Accepting Fault

Though bitter, good medicine cures illness. Though it may hurt, loyal criticism will have beneficial effects.
Sima Qian


I donate many of my blog entries to The Panama News. I believe that Eric Jackson—the owner and editor of this online publication—is providing a priceless service to Panamá’s English-speaking community, which is considerably large. And as a result of my work appearing in The Panama News, I often receive responses from readers. Over the next few weeks I'll be sharing a few of these.

One of the risks of being a writer who expresses his or her views in a widely distributed forum is that we sometimes offend readers. This was the case of "The News from Colón," a piece that discussed the alarming growth of violent crime in Panamá’s second largest city, situated on the Caribbean side of the Canal. The article appeared both in my blog and The Panama News in November of 2005.

In response to “The News from Colón,” Rafael Barnett wrote:

I have read your article and differ with you on the highlighted statement: Every English-language guidebook advises tourists to avoid this city, which is populated mostly by descendants of the Jamaicans and Barbadians who were brought to Panama as cheap labor by the French and, later, the Americans during the construction of the canal. I challenge you to investigate and you will find that all the derogatory things said about Colon cannot be only attributed to the descendants of the Jamaicans and Barbadians. After all these descendants are the ones whose majority have migrated to the United States. Many of the descendants of the cheap labor of construction days who remained in Panama were from other countries, however, whenever there is negative talk about this group of people there is always mention of Jamaicans and Barbadians.

West Indians as we are also vulgarly called; are an intelligent, hard working, problem solving bunch. In spite of the deck being stacked against us, we have risen to the highest professional levels in different disciplines. Have been innovative in changing the way things have been done and most of us have saved and invested our hard earned cash wisely in this country that has reluctantly accepted us.

Every time we have figured out how to play the game, beat the system, the rules have been changed, yet we don’t make a public spectacle complaining or blocking traffic. We just learn the new rules and begin playing by them.

Like the rest of the country the make-up of the city of Colon has gone through a metamorphic change over the past fifty years, thus many of the blacks who live there are not descendants of those who came to build the Railroad and/or the Canal.

Now this is not an accusation that you are overtly discriminating negatively against Jamaicans or Barbadians, however, there is a trend to covertly discriminate against los antillanos even by the so called negro colonial. In practice being called either an Antillean, Jamaican, or Barbadian on our streets has negative connotations, this way of thinking even goes further when you are duped, the term congeado is used having connotations that anyone from the Congo (African) is black and easily fooled or stupid.

It is not my intention to start a firestorm, however, I just hope that in the future some thought is given when you write about those of "West Indian" descent.

Thanks,
Rafael


My response:

Dear Rafael:

I apologize if something in the article upset you. I never meant to imply that the problems of Colón are due to any particular ethnic group. The article states that the culprit is poverty and lack of employment opportunities. And these, I believe, stem from the Panamanian government's historic lack of attention to the problems Colón faces.

Regarding my statement of Colón being mostly populated by the descendants of Jamaicans and Barbadians, I stand corrected. I’m relatively new to Panamá and I’m still being educated about the terms people of this country prefer with regard to ethnic identification. That said, I based my assertion on David McCullough's The Path Between the Seas. In this exhaustively researched book, this noted historian closely examines the French and U.S. hiring practices during the building of the Canal and proves, in fact, that the overwhelming majority of workers came from Jamaica (during the French construction) and Barbados (during the US phase). In addition, McCullough vividly describes the deplorable working and living conditions workers of Afro-Antillean descent were subjected to.

The bottom line is that I agree with you with respect to the real cause of the problems: racism.

Again, my apologies if I failed to make this absolutely clear.