All language subtitles for Box.25.2015.1080p.WEBRip.x265-RARBG2_Englisha

[uneasy music]

[insects buzzing,
birds chirping]

[tranquil music continues]

[uneasy music]

[elegant instrumental music]

- [Voiceover from George Martin
letter] "Some of our good bosses

would find some
encouraging talk for us.

They would say for us:

'Boys - are you
saving your money?

It won't be long from now that
we will see water in the Cut.'

But we just took it for a joke.

I personally would
say to my fellow men:

'That could never happen.

My children will come
and have children,

and their children will come
and do the same,

before you will see
water in the Cut.'

And most of us
agreed on the same."

- [Julie Green] So in 1903...

When Theodore Roosevelt
had been unable to

get the okay to build
a canal working through
the country of Colombia,

he became interested in
supporting a coup

for independence by Panamanians.

He sent warships down to
support the effort,

and the coup was successful

and the Republic of Panama
was born.

[energetic piano music]

- The Treaty stipulated
it would be "as if the
U.S. were sovereign",

in other words,

the U.S. had complete control
in the Canal Zone.,

and also was given the
ability to intervene

in the internal affairs of
the Republic of Panama,

to take over additional
lands as needed

for the construction...

So it was a major and complete
surrender of Panama's rights

to the heart of its own country.

[freight train roars past]

"Life in the construction days
was rough and tough.

Only hard work.
Rain or shine, we had to go.

I left my home in Barbados
in 1905, August 26th.

I was 19 years old.

I came on a boat
named the Aplato.

I construction we came from
Barbados by the thousands,

when we got here
we lived in camps,

we slept on cain bunks,

a piece of canvas
tied with rope,

no mattress, blanket,
sheet or pillow,

just the cold cain bunk.

It was rough and tough,

no water,

we had to get it wherever
we could get it,

we had to do our own
washing on Sunday,

we could only wash once a week,

it was rough and tough
from the start."

[uneasy music]

- It's interesting to examine

how the U.S.

went about deciding where
workers should come from.

It was quite an
exhaustive process.

They looked all around
the globe for workers.

And in fact there's one aisle of
the National Archives which has

boxes organized by country,

with correspondence explaining

what the U.S. thought of
the workers of that country,

why they did or did not
decide to use them.

So Mexico, for example,
the U.S. would say,

"Oh, no, Mexican workers will go
on strike, we don't want them."

And Peruvians, Chileans,
were considered not
to be hard workers.

Panamanians were considered
to be not hard enough workers,

although the U.S. did employ
a few thousand Panamanians,
partly out of respect for

its relationship with the
Republic of Panama.

So you almost can map

the sort-of mental territory

of officials like John Stevens,

and so he reluctantly turned
to using Caribbean workers

for most of the labor instead.

- [Julie Green]
Originally, John Stevens,

he had a pretty low opinion
of Afro-Caribbean workers,

he thought they were
not smart enough,

thought they were -
you know, had kind of a racist

thought about them,
thought they were like children,

they would not work hard enough.

And in fact he and his
successor George Goethals,

both believed that
something was needed

to push the Afro-Caribbeans
to work harder,

and so ultimately they imported
southern Europeans

precisely for that purpose,

hoping they would come
across more energetic,

more hard-working,

and would help the officials
to push the Caribbeans

to work harder.

[gentle music]

[uneasy music]

[train whistle blowing]

[uneasy instrumental music]

[tribal-style
drumming and chanting]

[switching to English] This
letter is from George Peters:

"l landed in Colon,
Republic of Panama,

from the island of Dominica,
British West Indies,

on the 14th of December, 1908.

Two days after I was
employed by one Mr. Craw

in a steam shovel repair shop,

at 10 cents an hour.

In those days it rained
from six to six,

you'd get to the
job wringing wet,

and so you remained
until you finished."

This letter is from Rufus Lucas:

"I also worked with a dredging
division for a short period,

as an oiler,

on the number one grader
in the Canal,

with a man by the
name of Mr. Right.

He looked at me one day and said
'You are fired right now.'

It was for no just cause,

but I couldn't talk back
because in those days

every white man thought he was

God down here."

[silence]

- [Voiceover from Albert
Peters letter] "Well this
particular day was payday,

the pay car was on the
opposite bank of the Canal.

All of a sudden...

I heard it blow its whistles,
for leaving.

I ran out on the
end of the barge

and waved my hand and hollered.

They saw me and stopped.

I swam across, then had
to climb a muddy hill
of about forty feet.

When I got to the top,

the pay car was about
twenty feet in front of me.

I was so exhausted that
the policeman took my cup
and helped me into the car.

There was my pay in front of
me on the counter.

I was as naked as when I
came into this world...

Except for my cup and my balboas
[Panamanian coins]."

- Hundreds of men died
from a dynamite explosion.

In 1908, 22 tons of dynamite
was at Bajo Obispo Cut,

and went off at 11:45 AM,

blowing to pieces over 300 men.

Their entrails and flesh
could be seen hanging
on the far away trees.

It was something terrible
and awful to look at.

The explosion was heard,

and smoke could be
seen three miles away

from where I was
living in Matachin.

The shock of the blast
knocked off glasses

from tables and shelves
in many homes,

and some fell to the floor
in their home.

- It's really difficult to

talk about the death toll
with any precision,

and I did not, in my research,
examine this question carefully,

the historian who did is
Michael Conniff.

He thinks roughly 15,000.

And of course, when you think
about what this labor required,

it's also really important
to think not only about
death, but about injury,

accidents and disease.

Disease remained
a prevalent issue,

a very widespread issue,

especially among Afro-Caribbeans
or West Indians.

Although Yellow Fever
was successfully eradicated,

malaria was not,

and really pretty much
every West Indian

suffered from malaria
at some point or another.

[somber violin music]

- [Voiceover] I, John Holligan,

left the island of Barbados
in 1906, the month of June.

My first boss, by the name
of Mr. Powers,

I worked on the corral
from 1906 until 1920.

In the years 1906-1907,

they had no sanitation.

Malaria fever was
killing all the people.

The deaths were so many

that we the steamer
had to go to the hospital

around the beach for the deaths

and we had to place them in box
cars around by Christ Church.

[birds chirping]

[people chattering
in background]

[speaking in
Spanish, indistinct]

[soul music]

[soul music continues,
no dialogue heard]

[applause]

- Once,

we were on our way to Gatun,

and in those days the train
had two different compartments,

one compartment for whites,
and one for blacks.

While waiting to board

the conductor spat
at us and ran us

to the cars in the
back of the train.

Although we didn't
care to board with them.

At that time I learned
about discrimination.

I was only about 13 years
old at that time.

Okay, this picture was taken
around the 1960's.

Okay?

At that time the black were
fighting for liberation from

discriminatory practices
in the United States of America.

But we had teachers who
told us about this,

and we decided to show,

to protest against
discrimination,

because it was the same
here in the Canal Zone.

- [Michelle Reese] So what
kind of protesting did you do?

- [Stanley] Well, we
started to... We were over
here, in this fashion,

and we used to
have black armbands

that showed that
we were protesting
against discrimination.

- So you spoke a lot of English,
and everything was in English...

- Well, that's the only thing
that we knew, English.

Spanish was never
in our vocabulary,

everything was English, English
- Social Studies, Math...

Everything, everything.
Lab science, everything,
as you can see.

English, English, English...

The yearbook? English.

It was not till your time

when it became

the Latin American High School.

It was at this station that

an engineer slipped
at the switch,

broke his leg,

and when taken to the hospital,

found she was a woman,

working among the men
all the time.

[agitated piano music]

[somber music]

[somber music continues]

[Torrijos, speaking in Spanish]

- [Interpreter] And
the armed forces...

[Torrijos, speaking in Spanish]

- They have decided...

[speaking in Spanish]

- That if the Treaty
was not ratified...

[speaking in Spanish]

- Or if it were amended
in such a way that it was
not meeting conditions

that could be
acceptable to Panama...

[speaking in Spanish]

- Then we will not
negotiate any more.

[speaking in Spanish]

- Tomorrow morning,
right away, we would start...

We would have started...

[speaking in Spanish]

- A struggle for liberation.

[speaking in Spanish]

- And possibly by tomorrow
the Canal would not
have been in operation.

[speaking in Spanish]

- We are in a condition,
we have the capability,
of destroying it.

[speaking in Spanish]

- Even if they have
the Southern Command,

or the West Command -
or the Western Command,
the Eastern Command,

All the commands that you
would wish to have.

[speaking in Spanish]

- The National Guard
is in a condition to
be able to destroy it.

[speaking in Spanish]

- And that capacity we
do not intend to lose.

[speaking in Spanish]

- In not destroying it,
we are the only ones who
are really defending it.

[speaking in Spanish]

- And this is why we are
not scared so much...

[speaking in Spanish]

- Of some of the demonstrations
of machismo,

of being very, very...

[speaking in Spanish]

- Of those who have no respect
for the dignity of other people.

[speaking in Spanish]

- As were used in the Senate.

Because they...

Because they have
placed the Canal

within two votes of
not being in operation.

[speaking in Spanish]

This was a decision
that was taken...

[speaking in Spanish]

- It was very well thought out.

[speaking in Spanish]

And we have now already
ten years of preparation...

[gentle music]

- [Mission Control #1]
Tower cleared!

- [Mission Control #2]
Here we got a roll program.

- [Mission Control #1] Neil
Armstrong reporting their
roll and pitch program

which puts Apollo 11
on a proper heading.

[gentle music]

- Plus thirty seconds...

- [Mission Control #1]
Roll complete and a
pitch is programmed.

[rocket engine roars]

- [Mission Control
#2] One-Bravo.

- [Mission Control #1] One-Bravo
is in network control mode.

Altitude is two miles.

[birds chirping]

[gentle music]

[gentle music continues]

[tranquil music]

[tranquil music continues]

- "After I had finished
waiting on two men,

one of them gave me
two shark teeth,

and the other
fellow gave me one,

from out of a rock that
was blasted in the Cut.

I said nothing to him,
nor thanked him.

They saw that I was
skeptical,

unbelieving about shark teeth

taken out of rocks,
instead of the sea.

Fishing is my pastime.

Shark teeth, like all
other teeth, are white.

I looked at him with doubt.

He looked at me and said: 'Man,

have you never heard
that these two oceans had
been joined together?'

'I have heard so,' said he,

'and these shark teeth

we got out of the Cut
prove it.'"

[agitated piano music]

[boat engine whirring]

[compressed air hissing
from scuba regulator]

[bubbling noises]

[tranquil music]

[somber music]

[airport loudspeaker
in background]

[uneasy music]

[airplane cockpit chatter]

[birds chirping]

[uneasy music continues]

- Hey!
- Hi!

- I'm finally meeting you,

it's very nice.
- Very nice.

- Oh, you brought your stuff.

- I think that my aunt wanted
the workers to be recognized,

that had not been.

Everyone. So she had

a contest, of all people

that were alive

that had been the true
workers that used that
shovel to dig that dirt,

that had to live in areas that
no one else would.

These people that has to work
hours that no one else would

and live in conditions
that no one else would.

And they dig that canal for

other people to sit in, say,
the Tivoli, and drink tea.

I mean I know that sounds
crazy, but that's what
ended up happening.

And these people needed
to be recognized.

But she also wanted to
hear their stories,

what they really did
and how they did it.

And she wanted us
all to hear it.

The letters that my aunt got,

received during the contest,

I know they're in the
Library of Congress,

but I wonder if they should
be there... stay there.

And I'll tell you why -
I have a problem.

I think the history
of the Panama Canal

is going to be slowly lost,
and not matter.

It's just my little thing.

So what's there,

and who will it matter to?

Will it matter to Panama?

If it does then that's
where things should go.

Not in a vault in the
U.S. Library of Congress.

That's how I feel.

[agitated piano music]

[cart squeaking]

- Thank you.

- Is that it?

- That's it.

- Yes, thank you, sir.

- You're welcome. So here are
the letters, the box...

And Juan can do whatever
he wants to do with them,

throw them all over the floor,
cut them up with scissors...

- No way! [laughter]

- No, we wouldn't
like you to do that.

- We heard that this box
is called #25.

- Yes, #25.

- Oh I guess so, yes.

- Canal Zone Library Museum,
and this is box 25.

[somber music]

[uneasy music]

[uneasy music continues]

[rumba-style music]