Memory of the World; 2012 - unesdoc - Unesco

� West Indian labourers working on the Panama Canal, operating
drilling machinery in preparation for a rock blast: one of the
postcards in this collection.
interest in appearing benevolent towards plantation
workers by creating a legislative framework in which
their rights and working environment were optimized.
These laws and regulations sought to control the exodus
of a labour force over which they had strict control, and
which was now being disrupted by this migration. This
mass emigration out of the British empire and their
relocation to Panama was witnessed and intimately
recorded in papers which highlight the daily lives
and working conditions which tens of thousands
of West Indians had to endure in Panama. The heritage
that captures all of this movement is contained in the
Colonial Secretary’s Office Records, Central Government
Department Records of Panama and various statutory
bodies’ records which reported on their settlement,
status and condition.
For the many thousands of West Indians who made
new lives in Panama from the middle of the 19th century
to opening of the canal, this voluntary separation from
home and family represented the unimaginable promise
of economic improvement. Depositors’ Ledgers of the
Barbados Savings Bank, from 1853 to 1918, record
the financial transactions of tens of thousands of
people who were depositing ‘Panama Money’, which
represented a new-found economic freedom directly
related to the West Indian Panama experience. Philatelic
and photographic documents offer evidence of the
burgeoning exchange of communications between
Panama and the West Indies during the first few decades
of the 20th century – indeed the Canal Zone had its own
stamps as a strategy to make it easier for workers to stay
in touch with their relatives. Additionally, the images
archived in various media are invaluable as records of
the entire process of the excavation and construction
of the Panama Canal, and the lives of those who
participated in it.
The records of the Isthmian Canal Commission that
document the success of the American canal project also
relate to the earlier French attempt in the late 19th century
and the early records of the Panama Railway Company
from the mid-19th century, all of which were catalysts for
the introduction of West Indian labour to the Isthmus
of Panama.
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