The workers of the Rockefeller Foundation have found eighty per cent of the people of the provinces afflicted with hookworm. Highly commendable is the work done by these representatives of the Institute, but so long as the common people know nothing of sanitation, clean and pure food, present conditions will continue. And physical "hookworm" is accompanied by a similar mental condition. There is a moral hookworm throughout the country, and life slumps down to a hand-to-mouth drag from one day to the next. Both physical and mental conditions are better in the cities, of course, but there is still room for a moral prophylactic.
There are social forces which have largely accounted for this result. Possibly no place in the world shows more mixed blood than Panama. Shades and colors and tints and tones there are, and blends indescribable and also impossible to analyze or trace. The artists tell us that the combination of the primary colors with white results in a tint, while blending a primary color with black gives a shade. Well, most of these tones are shades, for the same scientific reason as that mentioned by the artist. From the Caribbean world has come its contribution of the West Indian Negroes, with consequent shady result.
The social results of this mixture are various and distressing, but well understood by anyone who has lived in the interior of Panama. Even the cities are affected in the same way. Social standing, political availability, and personal influence are largely determined by the degree of whiteness—or darkness—that prevails in the skin. And the general desire of the ignorant and unmoral native of the interior to "lighten up the breed" has led to a moral situation that bodes no good for the away-from-home white man who may be living for a longer or shorter time in the up-country provinces.
Any aggressive North American, especially if he be from the West, looks upon the splendid areas of land, the fine rivers, the dense forests, and the other untouched resources of this rich country with amazement, and begins to plan development projects and dream of organizing syndicates, but the native loses no sleep over such vain imaginings. If he dreams at all, it is of his food if he be poor, and of politics if he be rich. Development in the North American sense is a disgrace, and no job for a gentleman. The smooth savanas may lie there untouched till kingdom come, for all he cares. The only interest in life is political manipulation. Law and politics are the two occupations most esteemed, and Panama is not different from other countries in the frequent association of these two professions.
Whence comes this emphasis on political activity, to the neglect of commerce and agriculture? It comes from Europe with the early inheritance of the first settlements and rulers of this Latin world. For them any form of physical work was dire disgrace. "These two hands have never done an hour's work" was a boast and badge of quality. The climate of the tropics made this philosophy of life easy to accept and follow, and what the leaders lived the followers did faithfully keep and perform. Of course somebody had to do a little work and raise a few vegetables and cattle, but the game was to find the unfortunate worker and then take away from him the product of his toil. Thus the getter lived without work and taught the loser the uselessness of further exercise.
By way of clearness these conditions are here described in their worst and final form. Bad as they are, they are not the whole truth. It takes more than mixed blood and hookworm and snobbishness to account for the present social conditions of Central America.
If moral conditions in Panama to-day are not ideal, it is not due to any absence of church or lack of religion. With the explorers and conquerors of the sixteenth century came the missionaries and priests. Crosses were set up, bells were hung, masses were said, and everywhere the elaborate ritual of the Spanish church was maintained. Whole villages were "converted," baptized, and labeled as good Catholics in a day's time. Massive and beautiful churches were soon built in centers of population, and every village has its church, often representing nearly as much value as half of the houses of the town combined.
From the beginning until the coming of the North American to finish the Canal the Roman Church has had exclusive and uninterrupted occupation of this entire territory. There has been no competition, and there have been no interferences with her moral and spiritual leadership.
PUBLIC MARKET, DAVID