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CHAPTER 3 Color, Caste, and Colonialism 44 D espite U.S. rhetoric about its Good Neighbor policy toward South America, norteamericanos consigned Latinos to “a lower caste” that barred them from restaurants, hotels, and other public accommodations , Robert M. MacIver wrote in 1956. “How can we stand for . . . human liberty before Latin America,” he admonished his countrymen, “when we contradict our principles as soon as the citizens of these states cross our borders?”1 MacIver’s observation was accurate not only for alien Latinos, but also for U.S. citizens of Hispanic heritage, who were deprived of political rights as well as access to public accommodations. News of the discrimination against them made its way abroad to the detriment of America’s image. But the effects went beyond national image to affect strategic issues such as the defense of the Panama Canal and the critical U.S. relationship with Mexico. Few possessions were of greater importance to Americans than the Canal. Its strategic value remained great (albeit diminishing with the introduction of capital warships too large to make the transit on the Canal), and it was intensely symbolic as an epic national achievement. A threat to the Canal would have been unthinkable to Americans. Yet in 1947, a controversy involving race threatened the continued use of bases that the U.S. military deemed essential to defend the Canal. The Panama Canal Zone was controlled by the United States with no local representation. As historian Thomas Berstelmann put it, the Zone “sat squarely in the middle of another nation, whose darker-skinned majority resented American racial prejudices and the support lent to Panama’s lightskinned elite.” The Canal was “dug chiefly by Caribbean Negroes,” who were not repatriated home after the construction. In addition to the 22,102 U.S. citizens in 1947, civilians in the Canal Zone numbered 13,322 West Indians,9,624Panamanians,and2,000representativesofothernationalities.2 COLOR, CASTE, AND COLONIALISM 45 The West Indians, the most downtrodden, were denied citizenship by the United States and were resented by Panamanians because they competed for employment in the Zone, and because their culture was West Indian, not Hispanic, and their language English, not Spanish. Panama barred West Indians from citizenship unless they Hispanicized their identity and culture , but it had not installed a Jim Crow system. Indeed, Panamanians had elevated two “Negroes of old stock” to the presidency, and many of them were descended from black slaves or had a mixture of Spanish, black, and Indian blood. Designated lower caste because of their color, not surprisingly many Panamanians nursed “ill will toward Americans.”3 Officially, discrimination in the Canal Zone was not based upon skin color, but on categories of labor. Skilled and supervisory employees were carried on the Gold Roll, unskilled laborers the Silver. (The terminology was taken from the former practice of paying them, respectively, in gold and silver coins.) In practice, there was a profound bias against people of color. Only three blacks were numbered among the 5,620 U.S. civilians on the Gold Roll (out of a total of 5,793), according to a report prepared in 1947 for the Truman administration by retired U.S. Army Brigadier General Frank J. McSherry. The imbalance was no accident: Contractors were “quietly warned not to bring Negro American citizens” to work on the Canal, Paul Blanshard wrote, lest they claim rights the Gold System reserved for white men. Even though the Zone was a U.S. government preserve , its schools, housing, and most public facilities, including theaters, commissaries, clubs, and drinking fountains, were rigidly segregated. McSherry attempted unsuccessfully to have the racial restrictions erased gradually, pointing out the contradiction of tolerating segregation while the country subscribed “to a policy of non-discrimination” in line with the U.N. Charter, and pledged equal treatment of Panamanians.4 Racial practices were actually worse in the Zone than at other U.S. installations in the region. It wasn’t that the federal government lacked the authority to make reforms, a common justification of Washington for not curbing racism in Dixie. “No state legislatures or southern sheriffs or . . . mobs [could] prevent changing” the caste system if the president ordered it.5 Naturally, there were vocal critics of the system. “Anti-American organizations and individuals,” McSherry wrote, effectively used “the personnel practices . . . for propaganda.” Time, one of the few U.S. periodicals to turn a critical eye on the system, pronounced it “one of the worst examples” of Jim Crow. Worse, it was...

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