by Julie Greene
55.Canal Zone v. Evan Barker, Sept. 26, 1905, case 20, Records of District Courts of the United States, District of the Canal Zone, 3rd Judicial Circuit, Criminal Case Files, 1904–20, box 1. On the politics of family violence in U.S. history, see Linda Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence—Boston, 1880–1960 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002).
56.“Report of M. H. Thatcher,” pp. 482–87; Census of the Canal Zone, February 1, 1912 (Mount Hope, C.Z.: ICC Press, 1912). To compare views on crime in the United States during this period, see John Goebel Jr., “The Prevalence of Crime in the United States and Its Extent Compared with That in the Leading European States,” Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology 3, no. 5 (Jan. 1913), pp. 754–69. After 1912 the number of arrests declined slightly, to 6,827 in 1913; 4,911 in 1914; and 5,157 in 1915. See “Report of the Governor,” in Annual Report of the Isthmian Canal Commission for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1914 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1914), p. 56; and “Report of the Governor,” in Annual Report of the Isthmian Canal Commission for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1915 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1915), p. 51.
57.“Report of M. H. Thatcher,” p. 487; on constructions of manliness and masculinity in the United States, see Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Kristin L. Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998).
58.Canal Zone v. J. Frank Houston, Feb. 17, 1913, case 615, Records of District Courts of the United States, District of the Canal Zone, 3rd Judicial Circuit, Criminal Case Files, 1904–20, box 3.
59.Canal Zone v. Houston, case 119, in Canal Zone Supreme Court Reports, vol. 2: Cases Adjudged in the Supreme Court of the Canal Zone from October 1908 to June 1914, pp. 238–52.
60.Canal Zone v. Desiderio Rodriguez, May 11, 1911, case 375, Records of District Courts of the United States, District of the Canal Zone, 3rd Judicial Circuit, Criminal Case Files, 1904–20, box 3.
61.Canal Zone v. Francisco Zaldivar, Nov. 30, 1912, case 700, Records of District Courts of the United States, District of the Canal Zone, 1st Judicial Circuit, Criminal Case Files, 1904–14, box 3; see also Canal Zone v. Zaldivar, case 113, in Canal Zone Supreme Court Reports, vol. 2: Cases Adjudged in the Supreme Court of the Canal Zone from October 1908 to June 1914, pp. 227–37.
CHAPTER EIGHT: THE RIOTS OF COCOA GROVE
1.For one account of the riot see FO 304, “Record of Proceedings of a Board of Investigation Convened at Camp Elliott, Isthmian Canal Zone, by Order of the Commanding Officer, Camp Elliott, to Inquire into a Disturbance Which Occurred in the City of Panama,” in Embajada de los Estados Unidos en Panamá: Expediente de los disturbios del 4 de julio de 1912 y 1915 en Cocoa Grove, vol. 1, Archivos de Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Panama City. For specific information on the injuries and fatality, see, for example, “Examination of Past Assistant Surgeon B. H. Dorsey, U.S. Navy,” in this same vol. 1.
2.Peter A. Szok, “La Última Gaviota”: Liberalism and Nostalgia in Early Twentieth-Century Panamá (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2001), p. 32; Fernando Aparicio, “ ‘Alcanzamos por fin la victoria’: Tensiones y contradiciones del 3 de noviembre de 1903,” in Historia general de Panamá, ed. Alfredo Castillero Calvo (Panama City: Comité Nacional del Centenario de República, 2004), pp. 372–92.
3.Bryce to Sir Edward Grey, Nov. 28, 1910, General Correspondence of the Foreign Office, Panama, Foreign Office Records, FO 371/943, The National Archives, Kew, U.K. On Panama during the early twentieth century, see Carlos Bolívar Pedreschi, “Negociaciones del Canal con los Estados Unidos: 1904–1967”; Gerardo Maloney, “Significado de la presencia y contribución del afro anti-llano a la nación panameña”; and Marco A. Gandásegui, “Los movimientos sociales en Panamá: Primera mitad del siglo XX”: all three are included in Calvo, Historia general de Panamá, pp. 25–41, 152–71, and 185–208, respectively; and see also the essays in Marco A. Gandásegui, ed., Las clases sociales en Panamá (Panama: Del Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos, 1993).
4.W. C. Gorgas, Report of the Department of Health of the Isthmian Canal Commission for the Month of January 1905 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1905), p. 6. “Report of the Department of Civil Administration,” in Annual Report of the Isthmian Canal Commission for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1907 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1907), app. F, pp. 146–57.
5.“Report of the Department of Civil Administration,” pp. 149–50.
6.“Report of M. H. Thatcher, Head of the Department of Civil Administration,” in Annual Report of the Isthmian Canal Commission for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1910 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1910), app. O, pp. 364–65.
7.Szok, “La Última Gaviota,” p. 60; “Report of M. H. Thatcher, Head of the Department of Civil Administration,” in Annual Report of the Isthmian Canal Commission for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1912 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1912), app. N, pp. 465–66.
8.W. Chalkley to Grey, Dec. 20, 1909, General Correspondence of the Foreign Office, Panama, Foreign Office Records, FO 371/943, 1910.
9.Claude Mallet to Sir, Jan. 31, 1906, Foreign Office Records, FO 288/98; Szok, “La Última Gaviota,”
p. 48; William D. McCain, The U.S. and the Republic of Panama (Durham, N.C.: Duke University
Press, 1937).
10.Michael L. Conniff, Black Labor on a White Canal: Panama, 1904–1981 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985).
11.Szok, “La Última Gaviota,” pp. 45, 47–48; the quotation is from George A. Miller, Prowling About Panama (New York: Abingdon, 1919), p. 41.
12.Winifred James, The Mulberry Tree (London: Chapman and Hall, 1913), pp. 243–44.
13.David McCullough, The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977), p. 561; John Major, Prize Possession: The United States and the Panama Canal, 1903–1979 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 130.
14.James, Mulberry Tree, pp. 253–55.
15.For a fine analysis of prostitution’s history that sheds light on the relationship between the sex trade and labor discipline, see Luise White, The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
16.John Hall, “As It Was,” in Panama Roughneck Ballads (Panama and Canal Zone: Albert Lindo, Panama Railroad News Agency, 1912), p. 18.
17.On the Watermelon Riot and on U.S.-Panamanian relations more generally in the nineteenth century, see Aims McGuinness, Path of Empire: Panama and the California Gold Rush (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008); on U.S. military interventions, see also Michael L. Conniff, Panama and the United States: The Forced Alliance, 2nd ed. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001).
18.On the background of U.S. military personnel, see Mary Renda, Taking Haiti: Military Occupation
and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915–1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); for information about the U.S. military in the Canal Zone, see Major, Prize Possession, esp. pp. 155–61.
19.T. B. Miskimon to the chairman, Dec. 20, 1909, folder 20; Miskimon to Goethals, June 2, 1908, folder 18: both T. B. Miskimon Papers, MS 86-5, Special Collections, Ablah Library, Wichita State University.
20.Major, Prize Possession, pp. 120–28; the quotation is on p. 121.
21.On this point, see Szok “La Última Gaviota,” esp. pp. 60–61. Also see Evelyn Saxton, Droll Stories of Isthmian Life (New Orleans: L. Graham, 1914), pp. 14–15, 19. Saxton did note, as she learned her way around the city, that the Americans she met, “no matter how drunk they appeared to be,” always showed her “some courtesy.” See also Mary A. Chatfield, Light on Dark Places at Panama (New York: Broadway, 1908), p. 52.
22.For useful commentary on corruption during elections and the role of the police, see
the reports by British consul Claude Mallet, for example, Jan. 31, 1906, FO 288/98, and Mallet to Grey, July 2, 1912, FO 371/1417, Political Correspondence, Panama, 1912: both Foreign Office Records. See also Thomas Pearcy, We Answer Only to God: Politics and the Military in Panama, 1903–1947 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998), pp. 39–42; Major, Prize Possession, pp. 117–19, 126–27; “Porras Wins in Panama,” New York Times, July 14, 1912, p. 9, ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
23.“Report of the Head of the Department of Civil Administration,” pp. 163–64; Major, Prize Possession, p. 121; Canal Zone v. Gregorio Serress, Manuel Jeminez, and Jose Gonzales, April 8, 1906,
case 43, Records of District Courts of the United States, RG 21, District of the Canal Zone, 3rd Judicial Circuit, Cristobal, Criminal Case Files, 1904–20, box 1, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
24.Mallet to Grey, Jan. 1, 1909, Political Correspondence, Panama, Foreign Office Records, FO 371/708.
25.Pearcy, We Answer Only to God, pp. 43–44.
26.Mallet to Grey, Aug. 24, 1910, General Correspondence of the Foreign Office, Panama, Foreign Office Records, FO 371/943.
27.Mallet to Grey, Aug. 29 and Sept. 10, 1910: both General Correspondence of the Foreign Office, Panama, Foreign Office Records, FO 371/943. On both letters, see also the additional commentaries signed by “R.S.”
28.Major, Prize Possession, pp. 121–27; Pearcy, We Answer Only to God, pp. 39–40; Patricia Pizzurno Gelós, Antecedentes, hechos, y consecuencias de la Guerra de los Mil Días en el Istmo de Panamá (Panama: Fomato 16, 1990).
29.Major, Prize Possession, pp. 126–27; “Porras Wins in Panama,” New York Times, July 14, 1912, p. 9.
30.Major, Prize Possession, pp. 119–30; Pearcy, We Answer Only to God, pp. 38–46.
31.See Mallet to Grey, July 2, March 18, and May 16, 1912: all Political Correspondence, Panama, Foreign Office Records, FO 371/1417.
32.Mallet to Grey, July 16, 1912, Political Correspondence, Panama, Foreign Office Records, FO 371/1417; Major, Prize Possession, pp. 119–30; Pearcy, We Answer Only to God, pp. 38–46; “Police in Panama,” Los Hechos: Diario Politico, Organo de la Union Patriotica, July 8, 1912, p. 1, Isthmian Canal Commission Records, RG 185, 62-B-199, National Archives, College Park, Md. (hereafter cited as ICC Records); “Want Us to Intervene,” New York Times, May 4, 1912, p. 4, ProQuest Historical Newspapers; “To Guard Panama Election,” New York Times, May 5, 1912, p. C3; “Guns for Panama Election,” New York Times, May 11, 1912, p. 2; “No Guns for Panamanians,” New York Times, June 13, 1912, p. 1; “Vote in Panama Today,” New York Times, June 30, 1912, p. 13; “Porras Wins in Panama,” New York Times, July 1, 1912, p. 6; “Porras Wins in Panama,” New York Times, July 14, 1912, p. 9; “Las Elecciones en Panama” and “El Derechode Sufragio”: both in La Estrella de Panamá, June 23, 1912.
33.James, Mulberry Tree, p. 262.
34.FO 304, investigation conducted by U.S. Army at Camp Otis, Las Cascadas, July 5, 1912; and “Record of Proceedings of a Board of Investigation Convened at Camp Elliott, Isthmian Canal Zone, July 6, 1912,” especially the summation of findings at end of report: both Legación de los Estados Unidos en Panamá, Archivos de Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Panama.
35.“Unanimous Conclusions of the Board of Army Officers,” U.S. Army investigation, July 5, 1912; statement of Mr. Otto W. Nichols, FO 304, “Record of Proceedings of a Board of Investigation Convened at Camp Elliott, Isthmian Canal Zone,” July 6, 1912, from Embajada de los Estados Unidos en Panamá.
36.Dodge to Ernesto Lefevre (secretary of state for foreign affairs), Feb. 25, 1913, FO 305, Correspondencia relacionada con los desórdenes que tuvieron lugar en el Barrio de Torolancia, Legación de los Estados Unidos en Panamá.
37.See testimony of Private Lucas Joretti (hospital corps), Private Emile Barbonese, R. L. Swinehart, Private George DeWolff, Private Harry G. Gebhart, and John McDaid, all in FO 304, “Record of Proceedings of a Board of Investigation,” investigation conducted by U.S. Army at Camp Otis, Las Cascadas, July 5, 1912, Legación de los Estados Unidos en Panamá.
38.Testimony of Captain Frank Halford, USMC, FO 304, “Record of Proceedings of a Board of Investigation Convened at Camp Elliott, Isthmian Canal Zone, by Order of the Commanding Officer, Camp Elliott, to Inquire into a Disturbance Which Occurred in the City of Panama.”
39.Carl DeLeen, testimony in ICC investigation, and Rafael Alzamora, testimony in ICC investigation, July 5 and 9, 1912: both ICC Records, 62-B-199, box 363; R. L. Swinehart, testimony in USMC investigation; Whiting Andrews (secretary of the American legation) to Mr. Minister, July 9, 1912, FO 304, Embajada de los Estados Unidos en Panamá.
40.Statement of Thomas Fuentes, July 10, 1912, ICC Records, 62-B-199, box 363.
41.Quijano to the director of La Estrella de Panamá, July 8, 1912; “Copy of Report to the Secretary of Government Justice,” n.d.: both ICC Records, 62-B-199, box 363. See also the editorial regarding these events in La Estrella de Panamá, July 9, 1912.
42.Testimony of Juan Muñoz (“la actitud de mis camaradas y yo durante los acontecimientos fue atenta y amisstosa para con los soldados Americanos, puesto que su estado de beodez y su número nos lo pedían”); of Alice Ward; and of Luis Francisco Ramírez: all from the investigation carried out by the Panamanian government, Legajo 14, Legación de los Estados Unidos en Panamá.
43.Testimony of Davis Gilbert, Cupertino Garrido, Eugenio Mateos, Ricardo Andrade, María Arosemena, Margaret Graham, Alice Ward, Enriqueta Gómez, Petra De León, Robert Davis, Charles Muller, Panamanian investigation, Legajo 14.
44.“Racial Differences,” Los Hechos, July 8, 1912, ICC Records, 62-B-199; testimony of Private Stephen Crow, U.S. Army investigation. References to race or racial insults are surprisingly rare in the testimony offered to Panamanian investigators.
45.Becky Kaatz (prostitute), testimony to ICC investigation, July 9, 1912, ICC Records, 62-B-199; Andrews to Mr. Minister, July 9, 1912, in Embajada de los Estados Unidos en Panamá, vol. 1.
46.Dodge to Lefevre, Feb. 25, 1913, FO 305; Chiari to Dodge, Aug. 27 and Sept. 27, 1912, letters 2806 and 3079; Dodge to the minister, Sept. 25, 1912, letter 255: all Legación de los Estados Unidos en Panamá, vol. 1.
47.Superior Court sentence, April 28, 1914, signed by Juan Demóstenes Arosemena; letter FO 58, Price to Lefevre, May 14, 1914, Legación de los Estados Unidos en Panamá, vol. 1.
48.Memo accompanying Mallet to Grey, Oct. 3, 1912, Political Correspondence, Panama, Foreign Office Records, FO 371/1417; Price to Lefevre, FO 68, June 9, 1914; Willing Spencer to Lefevre, Dec. 24, 1915; Porras to Lefevre, Feb. 1, 1916: all Legación de los Estados Unidos en Panamá, vol. 1.
49.Morales to Lefevre, letter 22-1915, dated June 3, 1914, Legación de los Estados Unidos en Panamá, vol. 1.
50.Lefevre to Robert Lansing, Dec. 8, 1916; Legation Royale des Pays-Bas, signed by WLFC de Rappard, arbitrator, Oct. 20, 1916: both Legación de los Estados Unidos en Panamá, vol. 1; Lefevre to Price, letter S-6439, dated April 24, 1915, Legación de los Estados Unidos en Panamá, vol. 21.
51.Dodge to Lefevre, March 13, 1913, FO 310, Legación de Washington en Panamá, Legajo 14A; “Soldiers and Police Slain in Panama Riot,” New York Times, Feb. 14, 1915, p. 1.
52.“American Soldier Slain in Colon Riot,” New York Times, April 3, 1915, p. 1.
53.José B. Calvo to Morales, telegram, S-6252; Lefevre to Price, April 24, 1915, letter S-6439: both Legación de Panamá en Washington, vol. 21; Price to Lefevre, FO 247, Oct. 15, 1915, Legación de Washington en Panamá, vol. 16; Porras to Wilson, telegram, May 11, 1915, and Lansing to American legation in Panama, telegram, May 13, 1915: both Legación de Washington en Panamá, vol. 16; Major, Prize Possession, p. 134. My understanding of the meaning of this disarmament in Panamanians’ collective memory today is also indebted to a discussion with Guillermo Castro, July 2002, in Panama City.
54.Memo accompanying Mallet to Grey, Oct. 3, 1912, Political Corr
espondence, Panama, Foreign Office Records, FO 371/1417.
CHAPTER NINE: HERCULES COMES HOME
1.Rose Van Hardeveld, Make the Dirt Fly! (Hollywood, Calif.: Pan Press, 1956), p. 139; David McCullough, The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977), p. 604.
2.Sharon Phillips Collazos, “The Cities of Panama: Sixty Years of Development,” in Cities of Hope: People, Protests, and Progress in Urbanizing Latin America, 1870–1930, ed. Ronn Pineo and James A. Baer (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1998), p. 252; Omar Jaén Suárez, La población del
Istmo de Panamá del siglo XVI al siglo XX (Panama: Impresora de la Nación, 1978), charts 77, 460 and 78, 460. The figure of fifty-seven thousand employees includes the employees of the ICC and the Panama Railroad, as well as workers contracted privately by corporations building the lock gates.
3.“Exposition Promise Is Victoriously Accomplished, World’s Greatest Fair Opens Its Gates to Public, Monument Built to Panama Canal by San Francisco,” San Francisco Examiner, Feb. 20, 1915; “150,000 People of All Nations in Exposition Parade, Rich in Line with Poor, Babel of Noises Thunders Greeting to All the World,” San Francisco Examiner, Feb. 21, 1915.
4.Charles Moore’s comment was made in a speech at a State Department dinner hosted by William Jennings Bryan on Dec. 15, 1913, Records of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, box 13, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley (hereafter cited as PPIE Records). For more information on the PPIE, see Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition: Being the Official History of the International Celebration Held at San Francisco in 1915 to Commemorate the Discovery of the Pacific Ocean and the Construction of the Panama Canal, 5 vols. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1921); Robert W. Rydell, All the World’s a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876–1916 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984); Donna Ewald and Peter Clute, San Francisco Invites the World: The Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915 (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1991); Burton Benedict, The Anthropology of World’s Fairs: San Francisco’s Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915 (London: Scolar, 1983); Eugen Neuhaus, The Art of the Exposition: Personal Impressions of the Architecture, Sculpture, Mural Decorations, Color Scheme, and Other Aesthetic Aspects of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (San Francisco: P. Elder, 1915); Abigail Markwyn, “Inviting the Alien: Images and Reality of China and Japan at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition,” unpublished paper in author’s possession.
