Red, white, and blue paradise: The American Canal Zone in Panama

by Herbert Knapp

Here is an thorough and impassioned account of America's Canal adventure, beginning in 1904 with the arrival of the first American Roughnecks in the 'Panama graveyard' and ending the day the last vestige of American authority on the Canal Zone was abolished seventy five years later.

306 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1984

Reviews

[Chris Choe]

Really shines when it narrates its auto-ethnography; falls apart as it devolves into polemic. Plenty of good insights here on the “American condition,” but the writers suffer, ironically, from the very elitism that they indict “status liberals” of the Progressive mold. But theirs is an elitism from below, or from the middle. Just as their outlook transforms gradually as they become more and more acculturated to isthmian-Zonian life, so too do the chapters become more and more perspectival and subjective. In some ways, that movement totally works: it works to allow us 2020ers to peer into the mind of a treaty-opponent, of an anti-Carter agent, of what one historian has recently called the conspiratorialism of the Zonians.

[Marie Polega · Rating 4 out of 5]

I borrowed this book from a friend who grew up in the Panama Canal Zone. Although I found the book dry at times, it was a very thorough and interesting look into life during this unique time in history.

[Henry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book written by zonians.

[Leo W. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The late 1970's found me doing my PhD research at a Smithsonian marine lab situated in the Canal Zone. A fellow researcher and I spent many a lonely Saturday night at the Balboa Yacht Club, failing completely to become absorbed in the Zonian culture. (We were desperately interested in being discovered by one gender of that society.) We were both fascinated by the zone and felt that were larger lessons to be learned from that culture. On more than one occasion we expressed the belief that we might be doing more interesting Ph.D's if our subject matter was Zonian society rather than marine biology. Now I find a book which realizes just this.

The authors explore two distinct theses. First they treat the obvious contrast between the essentially socialist state that was the canal company with the all-american spirit and predilections of its residents. The price of utopia was a lack of freedom and absence of change purchased at the price of security, relative comfort, and a wonderful place to raise a kid. Second they treat the debate over the canal treaties as perceived in the Zone and stateside. They conclude, I think correctly, that the treaties brief appearance as a national debate divided the populace along fault lines exposing the deeply conservative, the ambivalent center, and the 'elitist liberals'. Arguably today's tea party insanity with the dysfunctional House of Representatives is just the political maturation of one of the audiences which identified themselves in the Canal treaty debate.

I eventually found myself adopted by the Zonian culture (a real rarity amongst the scientists working at the Smithsonian), eventually coming to marry a Zonian. The books resonants with all that I learned then and hence.

[Jeffrey Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, I thought the authors did an excellent job describing what it was like living in the former Panama Canal Zone, but I wanted more history and less commentary.