The Colon people: Reading Caribbeanness through the Panama Canal

The Colon Man, a West Indian laborer named after one of the Panamanian isthmus\u27s largest cities, fictionally represents an important historical event in the Caribbean: the construction of the Panama Canal. In thinking about why the figure has been so attractive to Caribbean writers such as George Lamming, Claude McKay, Michael Thelwell, Eric Walrond, and Maryse Conde, I argue that by using it, these writers can articulate a notion of Caribbean subjectivity that complicates the region\u27s history of oppression and exploitation. Models for a truly post-colonial subjectivity derive from such a complex vision. Histories of the Panama Canal most often depict the back-breaking labor, poor working and living conditions, and extreme rates of death and disease experienced by West Indian workers. The literature of the Caribbean tells another story: the project is often depicted as beneficial to the region, and the literary Colon Man is revered as an elder, his material goods and financial success are envied and emulated, his hard work celebrated, and his activism described as vital to the circum-Caribbean region. The differences between these accounts raise an important question: what could transform the canal project, unexceptional in its exploitation of black workers, into something self-affirming for Colon Men and attractive to Caribbean writers? I argue that the literary figure is shaped not only by its history of exploitation, but also by unofficial and vernacular histories, cultural and social realities. By drawing on unofficial experiences of West Indian isthmian laborers, Caribbean writers identify the need for more inclusive definitions of Caribbeanness. Their versions of the figure draw on memories and songs, in addition to possibilities that inhere in the region\u27s cultural and social life; the result is a metaphor or trope that complicates univocal representations of Caribbean peoples as mere victims of colonialism. This study foregrounds the complication that the literary Colon Man introduces into texts in which he appears. In so doing, I offer complexity and complication as vital components in post-colonial responses to historical oppressions