Know Your Canal Week

Sprinkling flowers on Culebra Cut, to honor those who died building the canal

Commemorating the canal and celebrating West Indian heritage in Panama

Conozca su Canal 2008
article and photos by Katie Zien

This year's "Conozca Su Canal" ("Know Your Canal") celebration, sponsored by la Sociedad de Amigos del Museo Afro-Antillano de Panama (the Society of Friends of the Afro-Antillean Museum of Panama, or SAMAAP), honored the Panama Canal's 94th anniversary with events ranging from a UN workshop on human rights to a visit with an ailing member of the Panama's Antillean community. Conozca Su Canal week had us traveling all over Panama and the former Canal Zone, to places such as Pedro Miguel, Balboa, the City of Knowledge at the former Fort Clayton, as well as into Calidonia elsewhere in Panama City, to take part in a variety of intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually engaging activities.

Inside the Wesley Methodist Church

In keeping with the goals of past Conozca Su Canal programs, this year's activities emphasized education for youth about canal's history and recognition of the struggles and contributions of multiple generations of Panamanian of West Indian descent both in Panama and globally, who played a major part in building the canal and have since left rich legacies in cultural, political, and economic facets of Panamanian life. Former SAMAAP president and English professor Melva Lowe de Goodin states that the organization, which she helped to found in 1981, began the Conozca Su Canal program in 1985, as the Panama Canal handover date drew increasingly near. "Su" is the operative term in Conozca Su Canal: Lowe de Goodin notes that Panamanians had not generally conceived of the canal as 'theirs' prior to the handover, and so SAMAAP designed the week of events in part to facilitate national awareness about and pride in Panama's newfound sovereignty over the canal. The other major platform of the program is to promote widespread knowledge and affirmation of the countless West Indian workers who built and operated the canal. Additionally, the events seek to address the ongoing history of the West Indians who settled in Panama and became Afro-Panamanians, forming strong community ties in the face of racial segregation in the Canal Zone and cultural chauvinism in Panama. Through this week of events, students and citizens here in Panama can learn facts about the canal while also coming into contact with cultural traditions that are diminishing here, as West Indian Panamanians move to the US or assimilate into Panamanian culture.

Rogelio Gordon speaks in Culebra Cut, which is being widened and straightened

"Conozca Su Canal" is typically celebrated during the anniversary of the Panama Canal's inauguration, August 15. This year's events began Sunday, August 10, with a morning religious service and talent show at the Wesley Methodist Church, which recently celebrated its hundredth anniversary. Monday featured a presentation by local UN representative Yeselinde de Gonzalez on human rights, racism, and the history of the United Nations at UN building in la Ciudad de Saber. Participating schools were brought in from Colón and Panama City, and students spoke freely about their personal encounters with racial discrimination. SAMAAP president Enrique Sanchez and Vice-President Sonia Brown encouraged the students to make use of recent legislation and legal recourse in the fight to expose racist practices in Panama that often go unprosecuted.

Tuesday's pilgrimage into the Panama Canal happened to fall on a nearly cloudless day with intense sun, a rarity this time of year. About 80 people set out on two launches, the Gaviota and the Calamar, to sing, pray, and strew rose petals into the canal at the Culebra Cut in honor of the thousands of West Indian canal laborers who sacrificed their lives during construction. With two film crews documenting the event --- Betesda Films, a private Panamanian company, and the Panamanian public television station Canal Once --- members of the West Indian Panamanian community recited the names of their great-grandfathers, along with the Yoruba word "ashé," which signifies a pervasive spiritual energy and can also mean something akin to "amen," or "let it be so," said at the end of a prayer or ritual.

After the ceremony, a tour guide who knew seemingly everything about the canal (we tested him) joined the launch as it traveled to Gamboa and pointed out the crane Titan, the perforator Thor, and other marvels of the modern industrial world. While learning about canal taxes, tariffs, and expenditures, as well as revenues and their (dubious) destinations into various sectors of the Panamanian GNP, we were able to view part of the expansion process to date. Nostalgia was rife: many passengers pointed out the locations of their former townships, commissaries, schools, and sports fields, recounting anecdotes from their pasts as residents and employees of the US-controlled Canal Zone. This past is hardly over, however, as many Panamanians of West Indian descent continue to hold positions of authority in the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) and make key decisions regarding every aspect of the canal's future: technology, engineering, finances, publicity, and politics. As we sailed through the Culebra Cut, beneath the Centennial Bridge, and back to the Pedro Miguel launching point, past and future seemed to merge into a present that was poignantly alive. Even though many of my fellow passengers were in town on vacation from the United States, they still considered Panama home and evinced a great familiarity with the intimate details of life in this country.

The academic aspect, a high school history competition

On the heels of Tuesday's emotional pilgrimage, Wednesday's bulletin board contest took place at elementary schools all over Panama City, as SAMAAP members selected the three murales that most clearly and elegantly depicted the canal expansion process. Thursday's event, held in the Auditorio Ascanio Arosemena at the former Balboa High School, featured a history competition among eight high schools from several sites in Panama. Amid copious cheering and balloons, the Instituto Panamericano (IPA) took first place. The week culminated on Saturday, August 16, with a visit to the elder care facility Glowing Health Care, accompanied by a donation of nonperishable staples. The apex of the week, however, occurred on Friday, with a glamorous banquet held at the Marriott in Panama City, which packed the dancefloor as DJ Jorge Bulgin brought out the salsa and soul.

Melva Lowe de Goodin, head of the English department at the University of Panama
and past president of SAMAAP (second from left) with her aunt and friends

With several hundred members of Panama's West Indian-descended community in attendance, SAMAAP paid heed to the achievements of six exemplary individuals: Dr. Rodolfo Young, Reverend Maiziee Lennan, Professor Adelaida Jones, Professor Patricia Lewis, Rogelio Gordon, and Dr. Enitza George. Each honoree was introduced by a member of SAMAAP who also had personal connections to his/her life and work: for example, Melva Lowe de Goodin introduced Dr. Young as an outstanding pulmonary specialist who had left his 2007 Christmas celebration to treat her tracheal inflammation. Others were equally talented: to give a few telling examples, the Reverend Maiziee Lennan is a female religious leader in a male-dominated field, and Dr. Enitza George is an award-winning medical practitioner who was recently the first woman in the world to run a marathon six months pregnant (she finished in roughly seven hours). Adelaida Alphonse Jones has devoted herself to education and religious-themed theater directing for three decades, and Patricia Lewis is the director of the Instituto Episcopal San Cristobal, a prestigious private school with a long history in Parque Lefebvre, and has written several handbooks for educators --- among other accomplishments, of course.

Guests included Nyasha Warren and Delia Bernal and Marina Ardines, the
latter two of whom are National Assembly deputies from San Miguelito

Owing to Rogelio Gordon's position as the executive director of the ACP's Dredging Division, several prominent employees for the Panama Canal were present as Enrique Sanchez, contract manager for ACP and three-term president of SAMAAP, introduced Gordon. As he listed Gordon's many engineering accomplishments in service of the canal, Sanchez noted that a central motive for SAMAAP's yearly homage to members of the community was to bring forward those who could never be so arrogant as to tout their own accomplishments. Profesora Adelaida Jones also commented that while West Indian music, food, and dance are often hailed as important contributions to Panamanian culture, the achievements of talented professionals of West Indian descent in diverse fields --- medicine, engineering, education, and religion, to name a few --- often go overlooked in larger Panamanian society. In presenting the history of West Indians in Panama alongside current and continuing triumphs, SAMAAP organizers volunteered long hours, and the moving and inspirational character of the week's events truly spoke to these efforts.

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