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Prowling About Panama

<h3>PANAMA AND PROGRESS</h3> The coat of arms of the Republic of Panama bears the inscription, "The repudiation of war and homage to the arts which flourish in peace and labor." Under the existing treaty with the United States the first part of this excellent motto is guaranteed. Panama is a providential Republic and presents some of the finest possibilities of the American tropics. The educated Panamanians have not been slow to proclaim these rich resources, but no large advance has been realized yet. The government of Panama has been friendly to promotion plans and development projects, and has undertaken some ambitious enterprises on its own initiative, but the results have been on the whole disappointing. American business men who have lived in Panama feel that no permanent success can be assured to such undertakings without the backing of the United States government. The officials of Panama naturally do not look with enthusiasm upon this idea and prefer to keep development enterprises within their own jurisdiction. And serious effort has certainly been made by the Panamanian government to support some of the [Pg 123] enterprises projected by native and foreign capitalists. <div class="imgcenter" style="width: 500px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-121.jpg" width-obs="500" height-obs="240" alt="Wireless at Darien" title="" /> WIRELESS AT DARIEN</div> The causes of economic backwardness and social conservatism are not difficult to locate and describe. From the cruel savagery of Pizarro and Balboa to the model communities of the Canal Zone is a far step. In the past seventy-five years the city of Panama has passed through a thousand years of social evolution, and in five years after Panama became an independent and sovereign nation the city was transformed, the government reorganized, and something like twentieth-century conditions replaced the filth and disease and squalor of the old days. The prowler in social history will find plenty of material here. By all the precedents of progress Panama should have been prosperous centuries ago. While other cities of coming metropolitan centers were yet barren wastes and sleeping [Pg 124] wildernesses Panama was on the highway of the world. When New York and San Francisco and Chicago were inhabited by birds and squirrels Panama was known everywhere. Panama had a century the start of all North America and was the pawn of kings and the gateway of empire before the Pilgrims landed in New England. If there be any advantage in an early start, Panama should have led us all in the race for a commanding position in the New World. There is much in location. A single foot on Broadway is worth more than a farm in the desert. Great cities have great positions on the map, and Panama began with a situation to which the world simply had to come. A dozen different solutions of the transportation problem presented by the Isthmian power and navigation were proposed, but it always came back to Panama. Here is the narrowest part of the connecting link of the continents, and here is the lowest point in the continental backbone. Without lifting her hand or voice, Panama had but to dream and wait till the world should come and pour into her lap the commerce and progress of the modern age. To-day Panama is on the direct line of travel between almost any two great cities at opposite ends of the earth. Melbourne and London, New York and Buenos Ayres, Port au Spain and Honolulu—draw the lines, and they all pass through Panama. It is an accepted axiom of unthinking people [Pg 125] that gold and prosperity are synonymous. If this were true, Panama should be the most prosperous and progressive of all cities of the earth to-day. More gold has been carried through her streets, and stored in her warehouses, and handled by her people, than in any other city of the Americas. The Peru of the Conquest was lined and lacquered with gold. The palaces of the Incas and the Temples of the Sun were plastered and burnished with gold; and for a century this gold was loaded into European ships, taken to Panama and packed across the Isthmus and then reshipped to Europe to fill the coffers of profligate kings and bolster up the fortunes of fallen states. All of it came through Panama; and if much of it did not remain there, it was not due to conscientious scruples on the part of the Panamanians. If a stream of gold could bring progress, Panama should have led the world for three hundred years. Probably the modern Republic of Panama is one of the very few endowed governments in the world. The purchase price of the Canal Zone, invested in New York real estate, yields an annual revenue which forms a part of the government budget. The annual payment of $250,000 by the Canal Zone also helps. Since the beginning of the French Canal enterprise a considerable part of the monthly payrolls of the Canal builders has found its way into the till of the [Pg 126] merchants in Colon and Panama, and these terminal cities have largely lived on the Canal Zone trade. Certainly, Panama has even to-day some peculiar financial advantages—and if these could bring prosperity, Panama should be prosperous. <div class="imgleft" style="width: 289px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-124.jpg" width-obs="289" height-obs="500" alt="Farm Grist Mill, Costa Rica" title="" /> FARM GRIST MILL, COSTA RICA</div> When the California gold rush began in 1848 Panama awoke from her century and a half of slumber and trouble began afresh. Again there was gold on the Isthmus, and again there was crime. Hundreds of ships discharged their cargoes and passengers on one side of the Isthmus, and the trip across was one not to be forgotten. Now that the world has once more had to fight out the old battle of free institutions, it is worth while to remember that the oldest independent nation of the modern world is Panama; and that the first of the Spanish colonies to achieve freedom from the misgovernment of the old country was this same little nation on the Isthmus. Tired of the kind of [Pg 127] supervision which she had been undergoing from Europe, in 1826 Panama revolted, set up political housekeeping for herself, until she was later merged with the free New Granada—the modern Colombia. If political independence has anything to do with advancement, then Panama should be very advanced indeed, for she led all her neighbors in achieving national separateness. The independence movement that swept over the western world a century ago affected Panama profoundly, and the microbe of political freedom soon produced a well-developed case of revolution—and the revolution was a success. Four score years afterward Panama again established her independence without the shedding of a drop of blood. If a spirit of independence can make a people prosperous, then Panama and prosperity should mean the same thing. Panama has some peculiar political advantages to-day. Where other nations maintain their political sovereignty and internal peace at the cost of huge sums of money and by means of armies and battleships, Panama is spared this enormous drain upon her resources and men and money, and finds her political independence guaranteed against all the nations of the earth. Likewise she is sure of internal peace and is the only really war-tight, revolution-proof country in Latin-America. By the treaty entered into between [Pg 128] Panama and the United States, in return for the Canal Zone and other concessions, the United States guarantees the independence of Panama and agrees to step in at any time when it may be necessary and maintain order throughout the Isthmus. The Panamanians are not enthusiastic over this situation, and some of the politicos inwardly resent very bitterly an arrangement which makes impossible their chosen profession of agitators and revolutionary leaders. There are people who tell us that the basis of national progress is economic and commercial. Given a land with all large resources, we shall perforce have a progressive people. Measured by this standard, Panama should lead all the rest. Her thirteen hundred miles of coast bound a narrow empire, but an empire of wonderful possibilities. Her inexhaustible soil, her frequent rivers, her rich jungles, her broad savanas, her high mountains and dense forests, her mines and climate and rainfall, and a world market right at her doors—all that nature could do to lay the foundations of material wealth seems to have been done here. If so-called modern science and engineering skill can bring prosperity, then the Isthmus of Panama includes the site of the world's last achievement in engineering, sanitation, and organized efficiency. Health conditions on the Canal Zone are better than in many cities of the [Pg 129] United States. General Gorgas said that there were three causes for which the Americans left Panama in the old days: yellow fever, malaria, and cold feet, and that of the three the last caused more desertions than the other two combined. It is worth noting that the first two mentioned have now vanished entirely, and it but remains to find a preventive for frigid pedal extremities to make the tropics a white man's land. <div class="imgcenter" style="width: 262px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-127.jpg" width-obs="262" height-obs="600" alt="Happy Kindergartners, Panama" title="" /> HAPPY KINDERGARTNERS, PANAMA</div> Panama and Colon to-day are clean and healthful. Even the tropical buzzard that hovers over every town and crossroad in this mid-America world has disappeared from these cities—starved to death. The American Board of Health looks after the garbage cans and backyards and drains, and woe be unto the unhappy mosquito that inadvertently wanders into this forbidden territory. The entire country is now free from yellow fever, and while there is some malaria in the lowlands [Pg 130] during the wet season, health conditions are far better than might be supposed. The question of climate raises visions of burning days and sleepless nights. To people who have never lived in the tropics any lurid tale is plausible. But these tales of torment do not come from dwellers in the tropics, but from overheated imaginations of writers of fiction who find the tropics a rich field, because most of their readers know nothing of the subject. There are more comfortable days in Panama, per year, than in New York. There is rarely a night when one cannot sleep in comfort. If there were nothing the matter but the climate, there would be no reason for shunning Panama. By all the rules of the great game of getting rich, Panama ought to be both prosperous and progressive. Seemingly every chance has come her way. Yet the visitor does not find Panama as a whole either rich or energetic. The terminal cities, Panama and Colon, have lived pretty well off the proceeds of the Canal Zone, but the great interior country is sparsely inhabited by people who are neither prosperous nor progressive. Poverty, indolence, and dirt abound throughout the provinces. Education is attempted, and the present system, when perfected, will afford fairly good rudimentary training, but as now conducted it is a promise as well as a performance. With a [Pg 131] high illiteracy the people of Panama cannot be said to live on a lofty intellectual plane. Not one man in a thousand makes the slightest attempt to improve the country, or takes the least interest in what the world is doing. <div class="imgcenter" style="width: 255px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-129.jpg" width-obs="255" height-obs="600" alt="Young Costa Rica Is Enterprising" title="" /> YOUNG COSTA RICA IS ENTERPRISING</div> In the capital city are educated and refined men, both prosperous and progressive. Their activities are divided among business enterprises, professional callings, and political activity. Very few of these men are interested in development projects to any extent. Agriculture as a basis of national wealth has little place in their thinking, unless somebody else can be induced to attend to the agriculture while they themselves take care of the wealth. Working on a farm is all right for ignorantes and peons, but has no interest for a gentleman. The development of natural resources is not interesting unless it affords a percentage of some sort, to be earned without effort. The unfortunate fact is that such modern conditions as exist in Panama to-day have largely been brought to her ready-made, [Pg 132] which may be why she does not take more interest in them. The question of morals and marriage laws is one which had better be let alone unless the prowler is prepared to find some very unpleasant things. All children are baptized, and, as before explained, the baptisms are registered and classified either as "Legítimo" or "Natural"—the latter, of course, being illegitimate. Only thirty per cent of the births of the Republic as a whole, are born of married parents. The reasons for this are not so simple as may at first appear. Panama has to-day a civil marriage law, but unless a man has abundant leisure, endless patience, and can afford to hire a lawyer or two, he had better be married somewhere else. Evidently, influences were brought to bear upon the framers of the civil law which induced them to overload it with requirements that make it exceedingly unpopular. No voice of protest is raised against this scandalous moral situation on the part of the priests of the established church, who merely shrug their shoulders and shake their heads and say, "What can you do about it?" Certainly, they themselves do nothing at all except to ignore the situation. There have been physical factors that have militated against the progress of Panama. While the climate is comfortable, most of the time it lacks stimulus. There is no "kick" in it. [Pg 133] Without occasional respites in a higher altitude and cooler atmosphere, the man from the north loses his driving power and his wife sometimes gets a case of nerves. Four hundred years of it will take the energy out of any man; and many of the present inhabitants of interior Panama appear to have lived here for about that length of time. For the development of high human efficiency it is required in a climate that it be something more than comfortable. It should at times be uncomfortable, and occasionally exasperating. <div class="imgcenter" style="width: 400px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-131.jpg" width-obs="400" height-obs="249" alt="Wooden Sugar Mill and Its Maker" title="" /> WOODEN SUGAR MILL AND ITS MAKER</div> The workers of the Rockefeller Foundation have found eighty per cent of the people of the provinces afflicted with hookworm. Highly commendable is the work done by these representatives of the Institute, but so long as the common people know nothing of sanitation, clean and [Pg 134] pure food, present conditions will continue. And physical "hookworm" is accompanied by a similar mental condition. There is a moral hookworm throughout the country, and life slumps down to a hand-to-mouth drag from one day to the next. Both physical and mental conditions are better in the cities, of course, but there is still room for a moral prophylactic. There are social forces which have largely accounted for this result. Possibly no place in the world shows more mixed blood than Panama. Shades and colors and tints and tones there are, and blends indescribable and also impossible to analyze or trace. The artists tell us that the combination of the primary colors with white results in a tint, while blending a primary color with black gives a shade. Well, most of these tones are shades, for the same scientific reason as that mentioned by the artist. From the Caribbean world has come its contribution of the West Indian Negroes, with consequent shady result. The social results of this mixture are various and distressing, but well understood by anyone who has lived in the interior of Panama. Even the cities are affected in the same way. Social standing, political availability, and personal influence are largely determined by the degree of whiteness—or darkness—that prevails in the skin. And the general desire of the ignorant and unmoral native of the interior to "lighten up the [Pg 135] breed" has led to a moral situation that bodes no good for the away-from-home white man who may be living for a longer or shorter time in the up-country provinces. Any aggressive North American, especially if he be from the West, looks upon the splendid areas of land, the fine rivers, the dense forests, and the other untouched resources of this rich country with amazement, and begins to plan development projects and dream of organizing syndicates, but the native loses no sleep over such vain imaginings. If he dreams at all, it is of his food if he be poor, and of politics if he be rich. Development in the North American sense is a disgrace, and no job for a gentleman. The smooth savanas may lie there untouched till kingdom come, for all he cares. The only interest in life is political manipulation. Law and politics are the two occupations most esteemed, and Panama is not different from other countries in the frequent association of these two professions. Whence comes this emphasis on political activity, to the neglect of commerce and agriculture? It comes from Europe with the early inheritance of the first settlements and rulers of this Latin world. For them any form of physical work was dire disgrace. "These two hands have never done an hour's work" was a boast and badge of quality. The climate of the tropics made this philosophy of life easy to accept and follow, and what [Pg 136] the leaders lived the followers did faithfully keep and perform. Of course somebody had to do a little work and raise a few vegetables and cattle, but the game was to find the unfortunate worker and then take away from him the product of his toil. Thus the getter lived without work and taught the loser the uselessness of further exercise. By way of clearness these conditions are here described in their worst and final form. Bad as they are, they are not the whole truth. It takes more than mixed blood and hookworm and snobbishness to account for the present social conditions of Central America. If moral conditions in Panama to-day are not ideal, it is not due to any absence of church or lack of religion. With the explorers and conquerors of the sixteenth century came the missionaries and priests. Crosses were set up, bells were hung, masses were said, and everywhere the elaborate ritual of the Spanish church was maintained. Whole villages were "converted," baptized, and labeled as good Catholics in a day's time. Massive and beautiful churches were soon built in centers of population, and every village has its church, often representing nearly as much value as half of the houses of the town combined. From the beginning until the coming of the North American to finish the Canal the Roman Church has had exclusive and uninterrupted occupation [Pg 137] of this entire territory. There has been no competition, and there have been no interferences with her moral and spiritual leadership. <div class="imgcenter" style="width: 500px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-135.jpg" width-obs="500" height-obs="210" alt="Public Market, David" title="" /> PUBLIC MARKET, DAVID</div> But in spite of this situation, or perhaps because of it, moral conditions are what they are in Panama to-day. Out of the closed Bible and the bound consciences of this system have come social incapacity and intellectual helplessness in all the fields of human activity. Most of Latin-America has not yet learned that the intellect, like the nation, cannot exist half slave and half free. Only free consciences can guide free citizens to the founding of free political institutions and social activities. A successful democracy can never be reared upon a foundation of superstition and spiritual despotism. More than all other factors this moral blight and spiritual dry-rot is what is the matter with Panama. The moral and spiritual climate of a people has more to do with the growth or destruction of a spirit of progress [Pg 138] than do thermometers and telephones and declarations of independence. Until the spirit of a Panamanian becomes a free spirit and he is permitted to think and worship after the dictates of a free conscience, Panama can never become a progressive nation. Highly favored among the nations of the earth, this little country affords a strategic opportunity for the setting up of a national experiment in development and progress. If this undertaking is to succeed, there must be added to the large economic, social, and strategic resources of the country the element of a free spirit and an enlightened conscience. Out of these will come a sense of the dignity of labor, the worth-whileness of education, and the development of the now dormant resources of this beautiful land. The problem of progress in Panama is inevitably linked with that of Protestantism. Work was begun by the Methodist Episcopal Church in Colon under Bishop William Taylor, and a strong West Indian congregation was gathered. This was later turned over to the Wesleyan Methodists, who maintain considerable work among the West Indians of the Caribbean Islands. With the purchase of the Canal Zone by the United States, the Methodists began to plan for work in Panama and eventually established a Spanish church and school at the head of Central Avenue, opposite the national palace. [Pg 139] But no serious effort was made by this denomination to meet and master the problems that arose from exclusive Protestant occupation of the Spanish-speaking section of the field until the time of the noted Panama Congress in February, 1916. Here met representatives of the Protestant movement in all Latin-America, and general principles of comity and cooperation were established and adopted. Under this working agreement, the Spanish work in the Republic of Panama was assigned to the Methodists as a unit of responsibility. To this area Costa Rica was later added. West Indian work was not included in this survey, and it is to be hoped that some similar representative and authoritative body may yet undertake to bring order and comity out of the unorganized, though friendly, confusion of West Indian denominational programs now existent. The Pan-Denominational Congress of 1916 made definite the responsibility for Spanish work in Panama, and the denomination now in charge of this field is working on a program somewhat adequate to the strategic importance of the very conspicuous location beside the Canal Zone. When fully realized and in operation, this program of work will wield a wide influence in the Spanish-American world. A large factor in this new program has been the interest and enthusiasm of the young people of the California Conference Epworth League, who have done much [Pg 140] to make possible an enlargement of the work undertaken. Too much praise cannot be given to the earnest and efficient missionaries who founded and have maintained this mission. The Seawall Church has already sent out its influences to the ends of the earth. The standards and results attained in Panama College, so far as that institution has been developed, have exerted a strong influence on the educational and moral life of the city and of the republic. The work in 1919 included a Spanish base at the Seawall location, with its church and school, and American congregation, a West Indian school and church in Guachapali, a Spanish mission Sunday school and evangelistic service in the school building kindly loaned by the Wesleyans, a Spanish mission school and preaching service in Guachapali, a West Indian Sunday school and service at Red Tank, and a Chinese mission near the market. Present plans for future expansion include, in addition to the work now under way at David, an adequate program of interior education and evangelization, an industrial and agricultural school, a strong institution church in Panama, an institution of higher education, and adequate work in Colon. This mission shares with the Northern Baptist Convention and the Northern Presbyterian Church denominational responsibility for most of Central America. The Baptists have work in [Pg 141] Honduras, Salvador, and the Presbyterians in Guatemala and in Colombia, further south. The Methodists complete the chain by the occupation of Panama and Costa Rica, in which latter republic work was begun in the latter months of 1917. Costa Rica presents an attractive field with its good climate, fertile country, Spanish-speaking population of intelligence, and large capacity for progress. The new mission met with success from the start and promises rapid growth. The three denominations named are working together in complete harmony and have developed a unified program of Christian education for Central America, as the beginnings of further coordination of effort. There is no overlapping, no competition, and, above all, no overcrowding, in this promising but sparsely occupied field. The Protestant denominational front on this field is well unified. There are several independent missions working in this field, some of which do not find it in their purposes to unite in any general movement, and none of which place emphasis on education. Chief among these is the Central America Mission which maintains workers in all the republics of Central America who confine themselves largely to evangelistic effort. All of the Central republics have constitutional religious liberty, and the work of Protestantism is officially welcome everywhere. Of petty persecutions [Pg 142] and ecclesiastical opposition there are numerous examples. The spirit of the Inquisition still smolders beneath the surface, but the new spirit of world-democracy makes more and more grotesque and futile the intolerance and bigotry of the Dark Ages. Protestantism in Latin-America has been in the van of every movement toward progress and has contributed much toward the foundations of the new era. Without the Protestant movement, the present state of advance would be impossible. To-day Protestantism is in the anomalous position of being inadequate in equipment and man-*power to meet the situation created or to supply the demands arising everywhere for adequate expression of free institutions. The lump is large and the leaven has been small, but the contagion of liberty and the awakening of conscience demand an adequate equipment and program. There is promise of a new and worthy approach in the large purposes of the great denominations to undertake in adequate manner a program of world-reconstruction made imperative by the close of the great war. The collapse of all but moral and spiritual forces as a guarantee of peace renders all former alignments obsolete and forces the church to new methods and more comprehensive undertakings. It is now resolved to go up and possess this goodly land on the mere borders of which we have lingered for [Pg 143] nearly a century. The coming generation will see a reorganization and reconstruction of the Protestant program in Latin-America, and before the end of the twentieth century this mighty continent will have attained a noble citizenship in the neighborhood of great races. <hr /> [Pg 144] <h2>CHAPTER X</h2> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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