277. America Drills Through Hell’s Gorge (Part 5)

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0:28Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon. And me, William Derimple. So we are joined once again by the brilliant Matthew Parker, author of Hell's Gorge, to discuss our final chapter of the building of the Panama Canal. Now, in the last episode, we saw the complete failure of the French attempt and Bunwa Varilla convincing the Americans to build a canal in Panama over Nicaragua. But Colombia does not want to hand over the rights to the US. So the US is going to have to help Panama get its independence. And we have before us now the first American skullduggery of fiddling the politics of Latin America to suit themselves.

1:07Something, of course, that we will see much more of in the 20th century. So, Matthew, tell us more about how the Americans managed to separate Panama off into a much smaller and more bullyable independent state. Okay, so the leader of the wannabe Panama independence movement, a guy called Manuel Amador, travels to the United States to get help with basically freeing his country from Colombia and therefore getting the canal in his country rather than someone else's. He meets Cromwell, the lawyer, obviously, who was so important in getting the Americans to change their mind and choose the Panama route.

1:44And he is basically promised help from him. He also meets Bruno Verria, and one of his compatriots meets John Hay, the Secretary of State, who he can't say exactly, but basically says the Americans will support an independence movement in Panama. Without American help, the Colombian army will just move in and close them down. But if America joins in, this can just get rid of that whole Colombian issue and create a small, easily dominated Central American state that America can lord over and get its way with. Yes, and there's a very happy sort of background to this in that much earlier, sort of 50 years before, the Americans had signed a treaty with the Colombians, which allowed them to land troops on the isthmus in order to keep the transit open or suppress any sort of civil revolt.

2:38And they've done this many times, often actually to suppress independence movements, ironically enough. So they've got that sort of card to play. And also they've got sort of Buna Maria promises to give Amador$100 ,000, which he needs to bribe the Colombian garrison. They work out how much they need. A general gets this, a colonel gets that, an ordinary soldier gets that. And it adds up to about$100 ,000. This is astonishing because this is only 1903, and we're already getting America doing the stuff it's going to do for the whole of the rest of the 20th century, of picking and choosing Latin American leaders.

3:12Yeah. The one thing we haven't mentioned, which normally goes hand in hand with this, is American gunships. Now, when do they suddenly arrive on the scene? Well, what happens is they announce the revolution. And unfortunately, the plotters had taken in someone into their group, into their confidence, who then looked like he was going to flake. So in order to get rid of him, they invent an invasion from Nicaragua, and they send him and his soldiers north to deal with it. So he's off the scene. But word has got to Bogota, and acting with really unusual haste, the Colombians send 500 expert marksmen and three generals to Panama to help deal with this fictional...

3:53So that's really backfired. So these troops arrive, and the date has already been set. Buno Vria told Hay, and he actually had a meeting with Roosevelt as well, that there'd be a revolution on the 3rd of November. Oh, they put it in their day planner. It's in the planner because it's the day that were the results of the midterm elections. So it's going to be, it's a good day for bad news or for rather exciting news. They arrive, all of these soldiers and these three generals were splendid in their braid and their big hats and everything. I mean, the Americans are up to their neck in this. The American owner of the railroad says, oh, we haven't got any trucks here to take your men over to Panama City, but we've got a special luxury train.

4:33We can just take you generals. So they rather reluctantly agree. They're taken to Panama City where they're wined and dined and then they come out to inspect a load of troops and then the troops wheel round, point their guns at them and say, you're under arrest. Wow. So they've sort of decapitated this Colombian force. One of the generals rushes off, but is found hiding in a toilet stall. So he's forked out. This is 45 years before the CIA is formed and yet all the fingerprints are sort of already there. But also it's farcically easy. I mean, just to, you know, sort of say with the parting officers, it's just so, you know.

5:07There are some wobbles. There are some wobbles because you've still got these 500 soldiers and a colonel in Cologne. And the revolution is announced in Panama City. And they need the money. They need the money now from Bruno Veria to wire them the$100 ,000. And he goes, well, hold on. The deal was you make me your plenipotentiary ambassador in Washington in exchange for the money. And they haven't done that yet. This man is a mover, isn't he? He is a mover. He's a mover. So he sends 25 ,000, which isn't enough. So they borrow the money from the American-owned Panama Railroad in order to pay off these men.

5:42And at one point, there's this tent standoff, but eventually they manage to get all these soldiers bribed and away. You know, the revolution is a success. There's one fatality, which is a donkey. That's the only... Oh, what happened to the donkey? Wait, wait, what happened to the donkey? The donkey was caught in some sort of crossfire. I haven't got the details or I haven't got the donkey research done on that. You haven't done the donkey work? Oh, look at that. That's very, very good. Meanwhile, Bruno Varia is moving with extreme haste to do a deal as the temporary ambassador for this new republic with John Hay.

6:18So in the meantime, after these sort of American gunboats have now arrived on both sides of the isthmus. He's still a French national. He's a French national. He wants to be the ambassador to Panama. He is briefly. He is briefly. Right. So what happens is Amador and another leader of the revolution get on a boat and hurry to New York to do a deal with the Americans who have already recognised the new Republic of Panama in indecent haste. The Americans are right. They've got gunboats at either side. So the Colombians can't come by sea. And there's this patriotic upfeeling of anger in Colombia and loads of people volunteer to take back Panama.

6:58The only way they can get there is through the Darien jungle. And they get about halfway before they're done for. Darian has no, I mean, it's just merciless, Darian. So many are defeated by it. Century after century. Yeah. Yeah. So the Americans have basically made the revolution safe. And now they want to do a deal with the new republic. But they want to do it quickly because the Colombian general is rushing to New York as well. And they know that he will offer anything in order to get the canal and Panama back. So they've got to move quickly. So while Amador and his companion are going to New York, Buena Vril is in Washington talking to John Hay, who produces the fastest treaty document ever.

7:39He's working day and night. Which doesn't have a single Panamanian in the room when it's signed. No. Well, they're nearly there. Amador arrives at New York and the treaty hasn't been signed yet. By a happy coincidence, he's met by a guy called Roger Farnham, who is part of William Cromwell's organisation. said, oh, he's going to be here tomorrow. Can you just wait for 24 hours? And they do. And that 24 hours gives Buno Veria enough time using Lincoln's inkwell to sign the treaty, which is for Panamanians an absolute disgrace. But it gives the Americans pretty much everything they want in order to get a canal zone and build the canal.

8:20So his inky fingers have left the paper, which is actually known as the Jai Bunoviria Treaty of 1903. The provisions of that treaty are that the United States would pay Panama up to$10 million and an annual fee of a quarter of a million dollars for the right to a canal zone five miles either side of the canal route. Basically, the Americans get everything that they want. No Panamanian is in the room. The Colombians, in whose territory this was in, have been basically robbed, from their point of view, of their own sovereign territory. This has all happened pretty much in a matter of two weeks, a fortnight.

8:56Yes, and it causes huge ruptures everywhere, obviously in Colombia, but also in the United States. It's very, very controversial. Obviously, going back to the Spanish War, there was the Anti-Imperialism League that had a lot of followers. It's not quite at that level. The sort of more liberal press described the canal as stolen property, and they say it's might makes right. And Roosevelt has dragged the United States down to the sordid land grabbing sort of levels of the European powers. And something unique about America has been lost. And in the Senate, they have to obviously pass the bill to ratify the treaty.

9:35And one of the people says, stands up and says, well, you know, you're saying that the isthmus rose as one man. I say that one man was in the White House. And that's really the sum of it. It remains controversial for, you know, well, ever since. And it becomes a fact on the ground, so to speak, with the creation of the Panama Canal zone, established February the 26th, 1904. And this is a zone over which the United States has complete sovereignty. Yes. Well, the exact wording is as if it was sovereign, but effectively, yes, it is. And they also, originally, the Americans wanted the terminal cities, Colón and Panama City included, but even Bruno Verria couldn't agree to that.

10:17But they have huge rights to go into the city for sanitation, law and order. The Panemans originally, they're very grateful to the Americans that have helped them, without whose help they couldn't have had their independence. But the honeymoon period is incredibly short. Very short. Very short. Yeah. With the zone, the American zone. And what tickles me hugely is that the people who live in that zone, which is a predominantly white area, are called zonians. And it becomes very, very apparent very quickly. It's going to be run an apartheid system. I mean, talk a little bit more about what the Americans want from their zone and what the Panamanian reaction might be.

10:58Because as you said before, this is a mixed melting pot of a place. And the two-tier system, the golden roll and the silver roll, tell us about that. Yes, that's to do with the labour force, which obviously they have to assemble to build the canal. They have pretty much political control over the whole country. No one is really elected unless they are agreeable to the US interests. What happens initially is a guy called Wallace is sent down as chief engineer. And because of all of the heat that Roosevelt had taken over the effectively annexation of the canal zone, it's very important that he makes the dirt fly in order to satisfy, there were some nice pictures of sort of digging happening.

11:43So he starts all of that straight away. And it's really completely the wrong thing to do, because there's hardly any equipment there, there's hardly any workforce, and it really causes more problems than it solves. And then, very soon after they start the work, there's the first yellow fever case. And rather like Louise D 'Anglais, we heard about in the last episode, it's a pretty young girl, it's the wife of Wallace's secretary, they've only been married for two months, and she dies this hideous, agonizing yellow fever death. and panic breaks out. And what happens is that something like three quarters of the white American workforce desert.

12:23They just, they leave, they run. Just leave. With this one death. There were several others, not huge numbers, nothing like the French period, but there's none of the sort of heroic, you know, sort of self-sacrifice of the French period. They scuttle and the whole work is in crisis and people think that it's going to suffer the same fate is the French project. Wow. Okay. So Zonians have left and fled for their lives. America, the press is starting to turn against Roosevelt, or has been actually doing critical things. He hated what the press did, you know, called them all muckrakers, and they gave him quite a hard time.

13:00So how do they sort of pull this project out of the fire, the Americans? What do they do? Well, this was a sort of slightly unfortunate appointment because he was totally terrified of yellow fever as well, to the extent he actually brought two coffins with him for him and his wife should the need arise. Anyway, so he resigned and he's replaced with a guy called John Stevens, who is one of the sort of key figures in the American period. He's a very Rooseveltian figure. He built railways across Northwestern, the United States, you know, fighting wolves and hostile Native Americans and blizzards and everything.

13:36And he was a brilliant railway engineer. And he arrives and looks around and he says, this is the most discouraging project I've ever seen. You know, the Panama Railroad, he describes as two streaks of rust going through the jungle. Everywhere he sees fear and hunger and there's no accommodation. And he says, right, I'm stopping. However much Roosevelt's going to be annoyed, however much the press are going to stop and let's just plan it properly. And he spends a year planning how he's actually going to do this. For him, the key thing is he describes as transportation. It's getting the spoil away.

14:17One of the problems with the French is they dump the spoil by the side of the canal and it just fell back in, or it became unstable. So the most difficult thing about the excavation is what you do, getting the soil away. He was absolutely the right person to do this. Also, he orders in some real state-of-the-art equipment. In the generation between the French and the American, there'd been huge improvements in technology of steel and of mechanics. He's got these state-of-the-art massive shovels, all of which travel on rails. There's all sorts of other very clever little sort of inventions like a sort of self-emptying train where with a plough at 45 degrees you can empty it in one swoop rather than digging it emptying one by one there's ingenious things that lift track and move it without having to disentangle so he really he really sort of gives it the american technical ability and sets it up for the task ahead just as you're saying that i mean this really is the first time that you know canal madness has some method behind it because everybody else who's tried has basically had a suck it and see attitude.

15:26You know, you've got sort of the lessips who hadn't even been there before he was promising everybody a canal. And then, you know, all these other people who were not engineers who are promising a canal. And then suddenly you've got a man who does know railways and does know how to put these things and saying, actually, can somebody give me the plan? Can anyone show me a plan? Exactly. Exactly. Okay, let's take a break here. American engineers are finally setting up a proper plan and using all their technological prowess, but how will they get over the major obstacle that broke the French attempt first time round when building the canal?

15:58Yellow fever.

16:05Welcome back. So Matthew, let's talk about how the Americans tried to combat yellow fever in Panama. You know what? We haven't said what yellow fever does to a person. Yes. Give us a really gruesome description. We've had two people dying in great pain and agony. Yes. So what happens to somebody when they have yellow fever? What are the stages of yellow fever? What happens? You get bitten by an infected mosquito. Originally, you'll have headaches, loss of appetite, muscle pain, high temperature, and then really, really severe back pain that is described like being on a rack. This is a bit like dengue fever, which everyone gets in Delhi every one soon.

16:41It sounds hideous. You have about a sort of half, one in two chance as a fit adult of surviving. right and so so you've got agonizing back and then thirst and then you get jaundiced as your liver packs it in and then probably the most the most sort of terrifying thing about the vomito negro it's called where you're coughing up black blood because by this stage you've got multi-organ failure and and sort of uh hemorrhage and the brain is often affected as well producing delirium seizures and coma and you the medical shock alone caused by extreme fluid loss can be fatal Oh, it's horrific. It's a horrific way to die.

17:19And so you said, he plans and plans and plans. Yellow fever strikes. So how does he respond to that, the great planner? I mean, what can you do? Well, what the Americans have done is they'd sent their top yellow fever doctor to the isthmus, a guy called William Gorgas, who was a sort of frontier doctor. And he'd actually contracted yellow fever on the borders of Mexico, but has survived. And once you survive, you're immune. and he made it his life's work to combat yellow fever, yellow jack, as it was known in the States. And part of that, he was sent to Havana after the end of the Spanish War, during where something like five times the number of American soldiers had died of yellow fever than in combat.

18:00This was something that urgently, and there was all sorts of experiments. The mosquito theory of transmission is emerging. It's emerging from India and it's emerging in Cuba itself. And they do all sorts of experiments. So they put people in a cell with all the disgusting vomitoed Negro covered blankets of someone who's died and they're fine. Okay, so it's not about dirt. It's not carried in air and dirt. And then they actually, with volunteers, people volunteer to have themselves stung by a yellow fever mosquito to see what happens. And one of these volunteers actually died. Why would you volunteer to do that?

18:36What possible inducement? For the great, this is an American doing it for the greatness of mankind and obviously for his country as well. Matthew, were they really volunteers? Because so much of the time you hear the word volunteer and actually it's people who are sort of corralled into doing it. They were. James Lazier he was called, yeah. Oh, good. Well, it's good to remember his name, yeah. A Gorgas arrives with the knowledge of how to deal with a mosquito. So you exterminate the mosquito. It's a particular mosquito. It's Edith a gypsy, which is actually quite vulnerable because it stays very close to humans.

19:08The female relies on human blood to produce its eggs. And it also lays its eggs close to human habitations in ideally the cleaner water. So he knows you've got to kill the larva. And anyone who's infected with yellow fever, you've got to keep them from being bitten by an unaffected mosquito. Because that's how it travels. A mosquito bites someone and then takes away and then bites them. And that's how it's fed. And they have to be unimmune people, which is why all these American incomers were so vulnerable. So Gorgas has the tools to do it, but he asks the commission of old gents who are in Washington who are overseeing the project, he says, I need a million dollars and I need a workforce of 2 ,000.

19:48They give him$50 ,000 and a workforce of about 20 of the most feeble people. That's why yellow fever happened. And once it's happened, there is a crucial meeting between Roosevelt and his doctor Lambert. The head of the commission says, Gorgas is useless. We've got to sack him and we've got to bring in this friend of mine who's an osteopath with no experience. Oh, God. Oh, God. I hate these stories so much. God, how many lives could have been saved? The commission, they didn't believe. They didn't believe the mosquito theory, even though Ronald Ross had won a Nobel Prize for it. This is the early 20th century equivalent of modern anti-vaxxers ignoring all the science.

20:25Yeah. So Gorgas is saying, look, I can do this. I can do this if I have the backing. and Roosevelt's Dr. Lambert, who's a friend of his, has this meeting with Roosevelt. And Roosevelt's saying, well, they want to get rid of Gorgas because they think it's just dirt and dead rats and that kind of thing. And it's the terminal cities are filthy. And Lambert says to him, no, no, no, no, no. Gorgas knows what he's doing. If you don't back him, it'll be like the French. If you back him, you'll have your canal. Wow, okay, so good. And so Roosevelt puts his weight behind and then bang, the most expensive sanitary campaign in history is launched in the spring of 1905.

21:02And then by November, Gorgas can say to his staff, they gather in an autopsy room where there's a yellow fever victim. He says to them, this is the last yellow fever death you will ever see in Panama. I mean, that's extraordinary. And that's how it was. What a brilliant man. Well, their Nobel Prize is handed out for this because it's like epoch changing. Gorgas is one of the heroes. He then launches a huge campaign later against malaria, which is a massive problem, which is huge. He describes yellow fever as like making war on the on the family cat malaria was like taking on all the beasts of the jungle because they do they're everywhere but as as what he said they they studied them and if they cleared vegetation from around the habitat you know there were ways to lessen lessen it but there's one thing that i found that he wrote later that really sort of made me sort of do a double take because in havana he cleared that he'd save havana our work in cuba and panama will be looked upon as the earliest demonstrations that the white man could flourish in the tropics and the starting point for the effective settlement of these reasons by the Caucasians.

22:00Ah, so not before we elevate him to... It's the nuance in imperial medicine, I don't need to tell you, is so interesting. So we talked about the white suffering due to diseases, but what we haven't talked about is the suffering amongst those West Indian workers who, again, the Americans are going to rely on to do the work for this canal. And just give us a little picture of how they are treated. Are they getting treatment? I mean, are they getting access to this kind of groundbreaking science that is coming from Gorgas? I mean, is anyone looking out for them at all? The idea of who was going to build the canal was much debated.

22:34And Stevens actually had very little respect for what he called black labor. He said they were lazy, they were stupid or whatever. He tried bringing in sort of others. Originally, he wanted Chinese and Japanese. But people from Tokyo came and had all around said, no way, no, you're not. and the Chinese thing it was kind of you know there'd been terrible scandals in South Africa about Chinese labor and the whole sort of indenture thing was very unpopular so eventually they did have to look to the West Indies and originally they went to Jamaica and the the governor of Jamaica was actually rather anti-American said you're not recruiting from here because it cost us a fortune to bring back all the people from the French effort you know it cleaned us out so they go to Barbados and there they have much more luck the Barbados governor's married to America, which maybe helped.

23:20And Barbados is chronically poor. This is the island that used to be the richest place in the whole British empire, made fortunes for people through sugar and slavery. And now it's described as the empire's darkest slum. It has infant mortality rate over 50%, malnutrition. So it's a very fertile recruiting ground. And the Americans offer a contract, which is you work 10 hours a day, six days a week, you'll get paid 10 cents an hour and we'll give you accommodation and we'll ship you over and back. Originally people go, Panama, but then a couple of people who went earlier come back and land in Bridgetown in Cardinal Bay and they get off the boat and they're wearing this really fancy suit.

24:03They've got hats, they're smoking, and then they get in a cart and carriage and a driven home, which is just, for a young black person, it's just not usual at all. And then suddenly there's this rush. everyone wants to go to Panama. And thousands and thousands are shipped over. Something like 45 ,000 Barbagians worked on the canal out of a population of only 200 ,000. Gosh, that's extraordinary. So it's major, major, major. So Matthew, there's two tiers of workers, aren't there? There's the silver workers, and then there's the gold workers. And that makes massive difference, whether you're one or the other.

24:39Yes, I mean, it becomes something like a sort of euphemism for the sort of Jim Crow segregation, which of course was sweeping across southern United States. And visitors to Panama would say it's very much south of the Mason-Dixon line in terms of the setup there. And everyone assumed that all the Americans were southerners, which of course they weren't at all. Originally, it's non-skilled workers get paid in silver and skilled workers get paid in gold. And that's something they inherited from the railway and so on. But very soon, this becomes a sort of way to segregate the workforce. So every shop, every drinking fountain, every toilet, every post office has separate entrances for gold and silver.

25:23There's no sort of pretense that these are separate but equal facilities. A shocking example from schools that were set up. They originally sort of mixed, but then this is a gradual process. The whites are taken and set up in different schools to everyone else. In 1909, there were 17 pupils per teacher in the white schools. In the black schools, it was 1 to 115. Crikey. And in every way, they set up hotels and restaurants for the white workforce. And they do for the black workforce as well. But in the black workforce, there are no tables or chairs. You have to sort of stand with your food. and there's many many examples like this that really made it clear that this was really sort of stratified racist system you know very unlike anything that panama had experienced before for many americans you know a severe embarrassment the experience of some of these workers i mean apart from where they're housed and how their loved ones are educated and all of that is that they are facing such danger at work.