Getting labor to build the Panama Canal required lies, coercion, and force. A reprint from Madrid’s ‘El Socialista’ on the thousands of Spanish workers hoodwinked into going to Panama to work for U.S. companies and held in virtual slavery until their passage ‘debts’ are repaid.

‘Conditions of Spanish Laborers in Panama’ from The Worker (New York). 17 No. 44. February 1, 1908.

Spanish Paper Says Spanish Laborers There Are Held in Virtual Serfdom to Work on Canal.

The following is translated by Ben Lichtenberg from “El Socialista”, the Socialist paper of Madrid, the issue of Nov. 20:

Despite the sentiment stirred up by the press reports of the suffering of the Spanish laborers working on the Panama Canal for the United States government, and despite the declaration of various members of Parliament and of the Institute of Social Reforms, our government has not taken any steps toward restoring liberty to our countrymen in Panama.

The greater part of the Spanish laborers now on the Isthmus are being kept there against their will. Some wish to go to other countries, but most of them desire to return to Spain, but the United States government denies them the right of satisfying such legal desires.

These workers were cajoled into leaving their native land by the glittering reports. being spread thrnout Spain by American agents who infest this country in order to secure cheap labor for the United States. They do and any everything to create the belief that Panama is the workingman’s paradise, and thus succeed, in getting thousands of them to sign themselves for work in that fever-ridden country. On reaching the Isthmus these men were rudely disillusioned. They found that the quarters consisted of large single-room buildings filled with bunks (technically known as “standee berths”), standing three high without any regard to ventilation; that they were being charged exorbitant prices, for unwholesome food and that the cost of all the necessities of life was exceedingly high. They found themselves subject to all sorts of persecutions and impositions at the hands of the chiefs and sub-chiefs of the various departments. They learned that if a man did not go to work he was ordered to the hospital. If he refused to go there or was found in the street, he was sent to the jail and there forced to work. Hundreds of them were thus arrested on refusal to work.

Upon learning how things stood, hundreds decided to return to Spain, but the United States officials intervened at this point, claiming that they owed for their passage from Spain, and could not leave the Isthmus until they had worked that “debt” off. Thus it has remained for the arch-democratic and arch-progressive United States of American to claim the honor of having called into requisition a barbarous penalty that is condemned by twentieth century culture. Beautiful example of bourgeois democracy!

There is still more to say on this subject: The lives of these men are in daily peril. Scarcely a day passes but a number of men die. The climatic conditions are such as to undermine the healthiest constitutions: add to this the poor food and poorer lodgings, and one can easily account for the large death-rate among the Spanish laborers. Still the men are forcibly detained. Our government knows all about these evils thru its consuls, and yet, what hope have our brothers in Panama of returning to their country? We demand that these workers be liberated at once, even tho our treasury be emptied of a few hundred thousand dollars to repay the United States, the country of multi-millionaires who spend fortunes to satisfy their vices, the country in which the Steel and Oll Kings reign.

Every day that is allowed to go by without effective measures being taken to liberate these thousands of our countrymen means so many more names added to the long list of those who died in Panama; and we repeat, it is the duty of this government to come to their rescue, no matter at what cost. This government, in permitting the American agents to spread their lying reports about conditions on the Isthmus, lays Itself open to the charge of willfully betraying its citizens Into slavery: and if it takes no action, or limits itself to establishing negotiations thru its consuls, stands condemned as an abettor of this monstrous crime. To be sure, the cost of the liberation of our compatriots would mount up to the tens of thousands of dollars, but is that to be considered as against the lives of fellow men? And Spain spending a million dollars for an imitation navy!

The Worker, and its predecessor The People, emerged from the 1899 split in the Socialist Labor Party of America led by Henry Slobodin and Morris Hillquit, who published their own edition of the SLP’s paper in Springfield, Massachusetts. Their ‘The People’ had the same banner, format, and numbering as their rival De Leon’s. The new group emerged as the Social Democratic Party and with a Chicago group of the same name these two Social Democratic Parties would become the Socialist Party of America at a 1901 conference. That same year the paper’s name was changed from The People to The Worker with publishing moved to New York City. The Worker continued as a weekly until December 1908 when it was folded into the socialist daily, The New York Call.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/the-people-the-worker/080201-worker-v17n44.pdf