The Silver Payroll

 When Donald Trump launched his Christmas Day neo-colonial tirade against Panama, one of his arguments in favor of retaking the Canal (in violation of U.S. treaties) was that thousands of Americans had ostensibly given their lives to build it. (38,000, specifically, in Trump's telling.) 

Yet, as the New York Times notes—by way of correction—in fact, the vast majority of those deaths were of workers from Latin America and the Caribbean: migrant laborers who, we can imagine, were brought in to contribute to the U.S. construction effort under less than salubrious conditions. 

Indeed, racism and exploitation seem to have marred the entire period of U.S. control over the Canal Zone. I recall an anecdote about this from the essay collection, The Rush for Second Place—by my favorite postmodern novelist, William Gaddis—that is particularly worth revisiting now.

Gaddis—whose politics, especially in these occasional pieces, always take the form of a charmingly cultivated and generous-hearted liberalism—actually worked in the Canal Zone as a young man. At the time, he was still seeking to create for himself an adventurous, Eugene O'Neill–style author's life. 

(A character in Gaddis's The Recognitions, the clueless would-be author and eventual plagiarist Otto, would subsequently be mocked for picking Central America for this purpose—the implication being that all the other bohemians regarded this choice of exile as thoroughly played out.)

Gaddis's most telling memory of this period of history is of the pay rates workers received in the Canal Zone at the time. These various payrolls perpetuated a gross racial hierarchy: white workers like Gaddis received the "Gold" rate, whereas "local" labor were assigned to the "Silver." 

By the time Gaddis was there, he notes, these had become euphemisms for what had been an even more explicit caste system governing wages at the time of the Canal's construction. But plenty of other signs of overt racism were still visible when he worked there as well: including segregated work elevators and drinking fountains. 

One couldn't ask for a better shorthand image for the whole hubris, folly, and injustice of the colonial project than this business of the "silver payroll." Gaddis realized this as well—which is why he brought it up. He was writing this piece, after all, at a time when the Canal was once again a hotly contested partisan issue in the U.S. 

At the time Gaddis was revisiting this story, the U.S. was considering relinquishing control of the Canal to Panama (while maintaining the right to enforce neutrality). This was intended as a good faith gesture to Latin America, and, when it was finally accomplished, it was one of Carter's signature achievements. 

The New York Times notes the sad irony of the fact that Carter—who, by this act and others, modeled decency and magnanimity in the White House—happened to die the same week that the incoming president-elect is now reviving this issue, and explicitly threatening to undo Carter's legacy of good-neighborliness on the Canal. 

Carter's decision would, of course, be the very last sort of thing Trump is equipped to understand. The idea of voluntarily relinquishing the ability to exploit someone, simply because it is the right thing to do, is utterly alien to his personality. Trump has never seen an advantage he would not happily exploit. 

And in fairness, he's not unique in that regard. Many right-wingers at the time Carter's treaty was signed felt the same way. The Times reports that Ronald Reagan and others attacked the Democratic president vehemently for what they saw then as a cowardly betrayal of the national interest. 

What people of this sort never seem to understand is that the true self-betrayal was the exploitativeness of the occupation in the first place: a nation founded in liberty becoming a vehicle for imperialism abroad. The conditions Gaddis reports, with their crassly unjust pay rates and rank racism, is the true cowardice. 

What Jimmy Carter was willing to do—by contrast—required actual strength—strength of conviction and fiber. For, as Johan Huizinga observes, the highest form of strength—the truest test of civilization as of honor—is to be found in the voluntary self-limitation of power for the sake of justice and law. 

But of course, taking this course—and seeing its merits on grounds of national honor and chivalry—demands of people a bit more self-awareness and thoughtfulness than the gut-level appeals to national chauvinism and egotism that Trump likes to exploit. 

And so, Trump may indeed go far—just as Reagan did—in appealing to this strange national nostalgia for Panama: the hankering—which apparently many Americans still have—for, as Gaddis accurately describes it: " those days of privilege when we could put a whole nation on the silver payroll."