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The 1925 Tenants’ Strike in Panama: West Indians, the Left, and the Labor Movement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 August 2017

J.A. Zumoff
J.A. Zumoff*
Affiliation:
New Jersey City University, Jersey City, New Jersey
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In September-October 1925, there occurred in Panama a tenants' strike that helped define the development of the left and workers' movement in that nation. This article presents an overview of the strike—important because no synthetic English-language account exists—and then analyzes the role of black West Indians in the event. West Indians were prominent among the ranks of workers in Panama, and among the slums of Panama City and Colón. Nonetheless, they were not central to the rent strike. This absence reflects the historic relationship between West Indian and Hispanic workers in the isthmus, the effect of the recent defeat of strikes led by West Indians in the Panama Canal Zone, and the lack of attention paid to attracting West Indian support by the Hispanic leadership of the tenants' strike. This division between the West Indian population and the broader labor movement in Panama had lasting effects in the history of the Panamanian left, reinforcing divisions between the struggle for Panamanian self-determination and the struggle against racist oppression of West Indians and their descendants in Panama.

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Articles
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The Americas , Volume 74 , Issue 4 , October 2017 , pp. 513 - 546
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Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2017 

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References

1. The best source for the strike is Alexander Cuevas, whose study has been reprinted in various forms. See Cuevas, Alexander, “El movimiento inquilinario de 1925,” Tareas 14 (April 1964-March 1965): 5–38;Google Scholar Cuevas, “El movimiento inquilinario de 1925,” Lotería 213 (October 1973): 133–161; Cuevas, “El movimiento inquilinario de 1925,” in Panamá: dependencia y liberación, Ricaurte Soler, ed. (San José: Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana, 1974); and Cuevas, El movimiento inquilinario de 1925 (Panama City: Cuadernos Populares, 1980). Cuevas's study is excellent, although it is based only on Spanish-language sources, and it also reflects the political agitation of 1964. While the present article draws upon an array of primary sources, the most valuable include two daily Panamanian newspapers, the Spanish-language Estrella de Panamá and the English-language Star and Herald. Both papers were sold together—the Spanish paper had begun as an insert to the English—and shared the same publisher, Tomás Gabriel Duque, the secretary of Agriculture and Public Works under president Rodolfo Chiari. However, while both papers at times shared stories, the print versions often differed, sometimes in obvious and sometimes in subtle ways. They are thus treated as two different papers. Other useful, if biased, English-language sources are a British diplomatic report, the Panamá and Canal Zone Annual Report, 1925, made by Major Charles Braithwaite Wallis, March 15, 1926, to Sir. Austen Chamberlain, A 1821/1821/32 in FCO 371/1158, British National Archives, Kew; and the coverage in the American Communist Party's Daily Worker, especially October 15, 1925. See also Robin Elizabeth Zenger, “West Indians in Panama: Diversity and Activism, 1910s-1940s” (PhD diss.: University of Arizona, 2015), chapt. 3.

2. Neither “West Indian” nor “Hispanic” is a perfect term. In the context of this article, “West Indian” (and Antillano) refers to black people from the British (and to a lesser degree French) colonies in the Caribbean, while Hispanic refers to Spanish-speaking people.

3. Wood, Andrew and Baer, James A., “Strength in Numbers: Urban Rent Strikes and Political Transformation in the Americas, 1904–1925,” Journal of Urban History 32:6 (September 2006): 862–884 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On rent strikes in Latin Amerca, see also Baer, James A., “Tenant Mobilization and the 1907 Rent Strike in Buenos Aires,” Americas 49: 3 (January 1993): 343–368 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Calderón, William Elizondo, “Vivienda y pobreza en la Ciudad de San José en la década de 1920,” Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos 24:1-2 (1998): 47–74;Google Scholar Durand, Jorge, “Huelga Nacional de Inquilinos: los antecedentes del Movimiento Urbano Popular en México,” Estudios Sociológicos 7:19 (January 1989), 61–78 Google Scholar.

4. Gaceta Oficial, no. 4580, February 25, 1925. Since the country's main means of production—the Canal—was in foreign hands, wealthy Panamanians were dependent upon the United States, and focused on being intermediaries between the Canal Zone and Panama proper, for example in providing services, construction, land, and housing. See Montero, Carlos Ayala, “El Caso de Panamá,” in Las organizaciones sindicales centroamericanas como actores del sistema de relaciones laborales, Sepúlveda-Malbrán, Juan Manuel, ed. (San José: Oficina Internacional del Trabajo, 2003), 540 Google Scholar; Turner, Jorge, Raíz, historia y perspectivas del movimiento obrero panameño (Mexico City: Editorial Signos, 1982), 25 Google Scholar. The landlords were not entirely Panamanian, and there was significant foreign investment. See Pinzón, Armando Muñoz, La huelga inquilinaria de 1932 (Panama City: Editorial Universitaria, 1974), 11–12 Google Scholar, for a list of the most important landlords in Panama City in 1932, taken from Estrella de Panamá, August 4, 1932. For the historic development of the oligarchy, see Navarro, Alfredo Figueroa, Domino y sociedad en el Panamá Colombiano, 1821–1903 (Panama City: Impresora Panamá, 1978)Google Scholar.

5. Cuevas, El movimento inquilinario, 12–13; de la Rosa, Diógenes, “Jorge Henrique Turner: zapador de las ideas sociales en Panamá,” Tareas 57 (January-March 1984): 64–68 Google Scholar; and Wood and Baer, “Strength in Numbers,” 875.

6. Cuevas, El movimiento inquilinario, 11; Muñoz, Hernando Franco, Blázquez de Pedro y los orígenes del sindicalismo panameño (Panama City: Movimiento Editores, 1986)Google Scholar, chapt. 7; Everardo Tomlinson, “Las huelgas inquilinarias de 1925 y 1932,” Revista Lotería 213 (October-November 1973): 99. Hurwitz was of German descent. His father had migrated to Peru from Germany, with a detour in the United States, where he served in the Union Army during the Civil War. Hurwitz was later active as a Communist in several Latin American countries. See Daniel Kersffeld, “Jacobo Hurwitz: semblanza de un revolucionario latinamericano,” http://pacarinadelsur.com/home/figuras-e-ideas/50-jacobohurwitz-semblanza-de-un-revolucionario-latinoamericano (accessed December 25, 2014). On tenants' strikes elsewhere, see footnote 3, above. On Turner, see César del Vasto's biographical sketch, http://bdigital.binal.ac.pa/BIOVIC/descarga.php?f=Captura/upload/DomingoHenriqueTurner.doc (consulted July 19, 2015)

7. Estrella de Panamá, September 21, 22, 23, and 24, 1925.

8. Estrella de Panamá, September 25 and 26, 1925; Star and Herald, September 25, 1925. The habeas corpus hearing for Blázquez de Pedro was scheduled for late September; by that time, according to the Estrella de Panamá (September 29, 1925), there was some confusion as to whether the activist was inside or outside of Panama. In late October, he arrived on Panamanian soil again, only to be deported days later, along with his brother, Martín Blázquez de Pedro; Star and Herald, October 26 and 31, 1925.

9. Estrella de Panamá, September 29, 1925.

10. Star and Herald, October 1, 1925; Resolution issued by Archibaldo E. Boyd, governor of the Province of Panama, September 30, 1925, reprinted in Estrella de Panamá, October 1, 1925.

11. Star and Herald, October 1, 1925.

12. Tomás Arias to Marco Galindo T., September 29, 1925, and Marco Galindo T. to Tomás Arias, October 4, 1925, both reprinted in Estrella de Panamá, October 10, 1925.

13. Star and Herald, October 11, 1925; Estrella de Panamá, October 11, 1925. The initial newspaper reports listed one dead, and 11 injured, some critically; these included the captain of the port of Panama. Cuevas lists six dead; Diógenes de la Rosa recalled “in total some ten” deaths, while Robert Alexander gives the number of dead as 22. See Cuevas, El movimiento inquilinario de 1925, 8; de la Rosa, Diógenes, “El zapador de las ideas sociales en Panamá,” in Domingo H. Turner en el alma del pueblo, Turner, Anayansi, ed. (Panama City: EUPAN, 2001)Google Scholar, 67; Alexander, Robert J. and Parker, Eldon M., A History of Organized Labor in Panama and Central America (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008)Google Scholar, 11. The October 11, 1925 Estrella de Panamá lists those arrested.

14. Star and Herald, October 12, 1925.

15. Estrella de Panamá, October 12, 1925; Star and Herald, October 12, 1925.

16. Star and Herald, October 13, 1925.

17. Ibid.

18. This is what a British diplomat asserted in a report to London. See Major Charles Braithwaite Wallis, Panamá and Canal Zone, Annual Report, 1925, in FCO 371/1158, British National Archives, Kew. Similarly, Article 23 of the Hay-Bunau Varilla Treaty of 1903 gave the United States “the right, at all times and in its discretion, to use its police and its land and naval forces or to establish fortifications” when it saw the necessity to “employ armed forces for the safety or protection of the canal, or of the ships that make use of the same, or the railways and auxiliary works.”

19. New York Times, October 13, 1925; Star and Herald, October 13, 1925; On the withdrawal of the troops, see New York Times, October 25, 1925.

20. Star and Herald, October 13, 1925.

21. Daily Worker, October 15, 1925.

22. Star and Herald, October 15, 1925.

23. Ibid., October 14, 1925.

24. Ibid., October 15, 1925; Estrella de Panamá, October 12, 1925.

25. Star and Herald, October 16, 1925; Estrella de Panamá, October 16, 1925.

26. Star and Herald, October 18, 1925.

27. Estrella de Panamá, October 19, 1925; Star and Herald, October 19, 22, 23, 24, and 25, 1925.

28. Estrella de Panamá, October 31, 1925; Star and Herald, November 1, 1925.

29. Estrella de Panamá, October 31 and November 3, 1925; Star and Herald, November 3, 1925.

30. Alexander and Parker, A History of Organized Labor, 11.

31. Kersffeld, Daniel, Contra el Imperio: historia de la Liga Antimperialista de las Américas (Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno, 2012), 89 Google Scholar.

32. Muñoz Pinzon, La huelga inquilinaria de 1932, especially rent increases on page 12; Alexander and Parker, A History of Organized Labor, 11–12.

33. Partido Socialista, Comité Central del, “El Partido Socialista y el problema de la vivienda,” Tareas 7 (June-November 1962): 88–92 Google Scholar.

34. Navas, Luis, El movimiento obrero en Panamá, 1880–1914 (San José: Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana, 1979), 62–64 Google Scholar.

35. Cuevas, El movimiento inquilinario, 6.

36. Soler, Panamá: nación y oligarquía, 31.

37. Souza, Rubén Dario, et al., Panamá, 1903–1970: nación, imperialismo, fuerzas populares y oligarquía (Santiago de Chile: Horizonte, 1970), 58 Google Scholar.

38. This section is based on Zumoff, J. A., “Black Caribbean Labor Radicalism in Panama, 1914–1921,” Journal of Social History 47:2 (Winter 2013), 429–457 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which contains a fuller bibliography.

39. All black West Indians were silver workers, but not all silver workers were black. Italian and Spanish workers during the Canal's construction were also put on the silver roll, as were Hispanic workers later. On the system in general, see Zumoff, “Black Caribbean Labor Radicalism in Panama”; Conniff, Michael, Black Labor on a White Canal: Panama, 1904–1981 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Greene, Julie, The Canal Builders: Making America's Empire at the Panama Canal (New York: Penguin, 2009)Google Scholar; O'Reggio, Trevor, Between Alienation and Citizenship: The Evolution of West Indian Society in Panama, 1914–1964 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2006)Google Scholar; Senior, Olive, Dying to Better Themselves: West Indians and the Building of the Panama Canal (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2014)Google Scholar; and Ellis, Alfredo Reid, Las causas y las consequencias de la migración económica, política y cultural en el área del Caribe y de América Central durante el siglo XX (Paris: Publibook, 2004)Google Scholar. On the Canal Zone, see Donoghue, Michael E., Borderland on the Isthmus: Race, Culture, and the Struggle for the Canal Zone (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014);CrossRefGoogle Scholar A. Price, Grenfell, “White Settlement in the Panama Canal Zone,” Geographical Review 25:1 (January 1935): 11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On “racial democracy” in Latin America, see Peña, Yesilernis, Sidanius, Jim, and Sawyer, Mark, “Racial Democracy in the Americas: A Latin and U.S. Comparison,” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 35:6 (November 2004): 749–762.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See Montero, Carla Guerrón, “Racial Democracy and Nationalism in Panama,” Ethnology 45:3 (Summer 2003): 209–228 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the original black population in Panama, see for example Diez Castillo, Luis A., Los cimarrones y los negros antillanos en Panamá (Panama City: np, 1981)Google Scholar. The presence of a large black population in Panama before the Canal distinguishes the country from Costa Rica, which was seen as a “white” country in the eyes of many of its residents until the arrival of significant numbers of West Indians to work on banana plantations. See: Duncan, Quince and Meléndez, Carlos, El negro en Costa Rica (San José, Editorial Costa Rica, 1970)Google Scholar.

40. Donoghue, Borderland on the Isthmus, 98; Star and Herald, October 15, 1916; George C. Springer, “A History of Labor Organization among Local-Rate Employees in the Canal Zone,” [1951?], 2, in George W. Westerman papers, Schomburg Center, New York Public Library, box 45, folder 22. See also Zumoff, “Black Caribbean Labor Radicalism in Panama.”

41. Workman, May 10, 1919.

42. Norman Randolph, Panama Canal Department, Intelligence Office, Negro Labor Situation: Summary No. 1, February 25, 1920, and Negro Labor Situation: Summary No. 3, February 27, 1920, both in Federal Surveillance of Afro-Americans, reel 22, documents 1137 and 1142.

43. See Zumoff, “Black Caribbean Labor Radicalism,” 439–440. On the 1919-20 strike wave, see also Burnett, Carla, “‘Unity is Strength’: Labor, Race, Garveyism, and the 1920 Panama Canal Strike,” The Global South 6:2 (Fall 2012): 39–64 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Maloney, Gerardo, El Canal de Panamá y los trabajadores antillanos: Panamá 1920: cronología de una lucha (Panama City: Universidad de Panamá, 1989)Google Scholar; Parker, Jeffrey W., “Sex at a Crossroads: The Gender Politics of Racial Uplift and Afro-Caribbean Activism in Panama, 1918–32,” Women, Gender, and Families of Color 4:2 (Fall 2016): 196–221 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44. Montero, Carla Guerrón, “Voces subalternas: presencia afroantillana en Panamá,” Cuadernos Americanos 3:111 (May-June 2005): 46 Google Scholar.

45. Workman, July 10, 1920. On West Indian immigration to Cuba, see Kátia Cilene do Couto, “Os desafios da sociedade cubana frente à imigração antilhana, 1902–1933” (PhD diss.: Universidade de Brasília, 2006); Estévez, Rolando Álvarez, Azucar e inmigración, 1900–1940 (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1988)Google Scholar; de la Fuente, Alejandro, A Nation for All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001)Google Scholar, 101–105. On the anti-Spanish policies of the Cuban government and the turn toward West Indian workers, see Cobos, Amparo Sánchez, “‘Extranjeros perniciosos’: el orden público y la expulsión de anarquistas españoles de Cuba (1899–1930),” Historia Social 59 (2007): 178–179.Google Scholar On West Indian immigration to the United States, see James, Winston, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth-Century America (London: Verso, 1999)Google Scholar.

46. Pearcy, Thomas L., “Panama's Generation of '31: Patriots, Praetorians and a Decade of Discord,” Hispanic American Historical Review 76:4 (November 1996): 695;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Foreign Country Reports, no. 54, October 19, 1921, British National Archives, CAB/24/155; Zumoff, “Black Caribbean Labor Radicalism in Panama,” 445.

47. Muñoz, Hernando Franco, El movimiento obrero panameño, 1914-21 (Panama City: np, 1979), 38–48 Google Scholar; Zumoff, “Black Caribbean Labor Radicalism in Panama,” 443.

48. On the New Negro movement in the United States, see James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia.

49. See Burnett, “'Unity is Strength.'” On the Garvey movement in Panama, see Lewis, Rupert, Marcus Garvey: Anti-Colonial Champion (Trenton, NJ: African World Press, 1988)Google Scholar, 113–120; Barima, Koufi Boukman, “Caribbean Migrants in Panama and Cuba, 1851–1927: The Struggles, Opposition and Resistance of Jamaicans of African Ancestry,” Journal of Pan-African Studies 5:9 (March 2013): 43–62.Google Scholar The UNIA's increasing anti-Communism and anti-radicalism reflected conditions outside of Panama as well.

50. Star and Herald, September 27, 1925. On the PCWIEA, see Senior, Dying to Better Themselves, 308–309.

51. Jorge Turner, Raíz, historia y perspectivas, 8.

52. Major Braithwaite Wallis to Sir. Austen Chamberlain, Panamá and Canal Zone Annual Report, 1925, March 15, 1926, British National Archives, Kew, A 1821/1821/32, FCO 371/1158. The Star and Herald (October 25, 1925) mentions the organization of a British West Indian Welfare Committee in Colón as an “advisory committee to the British Consulate in affairs affecting West Indians.”

53. Star and Herald, October 1, 1925.

54. Braithwaite Wallis, Panamá and Canal Zone, Annual Report, 1925, British National Archives, Kew, A 1821/1821/32 in FCO 371/1158.

55. Pearcy, Thomas L., We Answer Only to God: Politics and the Military in Panama, 1903–1947 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998), 32 Google Scholar; Petras, Elizabeth McLean, Jamaican Labor Migration: White Capital and Black Labor, 1850–1930 (Boulder CO: Westview Press, 1988), 226 Google Scholar.

56. Zenger, “West Indians in Panama,” 90–91.

57. Walrond, Eric, “Tropic Death,” in Walrond, Tropic Death (New York: Collier, 1972), 181.Google Scholar The present article does not focus on Francophone West Indians; for information on their experience, see Francisco Marrero Labinot, Nuestros ancestros de las Antillas Francesas: intrepretaciones históricas y sociológicas de una minoría étnica nacional ([Panama City?, 1989?]); and Jos, Joseph, Guadeloupéens et Martiniquais au Canal de Panamá: histoire d'une émigration (Paris: Harmattan, 2004)Google Scholar.

58. Sandoya, Rebeca, “La Ciudad de Panamá y su área metropolitana,” Revista Geográfica 110 (July-December 1989): 33–35;Google Scholar Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censo, Población de la Républica, por Provincia, 1911–2000, http://www.contraloria.gob.pa/INEC/archivos/A2112.pdf (accessed January 28, 2015).

59. Estrella de Panamá, September 26, 1925.

60. A. Percy Bennett, “Panamá: A Report for the Period, 1914–1920,” April 7, 1921, in British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print, Part II, Series D, Latin America, Vol. 2. (Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America, 1992), 225.

61. Annual Report of the Panama Canal West Indian Employee Association, 1926, 4, in George W. Westerman papers, Schomburg Center, New York Public Library, box 47, folder 1.

62. Donoghue, Borderland on the Isthmus, 24; Frenkel, Stephen, “Geographical Representations of the 'Other'”: The Landscape of the Panama Canal Zone," Journal of Historical Geography 28:1 (January 2002): 85–99 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63. Senior, Dying to Better Themselves, 295.

64. Ibid., 292–293. “By 1921, some thirteen thousand West Indians had been repatriated but people from the islands kept coming, so the net outflow was only four thousand” (292).

65. Biesanz, John, “Race Relations in the Canal Zone,” Phylon 11:1 (First Quarter 1950): 25 Google Scholar

66. Soler, Ricaurte, Panamá: historia de una crisis (Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno, 1989), 48 Google Scholar.

67. Michael L. Conniff, Black Labor on a White Canal, 40, 65.

68. Diez Castillo, Los cimarrones y los negros antillanos en Panamá, 75; Priestley, George, “Notas para el debate sobre etnia, clase y cuestión nacional en Panamá,” in Piel oscura Panamá: reflexiones y ensayos al filo del centenario, Barrow, Alberto and Priestley, George, eds. (Panama City: Editorial Universitaria Carlos Manuel Gasteazoro, 2003), 34 Google Scholar.

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70. Conniff, Michael, “Black Labor on a White Canal: West Indians in Panama, 1904–1980,” Latin American and Iberian Institute Working Papers, no. 11 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983), 11 Google Scholar.

71. Reid Ellis, Las causas y las consequencias de la migración, 249–250.

72. De la Rosa, “Zapador de las ideas sociales en Panamá,” 67.

73. Zenger, “West Indians in Panama,” chapt. 3.

74. Negro World, November 7, 1925.

75. Major Braithwaite Wallis to Sir. Austen Chamberlain, Panamá and Canal Zone Annual Report, 1925; Daily Worker, October 15, 16, 18, 22, and 23, 1925.

76. Workman, August 22, 1925.

77. Ibid., October 17, 1925.

78. Ibid., October 24, 1925.

79. The task is complicated by the fact that race, ethnicity, and national origins are overlapping and often shifting categories. If anything, counting English-derived surnames is probably likely to overestimate the West Indian presence. An English surname could be an indication of being from the West Indies, from North America, from Britain, or none of these. Domingo H. Turner, for example, was a leading Panamanian leftist, but his surname was derived from English ancestry, not West Indian. Similarly, the governor of Panama province was named Arhibaldo Boyd; a list of members of Acción Comunal active in the 1931 coup contains several non-Spanish last names, including Zachrisson, Abrahams, Price, Clement, Crostwaite, etc. However, the first names indicate these were Hispanic: Mora, Beluche, Surgimiento y estructuración del nacionalismo panameño (Panama City: Editorial Condor, 1981 Google Scholar) chapt. 9. As a general rule, I have assumed that West Indians in Panama in the 1920s had both English-derived first and last names, while a Spanish first name was indicative of being Hispanic. I do this understanding that some famous West Indians had Spanish surnames (such as Jamaican politicians Alexander Bustamante and W. A. Domingo), and more to the point, that many Panamanians of West Indian descent have Spanish first names and English surnames. French and Italian surnames would pose a greater problem, but these are not prominent among the arrested.

80. “Nota del Capitán Jefe al Juez 5 de Circuito sobre los Incidentes en el Parque de Santa Ana el 10 de Octubre de 1925,” Revista Lotería 213 (October-November 1973): 6–8. See also Estrella de Panamá, October 11, 1925. The Workman article indicated that the arrested (and deported) South Americans were teachers in Panama. See De la Rosa, “Zapador de las ideas sociales en Panamá,” 65.

81. Revista Lotería 213: 9–10.

82. Cuevas, El movimiento inquilinario, 20–21.

83. Annual Report . . . 1926, 40–41.

84. “De actualidad,” undated article in Acción Comunal, 1925 or 1926. The New York Public Library's collection of the journal is in poor condition, making an exact dating impossible.

85. Beluche Mora, Surgimiento y estructuración, 52. According to his book, Beluche Mora took part in the 1931 AC coup.

86. Víctor F. Goytía, quoted in Víctor Manuel Pérez and Rodrigo Oscar de León Lerma, El Movimiento de Acción Comunal en Panamá (Panama City: Editorial Arte Tipográfico, [1964?]), 9, 23.

87. Pearcy, “Panama's Generation of '31,” 695–696, 699–702; Robinson, William Francis, “Panama for the Panamanians: The Populism of Arnulfo Arias Madrid,” in Populism in Latin America, Conniff, Michael L., ed. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2012)Google Scholar, chapt. 8; “Acta de Fundación de la Institución Acción Comunal,” August 19, 1923, in Panamá: sus problemas y sus hombres (Panama City: Acción Comunal, [1928?]), 9–11; Pérez and De León Lerma, El Movimiento de Acción Comunal, chapt. 1.

88. Lasso, Marixa, “Race and Ethnicity in the Formation of Panamanian National Identity: Panamanian Discrimination Against Chinese and West Indians in the Thirties,” Revista Panameña de Política 4 (July-December 2007): 72 Google Scholar; Lasso, Marixa, “Nationalism and Immigrant Labor in a Tropical Enclave: The West Indians of Colón City, 1850–1936,” Citizenship Studies 17:5 (2013): 558 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89. Alfaro, Olmedo, El peligro antillano en la américa central: la defensa de la raza (Panama City: Imprenta Nacional, 1924), 3.Google Scholar On this pamphlet, see Milazzo, Marzia, “White Supremacy, White Knowledge, and Anti-West Indian Discourse in Panama: Olmedo Alfaro's El peligro antillano en la América Central ,” in Global South 6:2 (Fall 2012): 65–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

90. Acción Comunal, April 18, 1926, and May 6, 1926.

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93. On the importance of language in Panamanian nationalism, see Rolando de la Guardia Wald, “Panamanian Intellectuals and the Invention of a Peaceful Nation, 1878–1931” (PhD diss.: University College London, 2014), chapt. 5; Pakozdi, George, “Linking Oceans: English, Economic Diversity and National Identity in Panama,” The English Languages: History, Diaspora, Culture 2 (2011): 4–6 Google Scholar. On the mestizo basis of Panamanian nationalism, see Szok, Peter, Wolf Tracks: Popular Art and Re-Africanization in Twentieth-Century Panama (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chapt. 1.

94. Gaceta Oficial, no. 4612, June 4, 1925. See a British diplomatic discussion of the law in A 434/434/32, in FO 371/10632, British National Archives, Kew. See also Durling, Virginia Arango, La inmigración prohibida en Panamá y sus prejuicios raciales (Panama City: Publipan, 1999), 27.Google Scholar

95. Gaceta Oficial, no. 4977, October 28, 1926; Arango Durling, La inmigración prohibida, 27.

96. Arango Durling, La inmigración prohibida, chapt. 5; Corinealdi, Kaysha L., “Envisioning Multiple Citizenships: West Indian Panamanians and Creating Community in the Canal Zone Neocolony,” Global South 6:2 (Fall 2012): 92 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

97. Enrique A. Avilés Torres, “Actuación de los sectores medios en Panamá ante las principales coyunturas de la década del 20,” paper presented at the Sixth Central American Congress of History, Panama City, July 2002, 19.

98. Acción Comunal, November 3, 1926.

99. Pearcy, “Panama's Generation of '31,” 697; Interview with Celedonio Gálvez Berrocal, July 12, 1964, reprinted in Víctor Manuel Pérez and Rodrigo Óscar de Léon Lerma, El Movimiento de Acción Comunal en Panamá, 157.

100. Beluche Mora, Surgimiento y estructuración, 52–55. In the tenants' strike of 1932, led by a reborn Liga de Inquilinos in which several veterans of the 1925 strike figured prominently, Víctor F. Goytía represented the strikers in negotiations with landlords. See Muñoz Pinzón, La huelga inquilinaria de 1932, 20, 26.

101. Jorge Turner, introduction to Turner, Domingo H., ¡Tratado fatal! (Panama City: Biblioteca de la Nacionalidad, 1999)Google Scholar, 12.

102. Jorge Turner, Raíz, historia y perspectivas, 30.

103. Major Braithwaite Wallis to Austin Chamberlain, Panamá and Canal Zone Annual Report, 1924, April 17, 1925, British National Archives, Kew, A2306/2306/32, FO 371/10632.

104. Report of the Proceedings of the Fourth Congress of the Pan-American Federation of Labor (1924), 8, 111–112. On the PAFL, see Toth, Charles W., “The Pan American Federation of Labor: Its Political Nature,” Western Political Quarterly 18:3 (September 1965): 615–620.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

105. See for example Gompers, Samuel and Gutstadt, Herman, Meat vs. Rice—American Manhood against Asiatic Coolieism: Which Shall Survive? (San Francisco: Asiatic Exclusion League, 1908)Google Scholar.

106. See for example, Granados, Marta María Saade, “Inmigración de una ‘raza prohibida’: Afro-estadounidenses en México, 1924–1940,” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 34:1 (Spring 2009): 169–192 Google Scholar; Frederick Douglass Opie, Black Labor Migration in Caribbean Guatemala; and Zumoff, “Ojos Que No Ven,” 253–265.

107. Star and Herald, October 26, 1925.

108. Beluche Mora, Surgimiento y estructuración, 47.

109. Gandásegui, et al., Las luchas obreras en Panamá, 51–53; Patricia Gelos, Pizzurno and Araúz, Celestino Andrés, Estudios sobre el Panamá Republicano, 1903–1989 (Panama City: Manfer, 1996), 136 Google Scholar; Franco Muñoz, Blázquez de Pedro,187, 189; Soler, Panamá: Historia de una crisis, 52.

110. The only study of early Communism in Panama is del Vasto, César, Historia del Partido Comunista de Panamá, 1920–1945 (Panama City: Universal Books, 2002)Google Scholar. Material on Panama in the Comintern archives is found in fond 495, opis 116. According to A. K. Sorokin, director of the Russian State Archives of Socio-Politico History, there are 15 files from the period 1927 to 1935 dealing with the Communist Party in Panama (correspondence, July 11, 2011).

111. Bennett, “Panama, 1914–1920,” British Documents, 217.

112. Soler, Panamá: Historia de una crisis, 50; González, Alexandra Pita, “De la Liga Racionalista a Cómo Educar el Estado a tu Hijo: el itinerario de Julio Barco,” Revista Historia 65–66 (January-December 2012): 128–130 Google Scholar; Tarcus, Horacio, “Revistas, intelectuales y formaciones culturales izquierdistas en la Argentina de los Veinte,” Revista Iberoamericana 70:208–209 (July-December 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 755–757; Shaffer, Kirwin R., “Contesting Internationalists: Transnational Anarchism, Anti-Imperialism and US Expansion in the Caribbean, 1890s-1920s,” Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe 22:2 (July-December 2011): 26–27;Google Scholar Shaffer, “Tropical Libertarians: Anarchist Movements and Networks in the Caribbean, Southern United States, and Mexico, 1890s-1920s,” in Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World, 1870–1940, Steven Hirsch and Lucien van der Walt, eds. (Leiden: Brill, 2014).

113. Del Vasto, Historia del Partido Comunista de Panamá, 14–15; Soler, Panamá: Historia de una crisis, 59; Gandásegui, Marco A., Saavedra, Alejandro, Achoni, Andrés and Quintero, Iván, Las luchas obreras en Panamá (1850–1978), (Panama City: Centro de Estudios Latinamericanos, 1980), 52 Google Scholar, 59; Hernando Franco Muñoz, Blázquez de Pedro y los orígines del sindicalismo panameño, in Biblioteca Nacional de Panamá, Colección Biblioteca de la Nacionalidad, vol. 29, chapt. six; available at: http://bdigital.binal.ac.pa/bdp/tomoXXIXP2.pdf (accessed January 15, 2015); Jorge Turner, Raíz, historia y perspectivas, 38–39. Unlike what happened in most other countries, in Panama the Communist Party did not split from the Socialist Party; rather, the Socialist Party was formed several months later by Demetrio Porras, son of Belisario Porras. Domingo H. Turner was the long-time head of the Communists, while José Brower and later Diógenes de la Rosa were prominent among the Socialist leadership. See Porras, Demetrio A., “Fundación del Partido Socialista de Panamá,” in El pensamineto político en los siglos XIX y XX, Soler, Ricaurte, ed. (Panama City: Universidad de Panamá, 1987)Google Scholar, vol. 6.

114. Max Bedacht, letter to Central Executive Committee [of the American Communist Party], undated [1923], in archives of the Communist International, (consulted in microfilm version, Tamiment Library, New York University), 515:1:201

115. See Arriola, Arturo Taracena, “El Partido Comunista de Guatemala y el Partido Comunista de Centro América (1922–1932),” Política y Sociedad 41 (November 2003): 88–122.Google Scholar On early Communist organizing in Central America, see Ernesto Isunza Vera, “Cosmovisión de la Vieja Guardia: organizaciones y cultura comunistas centroamericanas, 1922–1934,” (Undergraduate thesis: Universidad de Veracruz, 1993).

116. Central American Addresses, undated [1925?], 515:1:519.

117. A. B [Alexander Bittelman] to Jack Stachel, October 17, 1925, in Comintern archives, 515:1:522.

118. See Zumoff, Jacob A., The Communist International and US Communism (Leiden: Brill, 2014)Google Scholar.

119. Shaffer, “Tropical Libertarians,” 299–300.

120. See Bao, Ricardo Melgar, “Cominternismo intelectual: representaciones, redes y prácticas político-culturales en América Central, 1921–1933,” Revista Complutense de Historia de América 35 (2009): 135–159 Google Scholar.

121. J. W. Johnstone, “Report on the Pan American Revolutionary Movement and the Pan American Federation of Labor Congress,” no date [1925?], Comintern archives, 515:1:490.

122. Trade-Union Committee of the Central Executive Committee, Workers (Communist) Party, No. 41, May 27, 1927, in collection of Prometheus Research Library.

123. The Comintern played an important role in the Sacco and Vanzetti campaign, although anarchists, liberals, and others also took up the case. On the international campaign in defense of Sacco and Vanzetti, see McGirr, Lisa, “The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti: A Global History,” Journal of American History 93:4 (March 2007): 1085–1111 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

124. Mayer, David, “À la fois influente et marginale: l'Internationale Communiste et l'Amérique Latine,” Monde(s) 2:10 (2016): 109–128.Google Scholar A comprehensive overview of the coverage of Latin America in the Comintern press from 1919 to 1935 can be found in Bao, Ricardo Melgar, “La hemerografía cominternista y América Latina, 1919–1935. Señas, giros y presencias,” Revista Izquierdas 9 (April 2011): 79–136 Google Scholar.

125. Porras, “Fundación del Partido Socialista,” 329. This perspective shares much with the “two-stage” theory of revolution, which the Communist movement adopted under the tutelage of Stalin in the 1920s: that in Latin America and other economically backward areas, Communists' should first struggle for “bourgeois-democratic” measures, such as anti-imperialism, agrarian reform, etc. However much this contradicted the original program of the Comintern, at least it did not assert the working class's absence in the face of its obvious existence, but only that the proletariat was too weak to carry out the tasks.

126. Dario Souza, et al., Panamá, 1903–1970, 57.

127. Ibid., 58.

128. Yolanda Marco Serra, “Las elecciones de 1936,” La Prensa, March 16, 2014, http://www.prensa.com/elecciones_0_3890610960.html (accessed June 21, 2015).

129. Salomé Buitrago Fernández, “El Partido Comunista en Veraguas durante la decada de 1970,” (Master's thesis: Universidad de Panamá, 2013), 77.

130. Jorge Turner, Raíz, historia y perspectivas, 12.

131. Olmedo Beluche, “Una crítica del concepto Nación,” June 2007, available at biblioteca.clasco.ar/ar/libros/panama/cela/beluche.doc (accessed March 10, 2015).