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Prowling About Panama

<h3>ECONOMIC WASTE</h3> If it is true that South America is the victim of a bad start, it may also be said that Panama is the net result of a continuous and consistent follow-up campaign of wholesale demoralization through a long period of years. Beginnings are apt to be determinative, and when reenforced by continuous applications of similar influences, are sure to set a stamp on a long period of civilization. Three centuries of rule or misrule make a considerable impression on any people. There is something more than climate to be taken into account in the search for causes of the present conditions in Panama. The entire colonial program of Spain differed radically from that of the English in Canada or the United States in Hawaii or the Philippines. The leading motive of the conquistadores was the love of gold. Plunder, rapine, and devastation followed in the trail of the adventurers who fought their way across Panama and conquered Peru. Missionary zeal there was, but so mixed were the motives of these early heralds of the cross that the occasional man of pure and peaceful methods was often supplanted by the monk [Pg 110] who used all means that he might make "Christians" of men who had no alternative but to be baptized or destroyed outright. "Better be dead than be damned," thought the energetic priests. Never was a dastardly deed wrought by the conqueror but there was a priest at hand with heaven's blessing on the crime. If this is doubted, read the unchallenged Prescott's Conquest of Peru. Spanish colonial policies had small regard for the rights or development of the conquered. It was one of the viceroys of Mexico who said, "Let the people of these dominions learn, once for all, that they were born to be silent and obey, and not to discuss nor have opinions in political affairs." The native village of the far interior country, away from the main roads and untouched by uplifting influences, exhibits the situation at its worst; but even so, these same villages exhibit a better condition than do the wretched Indian huts of the high Andes farther south. The population of these distant barrios on the Isthmus can hardly be classified on distinct lines; every symptom is accounted for and every unfavorable trait explained by historical factors and social forces that have combined to make remote Panama what it is to-day. There can be no radical change in these conditions until some new program of social uplift, educational progress, and spiritual life is introduced to cause a fresh reaction and begin a new life. [Pg 111] The ignorant native hears an intolerable burden of superstition. His contact with the form of church life that exists in these towns is mainly expressed in the celebration of occasional fiestas and the payment of fees for services rendered, and supposed in some way to benefit the contributor or his dead relatives. If "the test of a religion is its results upon a people," then the impartial observer must draw his own conclusions. <div class="imgcenter" style="width: 500px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-109.jpg" width-obs="500" height-obs="345" alt="Interior Meat Market" title="" /> INTERIOR MEAT MARKET</div> That these interior towns are intensely conservative is to be expected. How could it be otherwise than that the methods of the fathers should be good enough for the sons? If human progress is not the result of dominant inner forces resident in human nature, but comes from the application of external stimuli, then the Panamanian [Pg 112] may have some excuse for his situation, in a social history that has afforded little incentive for exercise of enterprise or industry. <div class="imgcenter" style="width: 223px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-110.jpg" width-obs="223" height-obs="600" alt="The Flavor of Old Spain" title="" /> THE FLAVOR OF OLD SPAIN</div> If the far interior of Panama is to be judged by present industrial efficiency, the case is lost before the trial begins. General absence of everything that marks a high grade of living emphasizes the failure of the status quo. Incompetence, bad management, childishness cry aloud from rotting buildings, rusting machinery, neglected plantings, impassable "roads," and impossible officials. Streets knee-deep in mire, mud-floored houses, through which pigs wander at will, shiftlessness, dirt, insanitation are the register of the wet season in interior Panama. The outstanding church building is often itself dirty and disheveled. Sidewalks exist only as balconies for individual houses, and vary in height at the caprice of the builder, making the middle of the street the only convenient highway for the passers-by. [Pg 113] The bulk of this out-of-the way business is handled by the ever-present Chino with his little tienda. If there is no Chinese store in the town, it is because the town is too poor to support one. Business involves effort and industry, both distasteful to the native, but breath-of-life to the Chinese. Inspection of some native towns creates the impression that everybody just sits around all day. Along the streets the people lounge the idle hours away. Hundreds of young men lie about, rocking in chairs, lying in hammocks, hanging about corners. Women slowly move about their household duties, but the men are experts at the rest cure, and scarcely move at all. Once a young man gets a pair of shoes and a necktie, his industrial career abruptly terminates, and thenceforth he toils not, neither does he spin. He has arrived and is content. <div class="imgcenter" style="width: 267px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-111.jpg" width-obs="267" height-obs="600" alt="Taking the Rest Cure" title="" /> TAKING THE REST CURE</div> Lack of energy brings inevitable localization of all interest and action. Most of the people have never been any distance from home and have no desire to travel. Travel means exertion of [Pg 114] some kind. I asked a guide to go one day further than the first-day trip for which I had hired him, and he returned an embarrassed and deprecating smile, as if I had asked him to go to the French front. It was too far from home. It is impossible to get information worth anything about the country. "How many people live in this town?" brings one of two answers. Either it is, "I do not know," or it is "Bastante" ("Plenty"). "How far is it to Los Santos?" brings something like, "Señor, when the sun is there [pointing] you set out on your journey, and when it is over there, you will arrive." We crossed a well-traveled road. "Where does this road lead?" "To the port, señor." "And where does the other end of it go?" "To San Pedro, señor." "How far is it to the port?" "The same distance as to San Pedro." "And how far is that?" "Bastante lejo, señor" ("Plenty far, sir"). Cultivation of crops is unknown. When the brush and trees are cleared the stumps are left about two feet high; it is easier to do the chopping at that point than lower down. After the fallen growth has sufficiently dried out it is burned off and the stumpy field usually planted to corn. This corn is allowed to shift for itself until ripe, and after the stalks have rotted awhile [Pg 115] the land may have an application of grass seed and be used for pasture, in hope that the stock will wear down the stumps until it becomes at last possible to perform an athletic feat, called for want of a more accurate term, "plowing." I saw four oxen all pulling in different directions, while a plow occasionally disturbed the weedy surface of the ground and turned up irregular lumps of hard soil. The proprietor looked on with pride and asked if I had ever plowed. I had. Did I plow like that? I did not. When this plowing has been acted out, and some sort of clod-breaking has taken place, sugar cane is planted, and the work of cultivation is ended. For a dozen years the cane will produce annual crops of more or less value without any attention whatever other than the cutting of the cane when ready for the mill. <div class="imgcenter" style="width: 600px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-113.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="192" alt="The Oxen Stage of Agriculture" title="" /> THE OXEN STAGE OF AGRICULTURE</div> An interior road is an experience. A road is a route of travel along which various persons make their way as best they are able, under such conditions of weather and impassability as happen to exist. In the dry season some of these [Pg 116] tracks wear down to a condition in which a cart can be coaxed over the right-of-way. In wet weather nearly all the native thoroughfares are wholly impassable except for sturdy oxen, which plow their way through the mud and sinkholes with deliberation born of long practice. The man at the bottom of the scale is not to blame for his situation. He is the victim of a system that has made it exceedingly unwise for him to do anything other than what he does. Poverty is the only protection of the people. For nearly two centuries pillage, plunder, piracy, and murder were the record of the Isthmus. Every buccaneer who sailed the Spanish main seems to have made a business of taking a chance at the Isthmus. It was open season for every kind of crook work that the minds of men could invent. Most of this activity was confined to the trade route in the middle of the Isthmus, but the influence and terror of this bloody age extended both ways as far as the country was inhabited. The common people were exploited, plundered, murdered, enslaved, and beaten at every turn. Only a fool would work when to work meant that his head was marked for immediate oppression. If he forgot himself and got hold of anything of value, some one was ready to take it away from him without delay; and if he objected, he lost both his property and his head. The social dregs that strayed to Panama or [Pg 117] stayed in Panama in those lurid days were men without character, conscience, or capacity for industry, other than in their favorite occupation of despoiling some one else. These pirates and plunderers are gone, but they have left their tracks and traces in the civilization of the Isthmus. The common people to-day are mild and submissive; no other type could survive. It is possible to exist in dire poverty and pass the time without land or property, and that is the only kind of existence that holds any promise of peace to the man at the bottom. <div class="imgleft" style="width: 357px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-115.jpg" width-obs="357" height-obs="400" alt="Wayside Sellers of Fruit" title="" /> WAYSIDE SELLERS OF FRUIT</div> There have been efforts on the part of the leaders of Isthmian life to inaugurate a new era and bring about improvements. These efforts have been spasmodic and usually complicated by political considerations. Large appropriations have been made for roads, public buildings, machinery, schools, and mills, but while the money has been expended, it has gone like water in a sandy desert, and graft and inefficiency have swallowed up the funds with little or no results. <div class="imgright" style="width: 290px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-116.jpg" width-obs="290" height-obs="500" alt="The House Beside the Road" title="" /> THE HOUSE BESIDE THE ROAD</div> It has been supposed that appropriations for bridges, public markets, or good roads would in [Pg 118] some way take the place of industry and thrift and bring good times. Half-finished markets rear their ghastly skeletons in town centers. Rusting road-rollers stand idle, decaying machines lie neglected, and half-finished public works are covered with cobwebs. Nobody notices, no one cares, and nothing is done. A railroad was built with the evident idea that it would bring prosperity to a section of naturally rich country, but a railroad without crops is useless, and crops without labor are impossible, and labor without adequate returns is worth still less than it costs. The economic structure rests on the man at the bottom, and when this human foundation is the prey and target of every one above him the result can be nothing other than general distress and inefficiency. In some sections of the interior, as in the provinces of Coclè and Chitrè, meat cattle of good quality are raised. Shipping facilities to the [Pg 119] Panama market are very good. There is no regular inspection, but the cattle are uniformly healthy and in good condition. The cattle-raising end of the trade is all right, but the market is a different matter. The cattle buyers in Panama are organized into what is known as the meat trust, and these buyers hold the sellers in subjection. Prices are kept down to the lowest possible basis, and monopolistic methods so well known in North America are in full swing. Individual holders of interior ranchos have made earnest efforts to produce foodstuffs and introduce definite reforms into the methods of farming, but such persons have usually served as fearful examples to their neighbors. In an industrial system in which the one method of the man at the top is to keep his eyes open and whenever he finds anyone who has by chance or industry accumulated something, take it away from him—this does not stimulate long hours and speeding-up on the part of the men who do the work. When the United States took over the Canal Zone and paid the purchase price to the new Republic of Panama, a good appropriation was made to the interior provinces for the building of a system of highways as the first step in a general improvement of the country. Most of the provinces have little to show for this expenditure of money. In one province reports were received [Pg 120] that the money was being handed out in petty grafting operations and for political purposes and that no road was being built to speak of. An American engineer was sent to investigate. He reported the facts and was later put in charge of the "work." He reorganized the entire construction force, and at the expense of less than twenty thousand dollars built a road which has stood without repairs for a dozen years, and is in good condition to-day under heavy usage. But the reorganization pulled down on the engineer's head the wrath of the entire officialism of the province, and finally the men higher up in authority denounced the American for upsetting the smooth-working system at their expense. He had committed the unpardonable error of using the money to get results and build the road for which it was appropriated. This is interior Panama at its worst. There are Americans who have invested their money and their personal supervision in the development enterprises in Chiriqui, and they are hopeful of better things. There are officials who are genuinely anxious to see a better age begin. And the day will come when this fair land will make men rich by the abundance of its products and the certainty of large returns upon development work done under favorable conditions. But the conditions do not yet exist in any stable form. All of this is Panama at its worst, and forms [Pg 121] but the background of contrast for the picture of the fine possibilities that lie in the soil, and in the unreleased resources of a human stock that has never had a fair chance. Once separated from hookworm and superstition, given an industrial education, and assured competent leadership and certain returns for toil, and the lot of the Panamanian is no more incurable than that of any other victims of a bad system. <hr /> [Pg 122] <h2>CHAPTER IX</h2> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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