. It looks great!