The Silver Women: How Black Women’s Labor Made the Panama Canal

by Joan Flores-Villalobos

The construction of the Panama Canal is typically viewed as a marvel of American ingenuity. What is less visible, and less understood, is the project’s dependence on the labor of Black migrant women. The Silver Women shifts the focus of this monumental endeavor to the West Indian women who travelled to Panama, inviting readers to place women’s intimate lives, choices, grief, and ambition at the center of the economic and geopolitical transformation created by the construction of the Panama Canal and U.S. imperial expansion.

Joan Flores-Villalobos argues that Black West Indian women made the canal construction possible by providing the indispensable everyday labor of social reproduction. West Indian women built a provisioning economy that fed, housed, and cared for the segregated Black West Indian labor force, in effect subsidizing the construction effort and the racial calculus that separated pay in silver for Black workers and gold for white Americans. But while also subject to racial discrimination and segregation, West Indian women mostly worked outside the umbrella of U.S. canal authorities. They did not hold contracts, had little access to official services and wages, and received pay in both silver and gold. From this position, they found ways to skirt, and at times subvert, the legal, moral, and economic parameters imperial authorities sought to impose on the migrant workforce. West Indian women developed important strategies of claims-making, kinship, community building, and market adaptation that helped them navigate the contradictions and violence of U.S. empire. In the meantime, these strategies of social reproduction nurtured further West Indian migrations, linking Panama to places like Harlem and Santiago de Cuba.

The Silver Women is thus a history of Black women’s labor of social reproduction as integral to U.S. imperial infrastructure, the global Caribbean diaspora, and women’s own survival.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

291 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 31, 2023

Reviews

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

“American anti-Blackness has always been a hemispheric project, and so too have expressions of Black survival and regeneration.”


Where do you begin with a book that has had such an impact? So much of the history I knew about the Canal Zone was from a U.S. or Zonian perspective and while I have tried to expand that view in the last ten years, this work has given me so much I did not previously know and has expanded the lens with which I view the world. This history, this particular history I think is absolutely necessary to be able to understand the world we live in and how we got to the place we are at today (at least from a U.S. perspective.)

Thank you Joan Flores-Villalobos for writing this book. Thank you DisaporaDash for your reading list and dropping this gem at all times. Thank yous are not enough for all the West Indian women (past, present, and future) because we literally would not be here without y’all. I know I will keep reading and learning and I hope everyone else does the same. You cannot understand our shared history if you do not know this history.

[Ninna Ottey · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Silver women es un libro fenomenal y necesario, que valida, reivindica y dignifica a todas esas mujeres afroantillanas que llegaron al Istmo de Panamá para la Construcción del Canal. De los libros que he leído acerca de los afroantillanos que llegaron para este periodo, ninguno pone en justa perspesctiva, el rol que cumplieron estas mujeres al llegar a Panamá.

A través de la investigación y las letras, Joan Flores-Villalobos, le da voz a todas esas mujeres que vinieron con el propósito de trabajar, con proposito de establecer un crecimiento económico en su núcleo familiar, con el propósito de formar parte de la historia desde las diversas trincheras y oportunidades que el patriarcado, el capitalismo y el racismo, les permitió. Joan nos ilustra y rompe con esas concepciones peyorativas y racistas que se tenían de mis ancestras y demuestra también la importancia que tuvieron ellas en el fortalecimiento de las comunidades negras a nivel económico, social, político y cultural, no solamente en Panamá, pero también en lugares como Cuba y Nueva York.

En resumidas cuentas, The Silver Women es una obra que demuestra que, desplazamiento de las mujeres afroantillanas a Panamá, quizás la construcción del Canal hubiese sido demorada y quizás tan trágica como la historia de la construcción del Canal Francés.

Definitivamente es una obra que debe ser de lectura obligatoria para todos los panameños, y espero que en algún momento pueda ser traducida al español.

[Kiki Tapiero · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really informative! This is such important reading on how vital Black women were to providing domestic services to sustain the building of the Panama Canal yet have historically been overlooked. I loved reading about how anti-marriage this community was, how marriage was part of the colonization of their private lives and the way their private lives were policed/surveilled. Many were accused of sex work. And it was also interesting learning about insult lawsuits within this community and also how they navigated the deaths of their families during the canal. This was full of very interesting examples and vivid stories, the author clearly put in so much research into this topic that is not super well documented and I was really impressed. The only downside is that the book did read a bit repetitively at some points. But maybe that's just nonfiction - I still would recommend to read!!

[Daniel Hardy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Learned a lot about the Panama canal project and the women working in the area. I never thought much about the topic until it recently came up in the news. I appreciated learning about the experiences and understanding more about USA 's influence abroad.