Panama fever (27 page)

The French man-of-war, with its accompanying marines, stationed in Colón Harbor had, with the exception of helping fight the fire, played no part in the tumultuous events. Instead, even though it was a French company whose works and property were principally under threat, the force continued to maintain a strictly neutral stance, fearful of upsetting the United States’ position, or doing anything that went against the sacrosanct Monroe Doctrine. But the brief war had a profound effect on the French canal effort. To carry out such a massive construction project in a stable political situation was difficult enough; to achieve it in a state of anarchy and war was another thing altogether. It was just the first part in what would become an annus horribilis for the French effort.

For the benefit of share- and bondholders, and the ever-important confidence, the Company maintained in the
Bulletin
that they had lost nothing during the disturbance, but anyone on the Isthmus could see that this was patently untrue. Although Cristóbal had been spared, the fire had wrecked many large and valuable Company warehouses in Colón. In addition, offices, machinery, private residences, and railroad machinery had been destroyed or damaged. At a modest estimate, the loss to the Company was in the region of a million dollars.

There was to be a further ramification for the canal effort, and a nasty coda to the whole affair. On May 3, the tensions simmering between the Jamaican and Colombian workers came to a grisly head. That night there was to be a circus performance near the work camp at Culebra. The men had just been paid. The local
akalde
(mayor) requested a picket of Colombian troops to keep order. Five men were sent, but these were, according to Mallet, part of Reyes's newly arrived force, who “were ignorant of Isthmian affairs, and knew nothing of Jamaicans … and were animated only by a blind prejudice against all people who did not speak their language.” The soldiers tried to go through the camp to reach the site of the entertainment, but there was a rule that no armed men were allowed in the camps. The Jamaican watchmen, not knowing for sure if the Colombian troops were government soldiers or rebels, who were still roaming the countryside in small parties, disarmed them, on the orders of the camp chief, who said he didn't want a guard for the entertainment. The men returned to their base at Emperador and reported what had happened. Their commanding officer was incensed and ordered out his whole force. On the way they were joined by a mob of Cartagenians armed with machetes and revolvers. The whole crowd seems to have been well oiled, and there were raucous cries of
“Viva Colombia.”

It was about two in the morning when the troops reached the labor camp. The offending watchmen were tracked down first. Arthur Webb, a Jamaican who had been on the Isthmus since 1882 and was in No. 4 barracks, saw what happened: “I heard the watchman outside challenge some one who answered ‘Colombian.’ I opened the door, and saw four men around one of the watchmen chopping at him with machetes.” Webb took to his heels, was spotted, and fired at. The soldiers, some twenty-five in number, then attacked Webb's barracks, where it was believed another watchman had taken refuge.

At three in the morning, when volley after volley had crashed into the building or cut down the Jamaican workers as they tried to flee, the door was smashed down with machetes. Jamaican Samuel Anderson had taken shelter under his bunk. From there he saw “a number of Jamaicans killed and hacked to pieces, their boxes and trunks were then broken open and robbed of their contents. Some Colombians then came into the barracks with kerosene oil and tried to set light to it. When I saw they intended to burn the barracks I left my hiding place. Several Colombians then seized hold of me, tied my hands, and struck me all over the head and body with the flat side of their machetes. I didn't resist and I was then made to accompany them to Emperador.” Another Jamaican was also taken prisoner, but they turned out to be the lucky ones. Arthur Webb returned to his barracks early the next morning “and counted 23 Jamaicans lying killed, and hacked to pieces on the ground, and in their bunks. Some of them had their legs and arms chopped off, and many had their skulls split in pieces. Many of the dead appear to have been killed whilst attempting to dress.” He found that his possessions had been stolen, including $200 he had saved in the last three years. The floor of the barracks was awash with blood and the whole place scattered with the ransacked contents of the workers’ trunks and boxes. Isaiah Kerr, a Jamaican who lived at nearby Las Cascadas, came to Culebra that morning as usual and “on entering No. 4 Camp I saw my brother Augustus Kerr, who worked there, lying dead on the ground, his throat had been cut and one of his legs were gone. Many other Jamaicans were lying about dead and wounded.” He found that his brother's clothes and money had “been taken away, and I could find nothing belonging to him.”

The Colombian authorities suggested that the Jamaicans had started the aggression by firing on the Colombians, but the witness statements, carefully gathered by the British diplomats, contradict this story. “I have never before witnessed anything so horribly sickening as the scene of the butchery at the camp,” C. H. Burns, an American canal contractor, told Claude Mallet. “Some of these unfortunate labourers lay upon their beds with only a night shirt on.” He saw no weapons among the mutilated bodies. “It is not the first outrage upon Jamaicans, and all growing out of the prevailing hatred which the natives bear the ‘Chombo,’” he said.

Samuel Anderson, taken prisoner that night, was confined in jail at Emperador. “I remained in prison for nine days,” he said, “four days of which I was kept with my feet in the stocks, and I was without food or water for 48 hours. On Monday 12th of May the judge at Emperador told me if I gave him fifteen dollars he would let me go. I had a watch in my possession, which I pledged for seven dollars which I gave to the judge, and he released me. On my return to the camp at Culebra I found all my clothes, and money had been stolen, and I am left without anything.”

A shocked and furious Claude Mallet demanded an investigation, but met only delay and prevarication. Important papers had, it seemed, gone missing. Rafael Reyes, now promoted to general, wrote to the
Star and Herald
, trying to excuse his men, but the paper did not believe him: “In all these fights between Jamaicans and Colombians,” it said, “the former are invariably represented as the aggressors, and as invariably are they beaten, demoralized and cut to pieces … it was a massacre, pure and simple.” The Panamanian government assured the governor of Jamaica that his countrymen were safe, but Mallet told him that such promises were “worthless,” and are only made “with a view of inducing Jamaica negroes to leave their homes and come to the Isthmus.” In fact, the massacre was symptomatic of a wider disregard for the rights of the imported workers: “It must also be borne in mind,” Mallet wrote to the authorities in Kingston, “that British subjects have suffered as much from constitutional as from the Revolutionary authorities. Alcaldes, prefects, judges and all in authority have paid little attention to the rights of the negro from Jamaica. The poor negro has been the legitimate prey of Executive and Judicial outrage of the gravest and most serious character. The records of this Consulate are made up largely with the story of their wrongs. The powerful Companies that bring them have taken little interest in their welfare and make no active efforts in their favour when they fall into the hands of the authorities.”

The fallout was both immediate and long-lasting. The Jamaicans fled the camp at Culebra, and within days no one who had worked there was on the Isthmus any longer. All along the line, Jamaicans abandoned the works to return to the safety of Kingston. Nor did the shocking events of that night lead to any change in the attitude of the locals to the Jamaicans. Those who remained were increasingly forced to arm themselves, and tensions rose further. Although new laborers did continue to arrive from Jamaica, the appeal on the island of “Colón Man” was tarnished forever. Never again was the Company able to marshal such numbers of workers on the project as had been there at the beginning of 1885.

ven before the civil war, fire, and subsequent events, confidence in the success of the canal was seeming more and more far-fetched. In early March, Mallet had reported to London the visit of de Lesseps's second-oldest son, Victor, along with others high up in the Paris Canal Company. They had professed themselves pleased with what they had seen, “with the conviction,” Mallet wrote, “that the enterprise will be ready for the world's commerce at the end of 1888.I may remark in passing,” he added, “that there are few intelligent people outside of Canal circles, who share the sanguine expectations of these gentlemen…dissatisfaction and anxiety prevail.” Apart from anything else, the shock at the death of the last of Dingler's family was still being felt.

With the fire came a worsening of the bottleneck at Colón for the import of machinery and supplies, and the massacre at Culebra had led to labor shortages all along the line. April saw exceptionally heavy rains, which held up the work and exacerbated the problem of landslides. “The Panama canal is in such a state that its ultimate completion is beyond question,” wrote the
New York Tribune
in May, “but it appears equally certain that the present company can never complete it… In going over the canal route, one gets the impression that the work is practically stopped.”

But in some areas the sort of technical breakthroughs predicted by Ferdinand de Lesseps were occurring. Philippe Bunau-Varilla had been appointed chief engineer of the Pacific Division of the canal, even though he was only twenty-six. Through a study of the Bay of Panama he had accurately predicted that submarine trenches dredged there would stay free of mud and sand, thus dismissing a major worry in that sector. In recognition of this progress, in April 1885 he had been appointed head of the Atlantic Division as well. Here there was another breakthrough. The dredges of Huerne, Slaven & Company had been held up by hard rock at Mindi. When such material had been encountered at Suez, for instance between Bitter Lakes and the Red Sea, dams had been laboriously built, the area drained, and excavation had continued “in the dry.” But at Mindi, Bunau-Varilla, recalling an earlier experience in France, ordered a series of underwater holes to be drilled in the rock, a yard apart. In each was placed dynamite, which, when exploded, reduced the rock to paving-size slabs, which could then be dealt with by the dredges. Thus the cost of underwater excavation was reduced to that of cutting “in the dry,” and with even better methods and machines, Bunau-Varilla surmised, could be made yet cheaper. The realization would lead to a clever suggestion to save the French canal.

It is difficult to get a handle on the extraordinary figure of Bunau-Varilla. There is little doubt that he was an engineer of genius, as well as having other talents, as would emerge later. In his own writings, however, he has an egomania verging on madness. It is reported he spoke—and he certainly wrote—not in sentences but in proclamations. Nevertheless, he was adept at making friends. Short, only five feet four, he had perfect posture and a luxuriant dark red moustache. Many of those who met him found him an eccentric and slightly overwhelming figure. “Mr. Varilla's tremendous mental capacity becomes apparent when one looks at him,” wrote an American whom Bunau-Varilla would later befriend. “His brain rises from an active, rather square face, but, as if to contain it, the sides of his head are much larger than the face.” “His versatility was fantastic,” wrote another admirer. “He had the energy of ten horses.” No one who met him ever doubted his fanatical devotion to the achievement of the canal, at whatever cost and by whatever means.

But time was already running out for de Lesseps's sea-level plan. By summer 1885 the excavation was falling seriously behind schedule. Menocal visited in August and reckoned that only 8 million out of the 120 million cubic meters needed had been excavated since the very start of the project. Furthermore, much of the money raised had been spent. In spite of de Lesseps's assurances that all the problems were surmountable, the Panama shares began to fall a little on the bourse. The days of boom in the French financial markets had passed with the collapse of the Catholic Union Générale bank in late 1882. In place of the frantic speculation of the time of the launch of the Canal Company, traders on the bourse were just as likely to be bear raiders, seeking through a variety of schemes to lower the price of the shares in such an enormous company in order to profit on the change in market price. Criticism continued in the newspapers. In London and New York the financial press was loud in its condemnation. In response to the undeniable reports of deaths from illness, a cartoon appeared in
Harper's Weekly
asking: “Is Monsieur de Lesseps a Canal Digger, or a Grave Digger?” Even in France, doubts began to be aired.