Not many events encapsulate the U.S. empire in this hemisphere like the invasion of Panama in 1925 to put down the ‘Renters Rebellion’ against unbearable living conditions in the colony’s capital. On October 12, 1925 police of U.S. comprador, Panamanian President Rodolfo Chiari, fired into a crowd of workers on rent strike, the Movimiento Inquilinario, killing four. Riots and a general strike against his regime broke out, with U.S. marines stationed in the Canal Zone were ‘requested’ to put down the strike; which they did. More were killed, union headquarters destroyed, and the mass movement crushed under a U.S. marine boot.

‘Yankee Imperialism Shows its Teeth’ by Harrison George from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 6 No. 11. February 4, 1926.

There are lessons to be found for the workers in a study of the “Renters’ Rebellion” in Panama City, Republic of Panama, situated in the centre of Central America, the region most acutely oppressed by the expansion southward of United States imperialism.

These lessons pertain not only to the terrible economic and social conditions of those Latin-American workers suffering under the heel of ruthless exploitation, and they reflect not alone the vast power of oppression of Wall street imperialism–which is known to these oppressed peoples as ‘The Colossus of the North’, but teach as well the fundamental function of the capitalist state, as written by its own hand.

The strike of the renters in Panama, it will be remembered, occurred in October last. The landlords had raised the rents, already high, of workers that toil for the merest pittance and who live in the worst of horrible and unsanitary hovels. Extracts from a letter, given below, tell something of their conditions in the following words:

“A New York acquaintance once showed me around that city’s infamous East Side. My comment on the abominable, filthy and generally unsanitary conditions under which those workers exist, was that here we had a crime against civilization that cried to heaven. But that was before I started travelling around Central America. Your East-Sider is a pot bellied plutocrat in comparison to the Central-American worker.”

Against such conditions the workers of Panama City rebelled. The whole world proletariat should know that they fought valiantly against their venal and corrupt government, that they rushed into the struggle with a will for sacrifice, and that many gave up their lives in open, although unequal, combat.

The Panamanian government used all its power to crush the renters’ strike, but disaffection arose in its police force, and the government was swept along was on the point of accepting defeat with a wry face, when the soldiery of the United States invaded the country without the slightest pretext of international law to justify the invasion, and saved the rights of capitalist property from the sacrilegious hands of the Panamanian worker. Bayonets through the breast of a few brave proletarians who fought under red flags with their bare hands, triumphed. But even at that the renters won a ten per cent cut, though they demanded a fifty per cent reduction at the beginning. Brute force again triumphed over workers armed only with a just cause and isolated from the larger masses of workers, whose co-operation alone would have ensured success the organised workers of the United States.

Only when a common fight is made by the workers of the United States in close conjunction with the miserably oppressed workers of Central America, can the latter hope for permanent betterment to be forced out of the exploiters. And only when the workers of the United States understand that their own standards are menaced by he oppression suffered by Latin-American workers, will a common fight be made.

We come to the revelation in the struggle that went on in Panama City, of the basic nature of a capitalist state. In the decree issued by the mayor of the city on October 31, a decree with ten separate articles and a preamble, the latter states:

“The mere fact of inciting or advising by any means the non-payment of rent, is to induce citizens to ignore the natural and legitimate right of property, and therefore said act constitutes an attack against the right of property which it is the unavoidable duty of the State to protect.”

What could be clearer? Here there is stated the “natural right” of capitalist property, and the equally supreme duty and function of the capitalist state to protect that right.

That the right of human life and happiness is wholly immaterial when it conflicts with this “natural right” of capital, and that this “natural” right nevertheless required the assistance of artifice in the way of jails and bayonets is seen in the provisions of the decree.

These provided that all personally or indirectly inciting non-payment of rent should be arrested and imprisoned, if Panamanian citizens, foreigners to be deported. Panamanians of “Notorious bad conduct” who participate are sentenced to two years in prison and in such a prison where such a term is worse than immediate execution. Printers who print circular matter are subject to arrest. All meetings relating to the tenants’ question are prohibited and public demonstrations in which the red flag is displayed or the Internationale is sung are prohibited, and participants are subject to arrest.

Thus was crushed by summary decree and the aid of Yankee bayonets the movement which the mayor’s preamble stated “was aimed at disturbing public order and to change by violent means our institutions for the purpose of substituting them with others”, but which, in effect was a typical example of the savage treatment by capitalist government of workers who dare even to lay the weight of a finger on the holy “natural” right of property.

Thus was crushed the first brave effort of the Panamanian workers to battle for freedom under red flags and with the Internationale on their lips. But it was only their first effort, and the neat little axiom used by the Spanish people in all occasions of temporary reverses comes sharply to mind “Manana sera otra dia” “Tomorrow will be another day”.

International Press Correspondence, widely known as”Inprecorr” was published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) regularly in German and English, occasionally in many other languages, beginning in 1921 and lasting in English until 1938. Inprecorr’s role was to supply translated articles to the English-speaking press of the International from the Comintern’s different sections, as well as news and statements from the ECCI. Many ‘Daily Worker’ and ‘Communist’ articles originated in Inprecorr, and it also published articles by American comrades for use in other countries. It was published at least weekly, and often thrice weekly.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1926/v06n11-feb-04-1926-inprecor.pdf