Silver People Page 8

  away . . .

  ANITA

  STORM

  Alone in the forest again,

  we’re surrounded by beauty

  and danger,

  soaring wings,

  screeching cries,

  whirling wind,

  lightning, thunder, a cloudburst,

  and howls, our own powerful

  voices . . .

  THE HOWLER MONKEYS

  ALARM

  WHEN STRANGERS RUN BELOW US

  WE HOWL HOOT WHOOP BOOM

  CHASE CHASE CHASE

  WITH OUR VOICES

  WE LEAP

  FROM TREE TO TREE

  WE KNOW

  OUR VOICES ARE STRONG

  CLAWS OF AIR

  FANGS OF SOUND

  GO

  GO

  GO

  THE SCARLET MACAWS

  ALARM

  We fly

  Screech

  Call

  To one another

  As we fly

  Soar

  Cry

  Flap

  Clatter

  Chatter

  Escape

  With our wild

  FREEDOM

  We fly

  THE POISON DART FROGS

  ALARM

  we love to sing

  for mates

  but now we sing

  from fear

  our warning

  to one another

  unseen

  hidden

  by leaves

  we sing sing sing

  climb climb climb

  hiding our voices

  in trees

  THE TREES

  ALARM

  A wind of voices

  the storm of warnings

  hot crackles of lightning

  explosions of thunder

  fierce splinters

  of flame

  then our whisper

  rain

  rain.

  MATEO AND ANITA TOGETHER

  WHEN MOUNTAINS BECOME ISLANDS

  Last year, when all the digging finally ended,

  this entire forest was flooded—trees drowned,

  crate towns vanished, and at least

  fifty thousand silver people

  had to flee for their lives,

  along with native villagers

  and all the wildlife, including

  desperately swimming jaguars

  and flailing, hooting, howling

  monkeys . . .

  Even the birds

  lost their nests.

  Only this one mountain peak survived.

  It’s an island now—our new home.

  We have a stilt hut on a slope

  high above the water,

  and we’ve built a terrace

  we think of as our sky castle,

  because it overlooks dangling

  air plants

  and tiny sky ponds

  in soaring treetops.

  Squeaks, roars, plumes of scent,

  the drumming beaks of toucans,

  the waving-leg signals of golden frogs

  as they talk to one another in their own

  amphibious sign language . . .

  so many unique ways

  to communicate.

  Our only way of speaking

  with the forest

  is silence.

  We watch. We study. We record

  all that we see as we peer

  into hummingbird nests

  and howler eyes.

  We listen.

  We’ve counted as many as forty species

  of rare and common birds

  in a single tree when the wild figs

  are ripe.

  We sketch, paint, and hope to remember

  every detail of beauty.

  We keep a shared journal

  as we gather medicinal herbs

  for distant museums that want to include

  every plant in the world in their vast

  scientific collections.

  Sometimes, we feel like strangers,

  and at other times, we feel

  transformed

  into a natural part

  of this wild

  world.

  When Augusto visits, he brings excited

  explorers from all the distant cities

  where he sells our paintings

  and herbs.

  The canal has sliced this nation

  in half, so when Henry comes visiting—

  along with his growing family of lively

  children—they have to cross the water

  on a ferry, then row a canoe

  across the huge man-made lake

  called Gatún, a lake that was created

  to slow the rapids of the Chagres River

  in order to fill enormous

  concrete boxes called locks,

  which are used as a way

  to float huge ships

  up from one ocean’s sea level

  to another.

  Both Augusto and Henry were here

  when we got married in a green aisle

  of trees, with a singing red macaw

  as our best man and a chattering

  capuchin monkey

  as bridesmaid.

  We dream of someday studying

  at one of the faraway colleges

  where our work is displayed

  on gallery walls,

  but for now,

  we have only a single goal:

  learning to understand

  this one mountain-island

  of massive roots,

  delicate wings,

  and huge voices

  that croak, squawk, shriek,

  chant, whistle, and howl

  about hunger,

  freedom,

  danger,

  and love,

  always love.

  THE HOWLER MONKEYS

  AT REST

  MIDDAY

  NO DANGEROUS

  STRANGERS

  JUST SILENCE

  HEAT

  SHADE

  SLEEP

  DREAMS

  OF HOWLING

  AT THUNDER

  HOWLING

  AT WIND

  HOWLING

  AT RAIN

  HOWLING

  STRENGTH

  HOWLING

  HOPE

  THE RESPLENDENT QUETZAL

  CAMOUFLAGE

  Nest in a hole in a tree

  Eggs

  Then hungry hatchlings

  Flight

  From below in midair I swoop

  And I pluck tasty fruit

  My feathers the same shiny green

  As leafy branches

  Safe from the laughing falcon

  High above

  Ha ha ha

  Safe

  Back in the nest

  In a hole in a tree

  Only my long tail exposed

  Leafy green.

  POISON DART TADPOLES

  SWIMMING

  blue on forest mud

  our father wrestles

  with other males

  blue on forest mud

  our father protects us

  from fire-bellied snakes

  blue on forest mud

  our father lifts us onto his back

  and carries us one at a time

  up a tall tree into a sky pond

  blue on forest mud

  our mother climbs up

  to visit us

  swimming.

  THE TREES

  HOME

  Everything lives on us or under us

  Everything needs

  Wood

  Leaves

  Flowers

  Fruit

  Seeds

  Even the rain needs our roots

  In deep mud

  Water absorbed

  Lifted

  Released

  From our green

&nbs
p; Water transformed into mist

  Clouds

  More rain

  New growth

  Home

  No matter how small home

  Has become

  Just a mountaintop island

  Our home

  Steady growth.

  Epilogue

  HOWL!

  Mateo, Anita, Henry—

  Greetings from the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. Visitors from all over the world are here, touring miniature replicas of the canal’s engineering marvels. The tourists are astonished as they gaze at reproductions of a man-made Wonder of the World that is being called the “kiss of the oceans,” represented by colorful pictures of two mermaids meeting for the first time. Tourists are thrilled by cultural exhibits from continents newly joined by the watery shortcut: Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Americas, both North and South.

  I can hardly understand it, but you must believe me: There is not a single exhibit honoring silver people. No songs or dances from the Caribbean islands where most of us were recruited. Not even one booth showing the daily lives of all the brave laborers who accomplished the impossible task of digging with nothing but shovels and courage. There are no monuments honoring the tens of thousands who died in Serpent Cut mud.

  No one cares. No one cares because no one knows. If our history is ever to be told, we must tell it ourselves. Like howlers in the forest, we must lift our voices above the noise of thunder and dynamite.

  Dear friends, amigos queridos, write your memories; help me howl our wild truth.

  Augusto

  California, 1915

  Historical Note

  I grew up in Los Angeles during the 1960s. My family marched for civil rights, singing “We Shall Overcome,” but when my Cuban mother described the need for equality, she spoke of Panama more often than Mississippi. Like most Latin Americans, she was far more familiar with Canal Zone apartheid than Jim Crow laws. Many years later, as a botanist collecting wild plants in Central America’s rainforests, I had the chance to meet descendants of “silver people” from Jamaica. This book is a small gesture of thanks for their friendliness and hospitality.

  Silver People is a work of historical fiction, set in factual situations, in real places. There really was an inn called La Cubana María. The Culebra (Serpent) Cut became known as the Gaillard Cut. The mountain that became an island is Barro Colorado, maintained by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute as one of the world’s most thoroughly studied remnants of rainforest. Mateo, Henry, Anita, Old María, and Augusto are imaginary characters. John Stevens, Theodore Roosevelt, George Goethals, Jackson Smith, Gertrude Beeks, and Harry Franck are historical figures. Poems in the voices of historical figures are based on their own documented statements.

  The importation of laborers from the Caribbean islands to Panama began during the California gold rush, when a railroad was built by Americans as an alternative to mule trains. A Cuban American engineer named Aniceto Menocal surveyed possible routes for a U.S. canal project, but France was the first nation to actually try digging. The disastrous French attempt lasted throughout the 1880s, shattered France’s economy, and sacrificed the lives of more than twenty-two thousand laborers. In 1903, the United States backed a military coup that separated the province of Panama from the nation of Colombia. In exchange, Panama granted permission for a project that lasted ten years. Beginning in 1904, laborers were once again imported, and another fifty-six hundred lives were lost to yellow fever, malaria, and landslides. The canal was completed by a conglomerate of U.S. government and business interests called the Isthmian Canal Commission. Workers from more than one hundred countries participated, but the vast majority were Caribbean islanders, primarily English-speaking Jamaicans and Barbadians. On the island of Cuba, American recruiters specifically hired American military nurses and “semi-white” Spaniards, many of whom turned out to be active members of an anarchist movement.

  In the American-ruled Canal Zone, laborers from all over the world were subjected to a system that resembled South Africa’s apartheid. Dark-skinned islanders and olive-skinned southern Europeans were paid in silver. Light-skinned Americans and northern Europeans received gold. Housing, meals, recreation, and hospitals were also strictly segregated.

  Of the estimated quarter-million Caribbean islanders who worked in Panama between 1850 and 1914, at least one-third never returned to their homelands but fanned out across Central America, becoming an integral part of the region’s rich cultural heritage.

  The canal was intended as a link between continents, as well as a way to shorten shipping routes. The Panama Canal’s opening ceremony was planned as a festive celebration of worldwide prosperity and peace, but the month was August 1914. With the outbreak of World War I, the first ship to pass through the canal was a U.S. military vessel, on its way to Europe’s battlefields.

  The discriminatory silver/gold payroll system continued until 1955. Possession of the Canal Zone was ceded to Panama in 1979, but operation of the canal was not transferred from the United States to Panama until the eve of the year 2000.

  Eventual opening of wider modern shipping lanes will be linked to the expansion of key U.S. ports, allowing continued passage of increasingly enormous container ships from China. This time, the digging is being accomplished by heavy equipment, rather than imported labor.

  Strange as it seems, the “globalization” of international trade did not begin with the Internet but was launched a century ago, when a new waterway suddenly made the world seem small.

  Margarita Engle

  California, 2014

  Selected References

  Maps of Panama can be found on this site: ian.macky.net/pat/map/pa/pa.html

  Franck, Harry A. Zone Policeman 88. New York: Century, 1920.

  Greene, Julie. The Canal Builders. New York: Penguin, 2009.

  James, Winifred. The Mulberry Tree. London: Chapman, 1913.

  Keller, Ulrich. The Building of the Panama Canal in Historic Photographs. New York: Dover, 1983.

  Mabrey, Gerardo. El Canal de Panamá y los trabajadores antillanos. Panama City: Universidad de Panamá, 1989.

  McGuinness, Aims. Path of Empire. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008.

  Newton, Velma. The Silver Men. Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies, 1984.

  Parker, Matthew. Panama Fever. New York: Anchor, 2009.

  Rivas Reyes, Marcela Eyra. El trabajo de las mujeres en la historia de la construcción del Canal de Panamá (1881–1914). Panama City: Universidad de Panamá, 2002.

  Russell, Carlos E. An Old Woman Remembers: The Recollected History of West Indians in Panama, 1855–1955. Brooklyn: Caribbean Diaspora Press, 1995.

  Seacole, Mary. Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands. New York: Penguin, 2005.

  Serra, Yolanda Marco. Los obreros españoles en la construcción del Canal de Panamá. Portobelo, Panamá: 1907.

  Acknowledgments

  I thank God for tropical rainforests.

  The following resources were helpful:

  Isthmian Historical Society

  Panama Collection of the Canal Zone

  Library-Museum

  Silver People Heritage Foundation

  Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

  United States National Archives

  Central California Caribbean Association

  For a thrilling wildlife tour of Barro Colorado Island, gracias a Vilma y los monos aulladores (the howlers).

  Special thanks to nonfiction wizard Angelica Carpenter for advice about the mysteries of research and to Ragina Shearer for suggesting that I give trees a voice. For visions of bird art and sky castles, I am indebted to the paintings of Louis A. Fuertes and the expedition diaries of Frank M. Chapman.

  For encouragement and companionship, joyful hugs to my family. Special thanks to Victor, Kristan, and Jacob for dog-sitting.

  Deep gratitude to my wonderful editor, Reka Simonsen. At ti
mes, this book seemed impossible. Without your insight, it would have been a muddy mess at best. I am also grateful to Lisa DiSarro, Elizabeth Tardiff, Susan Buckheit, and everyone else at HMH for true teamwork.

  About the Author

  MARGARITA ENGLE is a Cuban-American poet and novelist whose work has been published in many countries. Her books include The Surrender Tree, a Newbery Honor book and winner of the Pura Belpré Author Award, the Américas Award, and the Claudia Lewis Award; The Poet Slave of Cuba, winner of the Pura Belpré Author Award and the Américas Award; Tropical Secrets; The Firefly Letters; Hurricane Dancers; The Wild Book; and The Lightning Dreamer. She lives with her husband in Northern California. Visit her at www.margaritaengle.com.