by Colin Grant
In the autumn of 1910, armed with the permit (having paid the dollar deposit that the Treasury required to cover the potential cost of repatriation), Marcus Garvey set sail for Costa Rica. Minor Keith’s United Fruit steamers regularly ferried bananas from Central America to North America, and mail and passengers to and from Caribbean islands (primarily Jamaica) to Costa Rica, Cuba and Panama. The cost of a steerage-class ticket would be offset by the salivating prospect of wages several times higher than the passenger could expect for similar work in Jamaica. The Right Reverend Herbert Bury recorded the great swell of excitement as the departing men boarded the ships. Defying the fierce morning heat, friends and relatives accompanied the men who struggled aboard with ‘the most extraordinary collection of personal property … friends on shore handed over the side, and those on board received and stowed away, pathetic little bundles … imposing tin boxes and portmanteaux, pillows, beds, chairs, cooking vessels …’ They were deck passengers, and as soon as the ship cleared the harbour, Herbert Bury, the self-styled ‘bishop amongst bananas’ observed how ‘everything was now neatly arranged and in order, for their two days and nights at sea had to be spent just where they had put down their belongings when coming on board’.38 It was Garvey’s first time off the island; a huge gamble but also a great adventure. He aimed to stay, in the first instance, with his maternal uncle in the Caribbean enclave of Port Limón (home to an estimated 20,000 British West Indians). Limón was an isolated region of Atlantic coast where the bullish United Fruit Company dominated the banana industry, and acted largely with impunity as if it were an autonomous government. Not satisfied with its near-monopoly of the North American market, the transnational United Fruit Company, which local people called ‘el pulpo’ (the octopus) because of its aggressive competitiveness and all-pervading reach into its workers’ lives, continued to expand its production and distribution. Each week its ships, the ‘Great White Fleet’, laden with perfect bananas, struggled to keep up with demand.
Disembarking from the steamers that brought them to Port Limón, the first thing passengers noticed was the smell – the cloyingly sweet smell of rejected, rotting bananas – and then the sight and sound of the workers summoned to load the boats. All day long women, poised with heavy loads of banana bunches on their heads, strode up and down the gangplanks of the company’s steamers. Dark stains of banana juice decorated their ragged garments that were once Sunday gowns. The ‘knee-dipping canter of the bearers’ would have been a familiar sight to Garvey. The work rendered the women indistinguishable from their Port Maria and Port Antonio counterparts back home, whom Governor Olivier was to describe ‘in all the imaginable shades of dinginess’. Banana loading was primarily women’s work. Almost every other aspect of banana cultivation was carried out by men. There was no banana season; work was an unbroken cycle. But employment was competitive and irregular; United Fruit preferred to pay wages in the form of coupons that could only fully be exchanged for provisions in United Fruit shops (partially redeemed in non-UF shops).
Though the majority of West Indian workers were labourers (single men housed in barracks and labour camps) and small-scale farmers (with their families), there had evolved over three decades of their presence in Costa Rica, a degree of upward mobility. The North American managers of United Fruit generally showed a preference to West Indians over the local Hispanic population, primarily because the West Indians spoke English and were more literate. After a while, the Hispanic peasants were relegated to the more unpleasant tasks of digging ditches and draining swamps. West Indians became foremen and timekeepers; they had a monopoly on the docks and worked in the corporate offices as clerks. However, the United Fruit Company’s heavy-handed control of the workforce, especially out on the plantations, was, as Governor Olivier would later report, ‘uncongenial to the Jamaican temperament’.39
Marcus Garvey arrived in the midst of a rancid dispute between Jamaican labourers and their North American managers: the Costa Rican government had recently proposed a tax on banana exports (2 cents per stem), and rather than absorbing the losses, the United Fruit Company had attempted to pass on the burden to its employees in the shape of a 12 per cent reduction in the wages. Earning 85 cents a day was bad enough, but when straight-faced managers insisted on a cut that would reduce their wages to 75 cents a day, resentment among the workforce, already running high, exploded into angry demonstrations that centred on Port Limón. The Jamaicans’ conflict with United Fruit was exacerbated when the newly formed Artisans and Labourers Union had the temerity to request that 1 August, the anniversary of emancipation, be recognised as an annual holiday. The company responded precipitously. It selected 600 union members – as an example to the others – and extending their leave indefinitely, locked them out from all United Fruit plantations. The fledgling union (more a mutual-aid society than hard-core labour movement) observed ‘el pulpo’s’ approach to conflict resolution with equal horror and dismay: company recruiters were dispatched to St Kitts and, after a speedy trawl through the countryside, shipped in several hundred Kittitians to take the place of the recalcitrant Jamaicans. On 23 November 1910, the British Consulate in San José sent an urgent telegram to the Governor in Panama:
[Artisans and Labourers] Union strikers have been replaced by other working people. 600 from Nevis and St Kitts under contract arrived all right last week. Today 180 intimidated by Union agitators – Riot suppressed without loss of life. Rioters detained under arrest … For the present all quiet. Deportation ringleaders probable. [Vice-Consul] Macgrigor remaining Limón.’40
The men from St Kitts would have been aware of the ambiguous role intended for them. The company frequently made a policy of exploiting inter-island rivalries, but, though there was initial friction with the Jamaicans, the Kittitians were soon alerted to the real enemy: the United Fruit Company for whom they were contracted to work at 10 cents a day less than the Jamaicans. Duped by the transnational, the new men also went out on strike, with the North American managers looking on anxiously, anticipating the violent backlash that they feared was bound to follow. When United Fruit appealed to the Costa Rican government, the authorities sent in troops to enforce vagrancy laws (contracted workers who refused to work could be considered vagrants and arrested) and to prevent more farm labourers descending on the port. Even the conservative Limón Times thundered at the injustice, its outrage mixed with a plaintive SOS: ‘We are all British … we all belong to a world-wide Empire, and on the strength of that assertion all British Subjects have every right to be treated with the greatest amount of respect; and should not be so subjected to American aggression.’ But the appeals of these Caribbean sons and daughters of a distant Albion for intervention met with little sympathy from local consular officials who believed them ‘vainly influenced by agitators’. In further telegrams, the British consul, Frank Cox, sounded a note of rising panic:
It is quite likely that martial law will be declared in Limón and unless things go well tomorrow I anticipate serious trouble. Government has 250 men here sufficient to maintain order in the town … There is uneasiness nevertheless which would be relieved by the presence of a warship.41
On 29 November 1910, Cox addressed the strikers and warned that they risked being drafted to Cartago to work by armed force: ‘You are hereby directed to return, as free men, to work at the farms of the United Fruit Company … I advise you to work as free men, and save money, rather than to be forced to work, and have nothing.’
Added to the hazards of duplicitous managers, officious British consular representatives, snakes and swamps, were the local bandits who regularly ambushed the bewildered immigrants on the edge of the jungle and relieved them of their wages. Still, once the strike was over, 75 cents a day seemed preferable to near-starvation in Jamaica and St Kitts. The immediate dispute was settled but the recriminations and grievances rumbled on. The newly appointed timekeeper, Marcus Garvey, found himself in an invidious role; his predisposition towards supporting his countrymen conf
licted with his job description. Whilst the labourers desired to work speedily to meet their required daily targets, the overseers, foremen and timekeepers were charged with ensuring that maximum efficiency did not come with the cost of bruised or scarred bananas. Timekeeper Garvey was employed to oversee the smooth running of the ‘factory in the fields’ (as banana plantations were commonly known) that left workers with the conviction that United Fruit were more concerned about the welfare of the bananas than the people who harvested them. Marcus Garvey only spent a few months on the plantations and though the bullying and belittling of his compatriots that he witnessed at close hand sickened him, it also heightened his sense of identification with the group.42
The labour dispute had highlighted the precarious and unprotected state of the Caribbeans in Costa Rica; ultimately, the host nation restricted citizenship and citizens’ rights to the descendants of Spain who had settled there over three centuries. The men had been forced back to work but the cynical attempt to drive a wedge between West Indian labourers had failed. The migrants may have come from diverse islands but they shared a common language and allegiance to Britain; the fraternal lodges and friendly societies that they established provided some succour; though they might organise petitions and seek the protection of the British Crown, the Artisans and Labourers Union, the Jamaica Burial Society, the St Kitts Sports Club Committee and the West Indian Immigration and Protection Club, were not marked by militancy. At the top of these organisations were elders who recognised their vulnerability and eschewed conflict. The unfortunate dispute with United Fruit had demonstrated the futility of any other approach. By the end of 1910, a handful of strike activists had been expelled from the country and the more conservative element of the expat society had reasserted itself.
Garvey was soon upsetting the new, old order. In the spring of 1911, he established a bilingual newspaper, the Nation or La Nación. Its potential readership would have been drawn from the captive audience of British West Indians in and around Limón. Up until the Nation’s launch, the long-established Limón Times had cornered the expat market. The Nation immediately displayed its colours as a small but feisty paper capable of punching above its weight in targeting the local West Indian leadership and its timid cap-in-hand response to the abuse of its compatriots. Every time these elders in Costa Rica opened the pages of Garvey’s paper, they had cause to wince. Although they couldn’t possibly argue with the sentiment behind the Nation, they baulked at its un-diplomatic language. Like self-conscious guests at a powerful host’s party, the West Indian elite muttered tetchily amongst themselves that Garvey’s complaints were ill-mannered and only served to make things worse. ‘How much longer,’ wondered an irate letter-writer to the Limón Times, ‘must … a respectable community be offended by the scurrilities of a vile penny-a-liner.’ That outburst was prompted by Garvey’s attack on the ‘notorious demons’, the Millennial Dawnists (precursors of the Jehovah’s Witnesses) who flourished amongst sections of the West Indian population and who, having ‘discarded the Old Testament, are expounding the doctrine of an ambitious American grafter’. To criticise the group’s figurehead, the venerable Charles Russell was an affront perhaps not beyond the bounds of fair comment, but it was the young upstart’s hijacking of preparations for the celebration of King George V’s coronation that particularly irked. In blitzing Port Limón with posters ‘calling on British subjects to unite and celebrate the Coronation’, Garvey had stolen a march on the coronation committee and ensured disunity. He raised substantial funds – contributions that, at any other time, his rivals of longer-standing reputation in the community might reasonably have been expected to collect. Aggrieved members of the official committee mounted a whispering campaign that this ‘Johnny-come-lately’ had misappropriated several thousand dollars – accusations which were never substantiated but which gave some of Garvey’s supporters pause for thought.
Three months on, the editor of the Nation appeared to have gone too far – even by his extreme standards – when making unguarded comments about a fire that had consumed several West Indian-owned small businesses in the centre of Limón. Garvey questioned the motives and priorities of the fire brigade who’d given so much effort to saving the luxurious home of Cecil Lindo, a wealthy white Jamaican, that when they turned their hoses on the flames lapping at the smaller businesses, there was no more water. That report earned him a brief audience with rough-handling police, foreshadowing the trouble that was heading his way. But the retribution when it came was accidental: days after the fire an important component broke on Garvey’s printing press. The only business that could cast a replacement was owned by United Fruit, which had lately borne the brunt of the Nation’s criticism. The printing press would not be fixed and ceased to turn. Under the heading, ‘A “National” Disaster, RIP’, the rival paper barely contained its grief over the news that Garvey’s flysheet ‘has now retired into private life’. Marcus Garvey, noting the valuable lessons he had drawn from Limón, had little option but to get out of town. The Limón Times was not so generous in its assessment of a young man ‘seeking prominence … [who] must be first humbled before he can be exalted’.43
Itinerant Jamaicans were the staple of much of Central America’s temporary workforce. Over the next few months Garvey garnered something of an unsentimental education as he picked up enough casual work to make his way through Panama, Honduras, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela.44 His experience of life in the zone of the Panama Canal was both disturbing and exhilarating. Over thirty years in the making, in fits and starts, and still three years from completion, the Panama Canal was an explosive crucible of ambitious men, dangerous materials, promissory notes of wealth and blatant exploitation. First in Bocas del Toro and later Colón (where he started another paper, La Presna), Garvey charted the fortunes of men flung together in this Creole culture: the oppressive humidity and heat which meant that nothing was ever dry; the gangs of labourers who cleared landslides; the porters who balanced dynamite boxes on their heads; explosions that went wrong; the stench of the malaria-infested hospital wards; and the fights over petty insults and the favours of prostitutes.
British West Indians had been travelling to Panama since the 1850s, first to construct the railroads, then to begin work on the initial French efforts to carve out the great canal. As communities were established and the cost of migration rose the ranks of construction labourers had been swelled by professionals and craftsmen. Latterly, during the American construction from 1904 onwards, another great wave of Jamaicans had gone over. Back home these adventurers were famed as Colón Men, who had braved the high seas, disease and discomfort and returned with renewed confidence, with gold in their teeth, gold rings on every finger, gold-capped walking sticks, and waistcoats adorned with gold watches and chains (though, it was said, if you stopped such a man in the street and asked him the time, he’d look to the sun). Every Jamaican village boasted a glamorous Colón Man and even those who spurned ostentation were still noted for their smart tweed suits, the snap of a North American twang on their lips, and the swagger in their step. The burgeoning dandy in Marcus Garvey would not have been out of place in such company. But there was a catch. Once in Panama, to qualify for his Yankee dollar the Caribbean worker entered into a Mephistophelean pact. USA contractors implemented ‘Jim Crow’ standards of segregation and introduced a two-tier system of payment: white workers benefited from gold roll, while blacks had to settle for silver. The compromise to his pride, together with the debilitating assault of bacterial infections on his asthmatic lungs, reduced Garvey to a fever and forced his return to Kingston at the end of 1911.45
It was not an opportune time to be returning to the island. The largesse of the Colón men was apparent but even their remittance made little dint on the wealth of the country: poverty and desperation were the only growth areas. And if signs were needed that things were getting worse, one only had to look to the brutality of the nationwide strike that led to the first inadvertent encounter be
tween the recovering timekeeper and Governor Olivier. On 26 February 1912 the capital, Kingston, erupted into violence during protests over a hike in tramcar fares. Governor Olivier decided to leave his official residence to assess for himself reports of the riot. He stopped outside a bar where two policemen were trapped by rioters, and instead of heeding his command to disperse, the rioters turned and started to hurl debris and stones at the Governor who was struck on the head with a brick. Luckily for Governor Olivier, the recent returnee Marcus Garvey, now recovered from his fever, happened to be in the vicinity. Decades later, Garvey reminisced with reporters from the Daily Gleaner that ‘he was an eyewitness, and was one of the two men – Mr Elliot the photographer being the other – who shielded the Governor on the day from attack’.46
Unusually, given Garvey’s tendency to overstate his achievements, he doesn’t seem to have dined out too heavily on the anecdote at the time. There would have been little point as he was soon planning on company of a very different kind of class and race of person.
