Over 25,000 people died during the construction of the Panama Canal, The vast majority of the workers who died were Black immigrants recruited from Caribbean islands like Barbados and Jamaica.
by Expert_Koala_8691
Over 25,000 people died during the construction of the Panama Canal, The vast majority of the workers who died were Black immigrants recruited from Caribbean islands like Barbados and Jamaica.
by Expert_Koala_8691
8 Comments
But no one talks about this and only talks about what those in the Middle East do.
That’s too many
Many of the labourers experienced hard conditions were not paid and we’re only brought onsite to do the dangerous and difficult jobs/tasks. Many were not allowed to leave the grounds or their encampments.
Edit: If you study world history, or are familiar with what is taught about the construction of the Panama Canal, You’ll discover it has a dark and checkered history/story for the Panamanian people.
Almost all of the 25,000 bodies were buried in the cement walls of the canal. It was the most efficient way of dealing with them, and many of the deaths were from falling into the deep cement retaining walls to begin with.
Most of the deaths were from mosquito born diseases. 22K of the 25K deaths were from when the French tried to build it in the 1880’s. About 4K when the American actually built it in the early 1990s. The Americans used mosquito eradication techniques, spray, insecticide fogs, making sure no standing water was about. There was no OSHA at this time, and most of the US deaths, like the French before, were from Malaria and Yellow Fever (no medicine vto treat either at these time). Over 100 died building the Hoover Dam near Vegas in the 1930s, still no OSHA. There was no safety culture, as we know it, until the 1980s really.
Just to add some actual facts to this, because it’s very easy to jump to various conclusions…
This was during the first building phase, when the French started it. They were completely unprepared for the rainy season and the effects of diseases like malaria and yellow fever. Their effort went bankrupt which was a big scandal in France. The guy who supervised the project had successfully built the Suez Canal, but was prosecuted (although then acquitted) for misappropriation of funds. Gustave Eiffel of the tower fame was also prosecuted.
When the US took over and bought out the French, their new chief engineer actually took a lot of measures to take care of the new set of immigrant workers, such as good quality accommodation and canteens. They appointed a chief sanitation officer and within a couple of years basically eliminated malaria (by then research had discovered it was spread by mosquitoes – which the French didn’t know), by spraying pesticides, building water systems, draining stagnant water, and installing mosquito nets. Still, about 5,600 workers died during the US construction phase, again most from West Indies and in particular Barbados. But you can see that care for the workers’ welfare was genuine (they wanted to attract the labour force), and very different to the French phase.
So? Many Irish immigrants died building the canals around New Orleans and they were white.
Who else would work in that tropical hell-hole? I’m pretty sure laborers weren’t being shipped in from New York or Paris.