Panama's Blacks: A U.S. Responsibility
ROPP, STEVE C.
THREATENED BY THE TREATY Panama's Blacks: A U.S. Responsibility By Steve C. Ropp Nearly every big power retrenchment of the past 30 years has brought with it a "refugee" problem. Not only must new...
...They see the problem they face being resolved only if the United States agrees to grant them preferential immigrant status...
...For one thing, letting in the Panamanian blacks would raise a host of difficulties vis-a-vis noncitizen Federal employes in other countries...
...The blacks who reside in the Canal Zone are more outspoken, openly expressing concern and reservations...
...Not only must new jobs and homes be found for the displaced citizens of the disengaging nation, but there is also frequently a community that, because it served the departing country, finds itself unwanted or endangered...
...In testimony two years ago before a House subcommittee, representatives from the U.S.-administered communities argued that their interests were being ignored in the negotiations and that their loss of jobs under the 1955 treaty boded ill for the future...
...And unlike the trauma of Vietnam, which was sufficient to jar Congress into appropriating $203 million for refugee absorption, the situation of the blacks in Panama is barely known, not to mention understood...
...There seems little chance, though, that it will be...
...A special optional early retirement program is to be implemented, too, that would benefit both black and white Zonians who would find themselves jobless once the U.S...
...The pending Panama Canal treaty involves a roughly analogous situation...
...displaced employes are to be offered "special job placement assistance" by Panama...
...The treaty may be sufficiently generous to senior workers, allowing them to retire with a modicum of dignity-and money...
...negotiators did try to build a measure of protection for black workers into the document...
...Spanish-speaking Panamanians view them as privilegiados (privileged ones) who should have been repatriated to their countries of origin after the canal was built...
...For although the U.S...
...Indeed, few people in this country are at all aware of their precarious position...
...Given the historical attitude toward blacks in the Republic, the treaty seems a rather weak reed for them to lean on...
...The blacks' current predicament is rooted in the history of railway and canal construction on the Isthmus of Panama...
...is now preparing to withdraw from Panama, while there it benefitted from the labors of a group that will fall to the tender mercies of General Omar Tor-rijos Herrera's regime if Washington does not offer it adequate protection...
...The man General Torrijos overthrew in 1968, Arnulfo Arias, head of the nationalist and racist Panamenista party, advocated denial of citizenship or expulsion back to the islands for West Indian blacks...
...A close reading of the new treaty indicates that U.S...
...During the late 19th century, France, under the direction of Ferdinand de Lesseps, attempted to repeat its magnificent Suez performance across the swampy Panamanian isthmus...
...pulled out...
...In 1849, when some New York entrepreneurs decided to build a railroad there to expedite travel to the California gold fields, they imported about 2,000 Jamaican workers, who were more resistant to the ravages of malaria and yellow fever than their Chinese and Irish counterparts...
...Nevertheless, the terms of the treaty are too qualified and too vague to offer the black population much real protection: Those holding administrative positions that come under Republic of Panama control are to be retained "to the maximum extent feasible...
...This began the phase of "integrating" the workers into Panamanian life, a polite way of saying that white Zonians wished to rid themselves of the whole problem...
...Not unjustly do the blacks refer to themselves as the "forced Panamanians...
...The canal completed, the blacks successfully competed for the menial bluecollar and service jobs that became available with the start of operations...
...In short, the blacks are a classic case of social marginality...
...Even under present conditions, whenever employment opportunities decline within the Zone, the black worker is the first to go...
...For another, the President's new illegal-alien plan threatens to create a "raise-the-drawbridge" mentality on Capitol Hill that would hinder consideration of special cases...
...Thus when the United States picked up where the French had left off, it inherited equipment, a partially completed ditch-and a sizeable black work force that it continued to supplement from the islands as construction progressed...
...Displaced into Panama's economy, racial and linguistic difficulties leave him with slim chances of finding work...
...have no future either in Panama or in the Canal Zone...
...Panamanians who work for Americans, they are disowned by both communities...
...government in the Canal Zone...
...Pressure to integrate them into the white community, however, always has been strenuously and, for the most part, successfully, resisted...
...This, perhaps more than anything else, may mean the question of our moral obligation to a community that has served us so well, and at such a high cost to its social position in the Republic of Panama, will not even be raised...
...Not surprisingly therefore, the prospect of an eventual United States departure from the Zone is so delicate a matter to the black community that few black canal employes living in the Republic of Panama are willing to comment on it...
...Consequently, the argument ran, the issue here was not one of racial discrimination but rather of nationality: Being Panamanians, the blacks had to attend schools that taught the Spanish language and culture...
...schools, it was suddenly stressed that blacks living in the Zone were Panamanians...
...For example, when the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling confronted white Zone residents with possibly having to desegregate their Steve C. Ropp is associate professor of government at New Mexico State...
...They had two advantages over native Panamanians: They spoke English and were Protestant...
...This is particularly true for relatively young people...
...There can be no doubt, though, that they fear the treaty, believing their jobs endangered, and covertly wish to see President Carter's ratification effort fail...
...In the case of Vietnam, for instance, the United States has so far rightly provided a haven to some 145,000 South Vietnamese fleeing from the wrath of the victorious Communists...
...The black community in Panama has in fact proposed that such legislation be enacted as a necessary aspect of the treaty's adoption...
...These feelings are sensed by the native population, heightening its resentment...
...Moreover, present racial antagonisms have a long history in Panama...
...Segregated and discriminated against by the Americans, blacks have fared even worse with their fellow citizens...
...These people are the estimated 15,000 black employes-all nominally Panamanian citizens-of the U.S...
...But their plight lacks the high drama of retaliation for wartime cooperation...
...They resent the fact that 5,000 blacks continue to live in special Canal Zone communities, and that all 15,000 receive salaries which, while considered the minimum wage in the United States, are triple what the average Panamanian makes...
...But health conditions were much worse than in the Middle East, prompting the French to follow the earlier American example and hire blacks from Jamaica, Barbados and the smaller Caribbean islands...
...But younger blacks working for the U.S...
...Under the provisions, those fired from jobs transferred to Panama would, if possible, be placed by the United States in other positions...
Vol. 60 • November 1977 • No. 22
