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

The Silver Women highlights the overlooked role of Black migrant women in the construction of the Panama Canal by emphasizing their essential contribution to the provisioning economy that supported the segregated Black West Indian labor force. These women developed strategies of claims-making, kinship, community building, and market adaptation to navigate the contradictions and violence of U.S. empire, while also nurturing further West Indian migrations and linking Panama to other parts of the Caribbean diaspora.

Format: Hardback
Length: 296 pages
Publication date: 31 January 2023
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

The Panama Canal's construction is often hailed as a remarkable feat of American ingenuity, but its reliance on the labor of Black migrant women remains less visible and less understood. Joan Flores-Villalobos's book, The Silver Women, seeks to shift the narrative by centering on the West Indian women who traveled to Panama to contribute to the construction of the canal. By highlighting the intimate lives, choices, grief, and ambitions of these women, Flores-Villalobos invites readers to place them at the center of the economic and geopolitical transformation brought about by the canal's construction and U.S. imperial expansion.

Black West Indian women played a crucial role in making the canal construction possible by providing the indispensable everyday labor of social reproduction. They built a provisioning economy that catered to the segregated Black West Indian labor force, effectively subsidizing the construction effort and the racial calculus that differentiated pay in silver for Black workers and gold for white Americans. Despite facing racial discrimination and segregation, West Indian women mostly worked outside the purview of U.S. canal authorities. They did not hold contracts, had limited access to official services and wages, and received payment in both silver and gold. From this marginalized position, they developed innovative strategies to evade and sometimes subvert the legal, moral, and economic constraints imposed by imperial authorities on the migrant workforce.

West Indian women employed various tactics of claims-making, kinship, community building, and market adaptation to navigate the complexities and violence of the U.S. empire. These strategies not only facilitated their survival but also contributed to the further West Indian migrations, establishing connections between Panama and places like Harlem and Santiago de Cuba.

The Silver Women, therefore, emerges as a history that centers on Black women and their profound impact on the construction of the Panama Canal and the broader trajectory of U.S. imperial expansion. By shedding light on the experiences and strategies of these women, Flores-Villalobos offers a valuable contribution to our understanding of the complex and multifaceted history of the Americas.

Dimension: 6 x 9 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781512823639