05/22/2019
School is in session....
What do you know about The Panama Canal?
Did you know that In addition to providing funding and governmental oversight and designing the project, the United States sent as many as six thousand Americans to work on the canal at any time, and thousands more family members traveled to join their menfolk. Americans worked as engineers, doctors, nurses, and provided skilled labor as machinists, carpenters, and steam shovel
engineers.
But they were just the tip of a truly global workforce arriving from dozens of countries. During the construction decade as many as 150,000 people of African descent traveled to the Canal Zone from the Caribbean. Most came from Jamaica and Barbados, but the islands of St. Lucia, Martinique, Antigua, Grenada, Dominica, Bahamas, and Trinidad were all represented as well. When Caribbean's weren’t working hard enough for the liking of US foremen, southern Europeans were recruited, particularly from Spain and Italy. Smaller numbers came from as far away as India.
All these workers, particularly those from the Caribbean, confronted a harsh working environment, including possible jail time or deportation if they failed to show up for work, high rates of disease and workplace accidents, and a pervasive system of racial segregation seeking to keep them under control. Thousands of Afro-Caribbean women also traveled to the zone to work as domestic servants, laundresses, or cooks.
I know... You did not know that. As a kid living in Panama, I had the priviledge of knowing my grandfather who migrated to Panama from Barbados 🇧🇧 as a young man to work in the Canal and my grandmother who came from Martinique 🇲🇶 a French speaking Island.
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@ Panama Canal
