Original subtitles

[uneasy music]

[insects buzzing, birds chirping]

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- [Voiceover from George Martin letter] "Some of our good bosses

would find some encouraging talk for us.

They would say for us:

'Boys - are you saving your money?

It won't be long from now that we will see water in the Cut.'

But we just took it for a joke.

I personally would say to my fellow men:

'That could never happen.

My children will come and have children,

and their children will come and do the same,

before you will see water in the Cut.'

And most of us agreed on the same."

- [Julie Green] So in 1903...

When Theodore Roosevelt had been unable to

get the okay to build a canal working through the country of Colombia,

he became interested in supporting a coup

for independence by Panamanians.

He sent warships down to support the effort,

and the coup was successful

and the Republic of Panama was born.

[energetic piano music]

- The Treaty stipulated it would be "as if the U.S. were sovereign",

in other words,

the U.S. had complete control in the Canal Zone.,

and also was given the ability to intervene

in the internal affairs of the Republic of Panama,

to take over additional lands as needed

for the construction...

So it was a major and complete surrender of Panama's rights

to the heart of its own country.

[freight train roars past]

"Life in the construction days was rough and tough.

Only hard work. Rain or shine, we had to go.

I left my home in Barbados in 1905, August 26th.

I was 19 years old.

I came on a boat named the Aplato.

I construction we came from Barbados by the thousands,

when we got here we lived in camps,

we slept on cain bunks,

a piece of canvas tied with rope,

no mattress, blanket, sheet or pillow,

just the cold cain bunk.

It was rough and tough,

no water,

we had to get it wherever we could get it,

we had to do our own washing on Sunday,

we could only wash once a week,

it was rough and tough from the start."

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- It's interesting to examine

how the U.S.

went about deciding where workers should come from.

It was quite an exhaustive process.

They looked all around the globe for workers.

And in fact there's one aisle of the National Archives which has

boxes organized by country,

with correspondence explaining

what the U.S. thought of the workers of that country,

why they did or did not decide to use them.

So Mexico, for example, the U.S. would say,

"Oh, no, Mexican workers will go on strike, we don't want them."

And Peruvians, Chileans, were considered not to be hard workers.

Panamanians were considered to be not hard enough workers,

although the U.S. did employ a few thousand Panamanians, partly out of respect for

its relationship with the Republic of Panama.

So you almost can map

the sort-of mental territory

of officials like John Stevens,

and so he reluctantly turned to using Caribbean workers

for most of the labor instead.

- [Julie Green] Originally, John Stevens,

he had a pretty low opinion of Afro-Caribbean workers,

he thought they were not smart enough,

thought they were - you know, had kind of a racist

thought about them, thought they were like children,

they would not work hard enough.

And in fact he and his successor George Goethals,

both believed that something was needed

to push the Afro-Caribbeans to work harder,

and so ultimately they imported southern Europeans

precisely for that purpose,

hoping they would come across more energetic,

more hard-working,

and would help the officials to push the Caribbeans

to work harder.

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[train whistle blowing]

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[tribal-style drumming and chanting]

[switching to English] This letter is from George Peters:

"l landed in Colon, Republic of Panama,

from the island of Dominica, British West Indies,

on the 14th of December, 1908.

Two days after I was employed by one Mr. Craw

in a steam shovel repair shop,

at 10 cents an hour.

In those days it rained from six to six,

you'd get to the job wringing wet,

and so you remained until you finished."

This letter is from Rufus Lucas:

"I also worked with a dredging division for a short period,

as an oiler,

on the number one grader in the Canal,

with a man by the name of Mr. Right.

He looked at me one day and said 'You are fired right now.'

It was for no just cause,

but I couldn't talk back because in those days

every white man thought he was

God down here."

[silence]

- [Voiceover from Albert Peters letter] "Well this particular day was payday,

the pay car was on the opposite bank of the Canal.

All of a sudden...

I heard it blow its whistles, for leaving.

I ran out on the end of the barge

and waved my hand and hollered.

They saw me and stopped.

I swam across, then had to climb a muddy hill of about forty feet.

When I got to the top,

the pay car was about twenty feet in front of me.

I was so exhausted that the policeman took my cup and helped me into the car.

There was my pay in front of me on the counter.

I was as naked as when I came into this world...

Except for my cup and my balboas [Panamanian coins]."

- Hundreds of men died from a dynamite explosion.

In 1908, 22 tons of dynamite was at Bajo Obispo Cut,

and went off at 11:45 AM,

blowing to pieces over 300 men.

Their entrails and flesh could be seen hanging on the far away trees.

It was something terrible and awful to look at.

The explosion was heard,

and smoke could be seen three miles away

from where I was living in Matachin.

The shock of the blast knocked off glasses

from tables and shelves in many homes,

and some fell to the floor in their home.

- It's really difficult to

talk about the death toll with any precision,

and I did not, in my research, examine this question carefully,

the historian who did is Michael Conniff.

He thinks roughly 15,000.

And of course, when you think about what this labor required,

it's also really important to think not only about death, but about injury,

accidents and disease.

Disease remained a prevalent issue,

a very widespread issue,

especially among Afro-Caribbeans or West Indians.

Although Yellow Fever was successfully eradicated,

malaria was not,

and really pretty much every West Indian

suffered from malaria at some point or another.

[somber violin music]

- [Voiceover] I, John Holligan,

left the island of Barbados in 1906, the month of June.

My first boss, by the name of Mr. Powers,

I worked on the corral from 1906 until 1920.

In the years 1906-1907,

they had no sanitation.

Malaria fever was killing all the people.

The deaths were so many

that we the steamer had to go to the hospital

around the beach for the deaths

and we had to place them in box cars around by Christ Church.

[birds chirping]

[people chattering in background]

[speaking in Spanish, indistinct]

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[applause]

- Once,

we were on our way to Gatun,

and in those days the train had two different compartments,

one compartment for whites, and one for blacks.

While waiting to board

the conductor spat at us and ran us

to the cars in the back of the train.

Although we didn't care to board with them.

At that time I learned about discrimination.

I was only about 13 years old at that time.

Okay, this picture was taken around the 1960's.

Okay?

At that time the black were fighting for liberation from

discriminatory practices in the United States of America.

But we had teachers who told us about this,

and we decided to show,

to protest against discrimination,

because it was the same here in the Canal Zone.

- [Michelle Reese] So what kind of protesting did you do?

- [Stanley] Well, we started to... We were over here, in this fashion,

and we used to have black armbands

that showed that we were protesting against discrimination.

- So you spoke a lot of English, and everything was in English...

- Well, that's the only thing that we knew, English.

Spanish was never in our vocabulary,

everything was English, English - Social Studies, Math...

Everything, everything. Lab science, everything, as you can see.

English, English, English...

The yearbook? English.

It was not till your time

when it became

the Latin American High School.

It was at this station that

an engineer slipped at the switch,

broke his leg,

and when taken to the hospital,

found she was a woman,

working among the men all the time.

[agitated piano music]

[somber music]

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[Torrijos, speaking in Spanish]

- [Interpreter] And the armed forces...

[Torrijos, speaking in Spanish]

- They have decided...

[speaking in Spanish]

- That if the Treaty was not ratified...

[speaking in Spanish]

- Or if it were amended in such a way that it was not meeting conditions

that could be acceptable to Panama...

[speaking in Spanish]

- Then we will not negotiate any more.

[speaking in Spanish]

- Tomorrow morning, right away, we would start...

We would have started...

[speaking in Spanish]

- A struggle for liberation.

[speaking in Spanish]

- And possibly by tomorrow the Canal would not have been in operation.

[speaking in Spanish]

- We are in a condition, we have the capability, of destroying it.

[speaking in Spanish]

- Even if they have the Southern Command,

or the West Command - or the Western Command, the Eastern Command,

All the commands that you would wish to have.

[speaking in Spanish]

- The National Guard is in a condition to be able to destroy it.

[speaking in Spanish]

- And that capacity we do not intend to lose.

[speaking in Spanish]

- In not destroying it, we are the only ones who are really defending it.

[speaking in Spanish]

- And this is why we are not scared so much...

[speaking in Spanish]

- Of some of the demonstrations of machismo,

of being very, very...

[speaking in Spanish]

- Of those who have no respect for the dignity of other people.

[speaking in Spanish]

- As were used in the Senate.

Because they...

Because they have placed the Canal

within two votes of not being in operation.

[speaking in Spanish]

This was a decision that was taken...

[speaking in Spanish]

- It was very well thought out.

[speaking in Spanish]

And we have now already ten years of preparation...

[gentle music]

- [Mission Control #1] Tower cleared!

- [Mission Control #2] Here we got a roll program.

- [Mission Control #1] Neil Armstrong reporting their roll and pitch program

which puts Apollo 11 on a proper heading.

[gentle music]

- Plus thirty seconds...

- [Mission Control #1] Roll complete and a pitch is programmed.

[rocket engine roars]

- [Mission Control #2] One-Bravo.

- [Mission Control #1] One-Bravo is in network control mode.

Altitude is two miles.

[birds chirping]

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- "After I had finished waiting on two men,

one of them gave me two shark teeth,

and the other fellow gave me one,

from out of a rock that was blasted in the Cut.

I said nothing to him, nor thanked him.

They saw that I was skeptical,

unbelieving about shark teeth

taken out of rocks, instead of the sea.

Fishing is my pastime.

Shark teeth, like all other teeth, are white.

I looked at him with doubt.

He looked at me and said: 'Man,

have you never heard that these two oceans had been joined together?'

'I have heard so,' said he,

'and these shark teeth

we got out of the Cut prove it.'"

[agitated piano music]

[boat engine whirring]

[compressed air hissing from scuba regulator]

[bubbling noises]

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[somber music]

[airport loudspeaker in background]

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[airplane cockpit chatter]

[birds chirping]

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- Hey! - Hi!

- I'm finally meeting you,

it's very nice. - Very nice.

- Oh, you brought your stuff.

- I think that my aunt wanted the workers to be recognized,

that had not been.

Everyone. So she had

a contest, of all people

that were alive

that had been the true workers that used that shovel to dig that dirt,

that had to live in areas that no one else would.

These people that has to work hours that no one else would

and live in conditions that no one else would.

And they dig that canal for

other people to sit in, say, the Tivoli, and drink tea.

I mean I know that sounds crazy, but that's what ended up happening.

And these people needed to be recognized.

But she also wanted to hear their stories,

what they really did and how they did it.

And she wanted us all to hear it.

The letters that my aunt got,

received during the contest,

I know they're in the Library of Congress,

but I wonder if they should be there... stay there.

And I'll tell you why - I have a problem.

I think the history of the Panama Canal

is going to be slowly lost, and not matter.

It's just my little thing.

So what's there,

and who will it matter to?

Will it matter to Panama?

If it does then that's where things should go.

Not in a vault in the U.S. Library of Congress.

That's how I feel.

[agitated piano music]

[cart squeaking]

- Thank you.

- Is that it?

- That's it.

- Yes, thank you, sir.

- You're welcome. So here are the letters, the box...

And Juan can do whatever he wants to do with them,

throw them all over the floor, cut them up with scissors...

- No way! [laughter]

- No, we wouldn't like you to do that.

- We heard that this box is called #25.

- Yes, #25.

- Oh I guess so, yes.

- Canal Zone Library Museum, and this is box 25.

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