WEBVTT - Part Two: How The U.S.A. Murdered Panama with Chelsea Manning 0:00:00.040 --> 0:00:09.200 Mcast, Part two, Robert Evans Behind the Bastards, Panama, Chelsea 0:00:09.240 --> 0:00:13.800 Manning guests, Chelsea, how are you doing? On several minutes 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:16.640 after we last off, Hey, how's it calling? Uh, it's 0:00:16.640 --> 0:00:19.520 still snowing, still snowing. It is not snowing here. The 0:00:19.560 --> 0:00:22.599 snow apocalypse is is starting to end here. So I 0:00:22.640 --> 0:00:24.960 wanted to chat about something before we getting back into Panama. 0:00:25.040 --> 0:00:27.960 I've become aware that the state of Ohio is advertising 0:00:28.000 --> 0:00:30.640 on our podcast a lot about how how good a 0:00:30.640 --> 0:00:34.720 place to move Ohio is. Well, that's because everywhere is Ohio, 0:00:35.000 --> 0:00:39.640 is it? It's all Ohio. It's a it's just Ohio 0:00:39.800 --> 0:00:42.639 straight on down. I don't know. My experience in Cleveland 0:00:42.680 --> 0:00:45.280 suggests that there's something unique about Ohio. Maybe it's the 0:00:45.280 --> 0:00:48.200 way the river repeatedly caught on fire in the seventies. Yeah, 0:00:48.280 --> 0:00:51.479 well you know it's it's Uh, there's a vast conspiracy 0:00:51.640 --> 0:00:54.080 that has been keeping this from you, that every every 0:00:54.200 --> 0:00:58.680 everywhere is Ohio. It's just all Ohios. Yes, well, that's 0:00:58.720 --> 0:01:01.360 actually the greatest tragedy I can imagine. But I'm not. 0:01:01.800 --> 0:01:05.240 I'm not on the pro Ohio faction. Why why is 0:01:05.280 --> 0:01:08.479 Ohio choosing to advertise on our podcast. I think they 0:01:08.520 --> 0:01:10.440 think that a lot of are They're trying to get 0:01:10.440 --> 0:01:14.640 people to start businesses in Ohio. Um, I don't. I 0:01:14.680 --> 0:01:16.720 don't know why. I just didn't want anyone to think 0:01:16.720 --> 0:01:18.840 that I'm a chill for Ohio. I'm this is a 0:01:18.880 --> 0:01:23.200 firmly anti Ohio podcast. I was going to say, we're 0:01:23.200 --> 0:01:25.399 not going to guess, according to Chelsea, means that we're 0:01:25.440 --> 0:01:29.160 now anti the entire world. So because everywhere is Ohio, 0:01:29.360 --> 0:01:31.399 I guess we're gonna have to go full joker here. 0:01:31.680 --> 0:01:34.280 So if you are in a nuclear stilo right now 0:01:34.319 --> 0:01:37.160 listening to a podcast that you have saved on your phone, 0:01:37.800 --> 0:01:41.520 I guess we're now advising you to start the apocalypse. 0:01:41.680 --> 0:01:44.760 So also, I just want the listeners to know that 0:01:44.880 --> 0:01:47.400 I feel like I am now face timing with my 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:51.400 mom because Robert is only showing the top of his 0:01:51.480 --> 0:01:54.160 forehead on the mid shot. I have to be in 0:01:54.840 --> 0:01:56.880 I'm gonna Mac mansion right now and it doesn't have 0:01:56.920 --> 0:01:59.520 a good recording room. Shout out to my mom, who's 0:01:59.760 --> 0:02:03.880 the best person. Petty bourgeois this is this is the 0:02:03.880 --> 0:02:08.360 pettiest bourgeois place. I mean, that's PLAINO in a nutshell right, 0:02:08.400 --> 0:02:14.200 it's the land of thirty millionaires. Um, yeah, it is 0:02:14.240 --> 0:02:16.200 where it is where all of your chips and all 0:02:16.280 --> 0:02:19.880 of your your missile guidance systems come from my my 0:02:20.040 --> 0:02:23.320 high school. Like most of the kids there's parents either 0:02:23.360 --> 0:02:28.560 worked for Friedo Lay or Ray Theon. So, Um, it's 0:02:28.560 --> 0:02:33.280 a great place. In other words, Um, it's not Chelsea. 0:02:33.360 --> 0:02:37.760 Are you ready to dive into America's war on biology 0:02:37.840 --> 0:02:40.800 in order to make Panama safe for white people? Quite 0:02:40.840 --> 0:02:43.920 frankly no, but I think we're going to do that anyway. 0:02:44.440 --> 0:02:49.440 That's exactly what Panama said back in the eighteen well 0:02:49.440 --> 0:02:52.040 the whole time really, So when we last left Panama, 0:02:52.120 --> 0:02:54.079 it was being turned in a canal into a canal 0:02:54.120 --> 0:02:57.440 in order to further US financial and military interests. Obviously, 0:02:57.960 --> 0:03:00.239 as we talked about with the Suez Canal, which killed 0:03:00.240 --> 0:03:03.240 a hundred and twenty thousand people, building canals is a 0:03:03.320 --> 0:03:06.440 terrible thing to do. You should never make canals. At 0:03:06.520 --> 0:03:10.919 least they didn't have a biom to deal with Jesus. 0:03:10.960 --> 0:03:14.000 I mean, yeah, it was. It was about like Panama 0:03:14.080 --> 0:03:16.760 was not as rough as Suez obviously, but was a 0:03:16.880 --> 0:03:20.440 rough place to build a canal. Um, and the work 0:03:20.440 --> 0:03:22.919 couldn't be done entirely by non white people, whose desk 0:03:22.960 --> 0:03:25.560 could be easily ignored by the United States, and this 0:03:25.639 --> 0:03:27.480 is why they had to quest to make the canal 0:03:27.560 --> 0:03:32.040 zone biologically safe, which mostly meant eliminating mosquitoes which could 0:03:32.080 --> 0:03:35.640 cause transmit both malaria and yellow fever. Now, the man 0:03:35.720 --> 0:03:38.880 put in charge of this Titanic effort was Dr William 0:03:38.920 --> 0:03:42.680 Gorgeous born Gorgus I guess g O R g A S. 0:03:42.680 --> 0:03:45.440 I don't think it's pronounced gorgeous. Born in Alabama in 0:03:45.480 --> 0:03:48.520 eighteen fifty four to an explosives expert, Young will grew 0:03:48.560 --> 0:03:51.520 up obsessed with the military. He later admitted to skimming 0:03:51.560 --> 0:03:53.520 the Bible just just so he could read all of 0:03:53.560 --> 0:03:57.000 the battle scenes. William tried to enroll in West Point 0:03:57.600 --> 0:03:59.520 as a young man, but he failed to make the cut, 0:03:59.560 --> 0:04:02.040 and instead he went to Bellevue Medical School and then 0:04:02.120 --> 0:04:04.440 joined the army as a doctor. He served on the 0:04:04.440 --> 0:04:07.800 frontier during the Indian Wars, particularly in South Dakota, and 0:04:07.840 --> 0:04:10.440 then he was stationed in Cuba. After the US invasion 0:04:10.480 --> 0:04:14.440 in eight The Americans in Cuba ran into the same 0:04:14.480 --> 0:04:17.960 problem that they would later hit in Panama, disease in 0:04:18.040 --> 0:04:21.640 Cuba's case, this was yellow fever. Gorgas was point was 0:04:21.680 --> 0:04:24.080 put in charge of the effort of ridding the island 0:04:24.120 --> 0:04:26.840 of mosquitoes. His first task was to mandate that all 0:04:26.880 --> 0:04:30.239 Havannah residents cover cover cisterns, which are like open pots 0:04:30.279 --> 0:04:33.719 of water, or pay a fine. He devoted army engineers 0:04:33.720 --> 0:04:36.200 to the task of filling in and eradicating all standing 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:39.520 bodies of water, and in about eight months Gorgons succeeded 0:04:39.520 --> 0:04:42.039 in wiping out yellow fever in Havana. So it seemed 0:04:42.040 --> 0:04:44.240 like he was pretty good at this job of making 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:48.960 tropical islands and tropical areas safer for for white people 0:04:49.000 --> 0:04:51.320 to live in uh and he was considered a natural 0:04:51.320 --> 0:04:54.159 fit for the job of ending malaria in Panama. The 0:04:54.200 --> 0:04:56.560 Canal Treaty the US had signed with some guy who 0:04:56.600 --> 0:04:59.719 wasn't Panamanian gave the United States the right to administer 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:02.400 annotation not just in the canal zone, but in all 0:05:02.480 --> 0:05:05.880 Panamanian cities in any land the US might later decided 0:05:05.960 --> 0:05:09.279 wanted to use for some reason. Gorgons thus became the 0:05:09.320 --> 0:05:12.120 director of public health for the whole nation. In effect, 0:05:12.160 --> 0:05:14.880 at least, so this treaty where we're like yeah, we 0:05:14.880 --> 0:05:17.440 could basically do what everyone in the canal zone. Leads 0:05:17.480 --> 0:05:19.680 to us being able to put a guy in charge 0:05:19.680 --> 0:05:22.039 of public health for all of Panama. And when I 0:05:22.080 --> 0:05:24.440 say he's in charge of public health, he's not really 0:05:24.440 --> 0:05:27.520 in charge of everyone's health. He's in charge of ensuring 0:05:27.600 --> 0:05:31.359 public health of the white people in Panama. Right. His 0:05:31.400 --> 0:05:34.120 first degree was that all man made bodies of standing 0:05:34.120 --> 0:05:36.720 water must be eliminated. It turned out that the French 0:05:36.760 --> 0:05:39.680 canal builders had started a practice of leaving open water 0:05:39.800 --> 0:05:41.760 jugs at the base of their bed legs to keep 0:05:41.800 --> 0:05:44.480 ants away, which probably explains why so many of them 0:05:44.520 --> 0:05:47.800 died of malaria. The initial steps Gorge Gorgons took were 0:05:47.839 --> 0:05:51.800 pretty reasonable, but things very quickly turned Authoritarian inspectors were 0:05:51.800 --> 0:05:54.360 sent to enter every single home in Panama City in 0:05:54.440 --> 0:05:57.159 Cologne to look for open barrels and jugs of water. 0:05:57.200 --> 0:05:59.640 They did this on a regular basis, and violations were 0:05:59.680 --> 0:06:03.159 punished by fines, so he makes like water police, basically 0:06:03.200 --> 0:06:05.800 to make sure that people are not creating breeding grounds 0:06:05.800 --> 0:06:08.680 from mosquitoes. The bulk of u S efforts, however, were 0:06:08.680 --> 0:06:12.000 devoted to an omnocidal war on nature in order to 0:06:12.040 --> 0:06:15.120 reduce the mosquito population, and I'm gonna quote here from 0:06:15.160 --> 0:06:19.040 Emperors in the jungle. Much of the Sanitary Department's efforts 0:06:19.080 --> 0:06:21.400 focused on the non human world by cutting down and 0:06:21.440 --> 0:06:24.800 poisoning the environment in which insects and rodents lived. Puddles 0:06:24.800 --> 0:06:27.360 of fresh water that formed without human aid made excellent 0:06:27.360 --> 0:06:30.160 breeding places for mosquitoes. One of the methods employed to 0:06:30.200 --> 0:06:33.120 eliminate such breeding places was simply to do away with 0:06:33.160 --> 0:06:35.920 the jungle. Many square miles of jungle in the command 0:06:36.000 --> 0:06:38.320 in the Canal zone were cut or burned during the 0:06:38.360 --> 0:06:42.120 construction period, wrote the Chief Sanitary Inspector in nineteen sixteen, 0:06:42.279 --> 0:06:45.960 which increased evaporation from sunlight, shortened the mosquito season, and 0:06:46.040 --> 0:06:49.200 enabled the sanitary soldiers to locate hidden water. It also 0:06:49.240 --> 0:06:53.240 facilitated sanitary social control. Clearing made it impossible for the 0:06:53.360 --> 0:06:56.320 negroes to throw containers into the tall grass or brush, 0:06:56.360 --> 0:07:00.080 neither houses without detection. He added. Another important tactic is 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:02.960 to spread oil and other larva sides on all standing water, 0:07:03.240 --> 0:07:06.280 which killed mosquito larvae by by depriving them of oxygen. 0:07:06.520 --> 0:07:09.640 The Sanitary Department devised myriad ways to distribute the oil 0:07:09.840 --> 0:07:12.840 from sprinkling cans to horse drawn oil barrels. At the 0:07:12.840 --> 0:07:16.000 peak of this method, the sanitation men distributed sixty five 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:18.720 thousand gallons of crude oil a month on the isthmus 0:07:18.760 --> 0:07:22.960 As waters. So they are just pouring gasoline into fresh 0:07:23.000 --> 0:07:27.880 water in order to kill mosquitoes, man versus nature. Winning 0:07:27.960 --> 0:07:31.400 the wall. All the took was poisoning the thing we 0:07:31.440 --> 0:07:36.200 need to survive with gasoline. Yeah. Now, as Gorgeous and 0:07:36.200 --> 0:07:39.000 others pointed out, the importation of a large number of 0:07:39.040 --> 0:07:42.040 foreigners who were not immune to yellow fever favored propagation 0:07:42.040 --> 0:07:44.920 of disease, as the non immunes also became carriers of 0:07:44.960 --> 0:07:47.480 the fever once it was introduced through even a single case. 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:51.720 The physical construction also radically disrupted the environment, leading in 0:07:51.760 --> 0:07:54.680 some cases to malarial mosquito incubators of the kind that 0:07:54.720 --> 0:07:58.960 Gorgus's sanitation department was opposing fines on Panamanians to eliminate 0:07:59.360 --> 0:08:02.440 the canal. We're itself was constantly creating the most desirable 0:08:02.520 --> 0:08:06.520 places for the same great biological purpose were, wrote Gorgus's widow. 0:08:06.760 --> 0:08:08.920 Every time a steam shovel made a deep hole, water 0:08:08.920 --> 0:08:12.920 would almost immediately collect, and the anopolies malarial mosquitoes would 0:08:12.920 --> 0:08:15.160 at once seek such a depression as a breeding ground. 0:08:15.360 --> 0:08:18.160 In nineteen twelve, for example, the suction dredgers employed to 0:08:18.240 --> 0:08:21.320 deepen the canal Ditch and Gatton pumped immense quantities of 0:08:21.360 --> 0:08:24.680 saltwater and silt into the jungle, killing the trees and vegetation. 0:08:25.000 --> 0:08:27.720 The resulting mass of dead matter generated a swamp that 0:08:27.760 --> 0:08:31.160 attracted swarms of an afolies mosquitoes. As a result, the 0:08:31.160 --> 0:08:33.559 death rate from malaria in nineteen o six was higher 0:08:33.559 --> 0:08:35.680 than it was for workers from the French Canal effort 0:08:35.679 --> 0:08:40.160 from eighteen eighty eight to nineteen o three. So there's 0:08:40.160 --> 0:08:42.360 a couple of fascinating things about how badly they funk up. 0:08:42.400 --> 0:08:45.280 One of them is that they focus all these authoritarian measures, 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:48.280 basically building a police force to punish black people from 0:08:48.360 --> 0:08:51.480 leading jugs of water, while at the same time they're 0:08:51.520 --> 0:08:55.920 creating these massive miles long mosquito incubators by digging these 0:08:55.960 --> 0:08:58.760 holes which fill up with water, and by poisoning huge 0:08:58.840 --> 0:09:01.480 chunks of jungle and turning them into swamps. So they're 0:09:01.520 --> 0:09:05.720 like they're blaming they're both blaming the mosquitoes having a 0:09:05.720 --> 0:09:08.400 place to breed on black people having jugs of water 0:09:08.440 --> 0:09:12.160 without covers and they're creating land for mosquitoes to breed 0:09:12.160 --> 0:09:15.600 in order to build this canal. It's pretty rad. Yeah. 0:09:15.679 --> 0:09:17.440 And what what I what I think is fascinating is 0:09:17.480 --> 0:09:19.320 just like looking at the looking at the map here, 0:09:19.640 --> 0:09:23.400 like the garden locks are like the shortest section of 0:09:23.520 --> 0:09:26.559 the entire Like they have to make this huge cut 0:09:26.800 --> 0:09:30.120 through the mountains on the on the east side, but 0:09:30.160 --> 0:09:32.040 on the west side they have like this very short thing. 0:09:32.080 --> 0:09:35.400 But it's like it's it's biologically treacherous, it's you know, 0:09:35.520 --> 0:09:39.720 it's got it's got all the standing water everywhere. Yeah. Yeah, 0:09:39.760 --> 0:09:45.960 it's it's a fascinating situation that I didn't realize, Like 0:09:46.720 --> 0:09:48.959 I I assumed because I'd heard as a kid that 0:09:49.000 --> 0:09:50.800 like the Panama and Al bunch people died from Lariay. 0:09:50.800 --> 0:09:52.960 It assume as just because there's a ton of malario 0:09:53.080 --> 0:09:57.000 malarialist mosquitoes like in in the area. I didn't realize that, 0:09:57.040 --> 0:10:00.840 like number one, we brought a out of the problem 0:10:00.840 --> 0:10:03.240 with malaria there by both like the kind of people 0:10:03.280 --> 0:10:05.320 we imported to build the canal, and by the fact 0:10:05.360 --> 0:10:08.880 that we made breeding grounds and we like poisoned the 0:10:08.960 --> 0:10:11.719 jungle with salt water and created a rotting swamp that 0:10:11.800 --> 0:10:14.840 the mosquitoes would love, like I I yeah, I assumed 0:10:14.840 --> 0:10:16.400 it was just like yeah, it was just always really 0:10:16.480 --> 0:10:19.880 dangerous before modern medicine to build stuff in Panama and 0:10:19.920 --> 0:10:22.960 it turns out like no, no, no, yeah, it was 0:10:23.000 --> 0:10:26.360 bad engineering, like we made it so dangerous, which is 0:10:26.480 --> 0:10:30.320 rad now. It's worth noting Chelsea that yellow fever and 0:10:30.360 --> 0:10:34.320 malaria were the only diseases that US occupiers concerned themselves 0:10:34.360 --> 0:10:38.160 with fighting, despite the fact that pneumonia actually killed more people. 0:10:38.440 --> 0:10:40.760 From nineteen o six to nineteen o seven, pneumonia killed 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:43.720 twice as many workers as malaria, but nine of the 0:10:43.720 --> 0:10:46.680 people who died of pneumonia were classified by the US 0:10:46.800 --> 0:10:50.840 as colored, and thus their deaths were considered acceptable. Gorgus 0:10:50.880 --> 0:10:54.040 and his men were taught were tasked with fighting tropical diseases, 0:10:54.320 --> 0:10:58.000 and in European medical literature at the time, the definition 0:10:58.000 --> 0:11:01.160 of a tropical disease was a zase that affected white 0:11:01.200 --> 0:11:07.320 people in the tropics. That's that's and that's interesting that, 0:11:07.400 --> 0:11:10.839 I mean, that is interesting. It is yeah, I mean 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:13.480 it's fun, but it's also interesting, like yeah, just it 0:11:13.520 --> 0:11:15.440 never like you know, like in terms of like how 0:11:15.480 --> 0:11:18.280 it was like how these things were classified. Yeah, I 0:11:18.320 --> 0:11:20.560 had no idea that like that that it was literally 0:11:20.600 --> 0:11:22.560 down to so it's sort of like it was. It was. 0:11:22.679 --> 0:11:24.760 So it's like it's sort of like black lung from 0:11:24.800 --> 0:11:31.760 like being exposed to like construction dust too. Yeah, it was. 0:11:31.800 --> 0:11:34.400 It was both the dust and there was another factor 0:11:34.400 --> 0:11:37.440 in like why the pneumonia was so bad, Like obviously 0:11:37.440 --> 0:11:39.680 like the construction by a product, all the oil and 0:11:39.720 --> 0:11:43.320 stuff that's everywhere has an impact. Also, these colored you 0:11:43.320 --> 0:11:46.760 know generally black Caribbean canal workers were bringing brought brought 0:11:46.800 --> 0:11:50.720 into Panama live in these filthy converted box cars where 0:11:50.760 --> 0:11:53.200 they sleep six dozen to a room and there's no 0:11:53.320 --> 0:11:56.800 mosquito screens, right, and they often had to use jars 0:11:56.800 --> 0:12:00.720 and bottles as their bathrooms because the actual houses were 0:12:00.800 --> 0:12:04.520 distant and like across a swamp or something. Um so, 0:12:04.840 --> 0:12:07.679 and and you know this is again how the the 0:12:07.679 --> 0:12:11.920 the black Caribbean employees are being treated. All white employees 0:12:11.960 --> 0:12:15.160 received furnished departments in the cities and they probably just 0:12:15.160 --> 0:12:17.960 didn't even get a proper diagnosis for like for like 0:12:18.000 --> 0:12:20.960 basic bacterial infections. No, of course not. And this and 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:23.640 this is a pre penilla. This this is pre penisilla too, 0:12:23.720 --> 0:12:26.480 So it's not all on the Some of the difficulty 0:12:26.520 --> 0:12:28.320 with treating it is they don't really know how. But 0:12:28.760 --> 0:12:31.680 the fact that they don't care about these people's comfort 0:12:31.800 --> 0:12:35.120 or sanitation is why pneumonia spread so much. And they 0:12:35.160 --> 0:12:39.600 also don't care about pneumonia because it's not hurting white people, um, 0:12:39.600 --> 0:12:43.720 which is great. Uh. And the reason and there was 0:12:43.800 --> 0:12:46.280 like this was not just taken for granted. They spent 0:12:46.400 --> 0:12:50.240 time to justify why white workers needed furnished departments while 0:12:50.280 --> 0:12:54.560 black workers could live in these like filthy, crowded box cars. Uh. 0:12:54.600 --> 0:12:56.880 And the reason that white people needed a more comfortable 0:12:56.920 --> 0:13:02.480 living situation was to stave off degenerate. So there were 0:13:02.520 --> 0:13:06.640 two schools of medical thought about how the tropics affected 0:13:06.640 --> 0:13:10.360 white people at the time. One school believed that tropical 0:13:10.400 --> 0:13:14.640 climates were inherently and specifically toxic to white human beings. 0:13:15.040 --> 0:13:17.959 As one doctor named Balfour wrote, there are those who 0:13:18.000 --> 0:13:20.120 believe that it is very doubtful if the white man 0:13:20.160 --> 0:13:23.760 can accomplish manual work out of doors under true tropical conditions, 0:13:24.000 --> 0:13:25.719 and that if he tries to do so, he will 0:13:25.760 --> 0:13:30.080 assuredly degenerate. The settlers should drive machines rather than do 0:13:30.160 --> 0:13:33.640 work with their own muscles. And these people form the 0:13:33.679 --> 0:13:36.880 basis of modern medicine. Yeah, yeah, it says a lot. 0:13:37.559 --> 0:13:39.640 It's just bad to be in the white it's toxic 0:13:39.720 --> 0:13:42.880 just the white people. Now. Another school of medical thought 0:13:42.880 --> 0:13:45.600 at the time, championed by men like Gorgons, believed that 0:13:45.640 --> 0:13:49.320 white people could live in the tropics given proper sanitation 0:13:49.440 --> 0:13:53.640 and segregation to quote, keep their blood pure. Children who 0:13:53.679 --> 0:13:55.920 were blought to the tropics were thought to be put 0:13:55.960 --> 0:13:59.240 at risk by contacts with the natives, which Navy Surgeon 0:13:59.320 --> 0:14:02.760 General still claimed is apt to have a detrimental effect 0:14:02.800 --> 0:14:07.800 upon children's moral and mental outlook. Now this is so 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:14.480 much worse than I think. I really bleak. Oh my god. Yeah, 0:14:14.559 --> 0:14:16.200 I mean that we're building to the story of how 0:14:16.240 --> 0:14:20.960 the US exported Jim Crow to Panama. So one store 0:14:21.040 --> 0:14:23.720 one solution to the problem of like that it's dangerous 0:14:23.800 --> 0:14:26.800 for uh white people to be in tropical conditions for 0:14:26.840 --> 0:14:30.080 too long was to give white workers regular extended vacations 0:14:30.120 --> 0:14:32.760 back north, a privilege which was not extended to non 0:14:32.800 --> 0:14:36.120 white laborers. The perceived vulnerability of white people in the 0:14:36.120 --> 0:14:38.880 tropics was also used as a justification for why hard 0:14:38.960 --> 0:14:42.320 manual labor should be done only by black and indigenous workers. 0:14:42.920 --> 0:14:46.360 Starting in nineteen ten, the international frenzy over phrenology reached 0:14:46.400 --> 0:14:50.000 the canal zone. Doctors started to collecting autopsy data on 0:14:50.080 --> 0:14:55.240 dead canal workers to answer questions quote concerning certain racial features. 0:14:55.560 --> 0:14:59.320 They noted brain weights, skull thickness, cephalic index, skull shape, 0:14:59.360 --> 0:15:03.080 and homicide or altercational tendencies, and they broke these down 0:15:03.120 --> 0:15:05.680 based on race. As a result of this data, Tropical 0:15:05.760 --> 0:15:09.320 doctors concluded that so many black people died violently on 0:15:09.360 --> 0:15:12.080 the canal project died because they were crushed by machinery 0:15:12.160 --> 0:15:14.080 or something you know, as opposed to death and disease. 0:15:14.360 --> 0:15:16.960 They decided that this this was so common with black workers, 0:15:17.200 --> 0:15:19.680 not because of poor safety measures or because of the 0:15:19.720 --> 0:15:22.320 fact that black workers were used to do all manual 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:24.960 labor because it was considered dangerous for white workers, but 0:15:25.040 --> 0:15:29.520 because black workers were genetic genetically had quote a striking 0:15:29.640 --> 0:15:34.440 lack of appreciation for a dangerous environment. So the reasons 0:15:34.480 --> 0:15:36.600 so many of them are getting crushed by machinery isn't 0:15:36.600 --> 0:15:39.080 because we're the they're the only ones that we have 0:15:39.320 --> 0:15:42.680 doing this manual labor, and because we have no safety procedures. 0:15:42.920 --> 0:15:48.120 It's because their brains aren't capable of understanding dangers. Good 0:15:48.120 --> 0:15:56.480 stuff real, this is it's very bleak. Uh yeah, this 0:15:56.560 --> 0:15:59.040 was a rough read. That book Emperors in the Jungle 0:15:59.200 --> 0:16:03.120 is a fucking bleak read. Now, the dangers of the 0:16:03.120 --> 0:16:05.680 tropics for white people were not seen as a reason 0:16:05.720 --> 0:16:09.560 to avoid colonizing tropical climates by everyone. At least Gorgons 0:16:09.640 --> 0:16:12.480 and many like him were convinced that settlement in South 0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:15.440 America would allow white people to avoid overpopulation in the 0:16:15.520 --> 0:16:19.120 United States, but first tropical disease needed to be eliminated. 0:16:19.320 --> 0:16:22.000 This would quote enable man to return from the temperate 0:16:22.080 --> 0:16:24.560 regions to which he was forced to migrate long ago, 0:16:24.960 --> 0:16:28.440 and again live and develop in his natural home, the tropics. 0:16:29.040 --> 0:16:32.520 In his book, John Lindsay Poland notes an implicit premise 0:16:32.640 --> 0:16:35.520 was that those already living in the tropics were not men, 0:16:36.280 --> 0:16:39.520 which is a good point from John Lindsay Poland. Now, 0:16:39.920 --> 0:16:42.440 the repeated failure of Gorgus and I know I'm pronouncing 0:16:42.440 --> 0:16:45.360 his name differently every time, but fuck him. The repeated 0:16:45.360 --> 0:16:48.520 failure of Gorgus another tropical doctors to actually defeat the 0:16:48.560 --> 0:16:51.160 diseases they were trying to fight lead them to one 0:16:51.200 --> 0:16:55.120 inescapable conclusion their failures were the result of black people, 0:16:55.440 --> 0:16:57.680 of course, Like we're not going to admit that we 0:16:57.800 --> 0:17:00.160 fucked up fighting mosquitoes. It's got to be the act 0:17:00.160 --> 0:17:03.640 of all of these people that we have imported into Panama. 0:17:03.840 --> 0:17:07.399 So there's there's layers of horrific stuff going on. It's 0:17:07.520 --> 0:17:11.400 really deep. You have terraforming, you have a terraform project 0:17:11.560 --> 0:17:14.879 and an ethnic cleansing and a sort of subjugation like 0:17:15.119 --> 0:17:18.119 program all at the same time. And it's like and 0:17:18.119 --> 0:17:21.320 it's like being medicalized. It's like being like given like 0:17:21.480 --> 0:17:24.480 you know, like uh like just like just like sort 0:17:24.480 --> 0:17:27.040 of like being in trans and sort of the trans community. 0:17:27.040 --> 0:17:29.240 It's like, oh, you know, like you know, you have 0:17:29.280 --> 0:17:31.600 to have a gate keeping doctor to like determine all 0:17:31.640 --> 0:17:33.399 of these things and all these made up things that 0:17:33.440 --> 0:17:36.360 are based upon the predispositions of the doctors who are 0:17:36.440 --> 0:17:40.320 writing it. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's it's a it's like 0:17:40.359 --> 0:17:43.919 a layer cake of bigotry. Like the sediment of racism 0:17:44.000 --> 0:17:47.919 in this is very complicated and deep um, which I 0:17:47.960 --> 0:17:52.399 think is rad uh personally that it's such a complex 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:55.720 level of horror. I am not going to use time not. 0:17:56.800 --> 0:18:00.360 I'm not going to say that. Yeah, I mean, it's 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:04.160 it's it's it's obviously horrific um, which is why we're 0:18:04.200 --> 0:18:07.199 talking about it. So I'm gonna quote from Emperors in 0:18:07.200 --> 0:18:09.680 the Jungle because that book has a very good passage 0:18:09.720 --> 0:18:13.440 on how Gorges and his fellow doctors blamed the black 0:18:13.480 --> 0:18:16.120 Caribbeans that they were bringing into Panama for the fact 0:18:16.119 --> 0:18:20.200 that their disease control measures failed. What was needed, according 0:18:20.240 --> 0:18:22.800 to Dalla phrase Curry, a Canal Zone health officer in 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:26.320 the nineteen twenties, was a sanitary conscience, a set of 0:18:26.359 --> 0:18:29.919 internalized rules that both individuals and nations could follow. But 0:18:30.000 --> 0:18:33.400 while whites might be perceived as reliably civilized and obedient 0:18:33.440 --> 0:18:37.439 to sanitary regulations, West Indians and that's those are black Caribbeans. 0:18:37.680 --> 0:18:39.600 That's what they called him this period, as West Indians 0:18:39.840 --> 0:18:43.040 were seen as disturbingly negligent as elsewhere in the world, 0:18:43.200 --> 0:18:46.720 the enforcement of sanitation among the negroes as a gigantic task, 0:18:46.840 --> 0:18:49.399 wrote William Deek's director of the Medical Service during the 0:18:49.440 --> 0:18:51.960 Construction era. As long as he has a roof over 0:18:52.040 --> 0:18:53.800 his head and a yam or two to eat, he 0:18:53.880 --> 0:18:56.439 is content, and his idea of personal hygiene is on 0:18:56.520 --> 0:18:59.960 par with his conception of marital fidelity in these circumstance, 0:19:00.000 --> 0:19:02.960 and says only physical segregation would protect whites from black 0:19:02.960 --> 0:19:06.359 carriers of disease which could establish reservoirs and infected West 0:19:06.400 --> 0:19:09.800 Indians living in the bush. So, yeah, just a tremendous 0:19:09.840 --> 0:19:13.359 amount of bigotry here, Like the entire US project in 0:19:13.480 --> 0:19:17.280 Canal is is it's just racism all the way down. 0:19:17.560 --> 0:19:22.720 You know, it's it's it's you can't over emphasize how 0:19:22.760 --> 0:19:27.480 bigoted it is and stays until the fucking nineteen nineties. Um, 0:19:27.600 --> 0:19:31.240 this is probably why it's not in American high school textbooks. 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:34.520 I just heard we built a canal and Teddy Roosevelt 0:19:34.560 --> 0:19:41.200 was there. Yep, Yeah, didn't hear any of this. So 0:19:41.359 --> 0:19:43.600 during the construction of the canal, which took place from 0:19:43.640 --> 0:19:46.439 nineteen o four to nineteen fourteen, black people made up 0:19:46.440 --> 0:19:48.960 at least three out of every four workers, and most 0:19:48.960 --> 0:19:51.879 of these people were imported from the Caribbean, an act 0:19:51.920 --> 0:19:55.879 which permanently changed the racial dynamics of Panama. Using public 0:19:55.920 --> 0:19:59.360 health and sanitation as a justification, The US then imported 0:19:59.480 --> 0:20:03.360 Jim C Laws to Panama as well, effectively creating a 0:20:03.440 --> 0:20:07.399 massive new racial underclass in that country. Most white people 0:20:07.440 --> 0:20:10.000 had no contact with their black co workers outside of 0:20:10.000 --> 0:20:14.439 the jobs. Indigenous Panamanians endured somewhat less oppression, but the 0:20:14.520 --> 0:20:17.600 United States still considered them unworthy of having any say 0:20:17.600 --> 0:20:19.480 in the canal that was being cut through the middle 0:20:19.480 --> 0:20:22.960 of their country. Panama was seen as a seedy, dangerous place, 0:20:23.000 --> 0:20:26.600 and its people were inherently criminal and unreliable. One American 0:20:26.640 --> 0:20:29.320 writer at the time described the country as a hideous 0:20:29.400 --> 0:20:33.520 dung heap of physical and moral abomination. A US congressman 0:20:33.560 --> 0:20:36.199 called the black population of Panama, which the US had 0:20:36.200 --> 0:20:38.560 brought there in the first place, to be of no 0:20:38.680 --> 0:20:41.520 more use than mosquitoes and buzzards. And again, these are 0:20:41.560 --> 0:20:43.440 the people doing three quarters of the work to build 0:20:43.480 --> 0:20:54.000 the canal. Uh, We're such a good country, really nailing 0:20:54.000 --> 0:20:58.200 it forever. So the legacy of segregation in Panama began 0:20:58.240 --> 0:21:00.320 at the express command of the United States, and it 0:21:00.440 --> 0:21:03.120 is still with Panama today. As we will discuss later, 0:21:03.520 --> 0:21:05.639 the nation was independent on paper, but it was a 0:21:05.680 --> 0:21:08.160 colony and all but name, and the US acted quickly 0:21:08.200 --> 0:21:11.879 and brutally to stifle anything that's smacked of independence. Panama 0:21:11.920 --> 0:21:14.440 initially had its own military, a small group of two 0:21:14.480 --> 0:21:17.480 hundred and fifty men led by General Estemon Huertas, a 0:21:17.520 --> 0:21:21.159 former Colombian officer and a hero of the Panamanian independence movement. 0:21:21.520 --> 0:21:24.000 He was competent and beloved, but not willing to have 0:21:24.080 --> 0:21:27.760 his beloved nation exists purely for US profit. In nineteen 0:21:27.760 --> 0:21:30.320 o four, when canal construction had just begun, he threatened 0:21:30.359 --> 0:21:32.960 to revolt due to the United States' treatment of his people. 0:21:33.440 --> 0:21:36.879 U S diplomatic representatives advised the Panamanian president that he 0:21:36.880 --> 0:21:39.439 should fire the general, and U S Marines went in 0:21:39.480 --> 0:21:43.000 and disarmed his forces. Panama's army was disbanded and did 0:21:43.000 --> 0:21:47.359 not reform for half a century. Yeah, so we just 0:21:47.400 --> 0:21:48.800 get rid of that army. Were like, you know what 0:21:48.840 --> 0:21:51.320 if these people have an army that that might be 0:21:51.359 --> 0:21:53.680 a problem for us doing whatever we want in Panama. 0:21:54.000 --> 0:21:58.920 Let's just let's just xnay on the snarmy. A. I don't. 0:21:58.960 --> 0:22:01.639 I'm not great at pig Latin. Hey, it's a pulling 0:22:01.720 --> 0:22:09.240