ECONOMIC WASTE
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 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.
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.
[Illustration: INTERIOR MEAT MARKET]
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 may have some excuse for his
situation, in a social history that has afforded little incentive for
exercise of enterprise or industry.
[Illustration: THE FLAVOR OF OLD SPAIN]
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.
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.
[Illustration: TAKING THE REST CURE]
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 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, "Senor, 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, senor."
"And where does the other end of it go?"
"To San Pedro, senor."
"How far is it to the port?"
"The same distance as to San Pedro."
"And how far is that?"
"Bastante lejo, senor" ("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 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.
[Illustration: THE OXEN STAGE OF AGRICULTURE]
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 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 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.
[Illustration: WAYSIDE SELLERS OF FRUIT]
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.
It has been supposed that appropriations for bridges, public markets, or
good roads would in 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.
[Illustration: THE HOUSE BESIDE THE ROAD]
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 Cocle and Chitre,
meat cattle of good quality are raised. Shipping facilities to the 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 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 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.