A Tour Through South America

by A. S. Forrest

When the first French company started its operations, Jamaicans, tempted by the high wages offered, flocked on to the scene, and when the work was brought to a standstill in 1901 many of them were left stranded upon the isthmus, and those unable to obtain other employment were shipped back to their island at its expense. Many, however, remained and settled upon small patches of unclaimed land and lived in a primitive fashion without much difficulty, in a country which furnishes abundant subsistence to the cultivator.

A LABOUR CAMP (EVENING), CANAL ZONE.

The demand for labour again arose when the U.S.A. Government restarted operations, and numerous sources were tapped to supply sufficient numbers of efficient pick-and-shovel men.

Naturally attention was turned in the negro’s direction, for he is indispensable when such work is forward. Those who urge his expulsion en masse from the Northern States overlook the firm hold which he has got on the plantations of the South. However high racial prejudice may occasionally rise against him, he has made himself absolutely necessary to the Southern planter, who would be ruined if black labour were withdrawn. Besides, it is not a particularly easy task to expel ten millions of people.

It is interesting to note that the nigger is far more appreciated in South America than he is in the northern part of the continent. In Anglo-Saxon colonies the laws against the blacks have always been more stringent and oppressive than those of Spain, Portugal, and France. So much is the negro valued in Latin America that many of the Republics were unwilling to allow their black labour to be recruited for the canal. Only recently the Argentine Consul in Panama sent word to his Government that fifteen thousand of the workmen on the Zone were disposed to transfer themselves to the wheatfields of the South.

Through the action of a Governor of Jamaica in refusing to allow negroes from that island to go to the isthmus (unless upon terms to which the Canal Commission found it impossible to agree) other countries were tried, to make up for the loss of Jamaica as a recruiting ground. Cuba, whence many of the Spanish settlers were brought, suggested to the labour department that Spain would be a likely place from which to obtain labourers, and many were imported on to the work, and proved the wisdom of the choice. Italians also were brought, while the Jamaicans arrived in great numbers, although not under any form of contract. Barbadians, Martiniquians, and Trinidadians flocked in, but all of the negro labourers who are on the work are liable to take a holiday frequently and return to their native countries to spend, in ostentatious display, the money they have earned.

These negroes of the different islands exhibit such lack of sympathy with one another, that the authorities are compelled to house them in separated camps.

The Barbadians predominate on the isthmus, probably because theirs is the most densely populated island, and they have rapidly made themselves acquainted with the conditions on the Zone, settling down as if it were their native land.

The British West Indian negro has a great contempt for and prejudice against those of his own colour who speak the French, Dutch, or Spanish language, and whenever an altercation or argument arises between negroes of the different nationalities, reference is frequently made to the prowess and prestige or weakness and decadence of the rival nations. This characteristic is set out by the old joke which probably originated on the West Coast of Africa, but has of recent years been told of the West Indians. “Yah, you big, black, ugly Frenchman!” a huge Barbadian yelled at a Martinique gentleman of colour who was getting the better of him in argument. “What we give you at Waterloo, eh?”