March 8, 1978
Page 6020
Mr. ALLEN. I shall be delighted to yield to the distinguished Senator from Maine. The Senator will then recognize me, Mr. President.
Mr. MUSKIE. I thank my dear friend from Alabama. I simply wanted to make a brief reference to the comments just made by my good friend from Nebraska (Mr. CURTIS).
I devoted several hours on February 28 to some of the issues which he has just touched upon. For a more complete exposition of a different point of view, I want to make reference to those.
Whether or not we have been a colonial power in Panama depends upon one's definition of colonialism. The Senator from Nebraska, of course, has provided us with his own definition and then, by this definition, undertaken to measure our performance in Panama. I am not going to try to respond in detail to what he has had to say.
However, I was struck by one description the Senator has given us of his evaluation of our performance in Panama over the last 75 years vis-a-vis the Panamanians. I think this is the exact quote.
He said: "A generous spirit has always prevailed" in our attitude toward the Panamanians. Let me refer to the record. With respect to employment in the Panama Canal Zone of Panamanians and non-U.S. citizens generally, the fact is that the United States imported labor from Asia and from the West Indies to the zone for the purpose of getting cheaper labor than we could get from among Panamanians themselves, thus undermining Panamanian wage rates and denying employment to Panamanians.
Both during the construction phase of the canal and since, we also established separate wage scales for Americans as against non-U.S. citizens, reserving the best-paying jobs for our countrymen.
In the 1936 treaty, we pledged to work toward greater employment equality for Panamanians, that being one of the issues raised in the negotiations in that year, 22 years after we began operating the canal, both countries determining that it was an inequity that needed to be addressed. So, in the 1936 treaty, we pledged to correct an inequity and to work toward greater employment equality for Panamanians. Yet, legislation was passed reserving all high-paying canal jobs for U.S. citizens.
Following World War II, the War Department's two-tier hiring practice became official U.S. policy. Thus, we established and maintained a system which was both separate and unequal.
Now, whether or not that performance makes us a colonial power by all definitions which might be developed by any of us, it surely was not a generous spirit that moved us to establish that kind of discrimination as between Americans and Panamanians.
My good friend from Nebraska, in addition, made a great deal of the point that we had not tried to impose our culture on Panamanians. That is true. What we did was try to establish our culture with its obvious higher standard of living for Americans in the Canal Zone, and denied Panamanians equal access to that standard of living in the zone, while they, living a markedly lower standard of living outside the zone, were left to look at the doggy in the window which was beyond their reach.
That class system which we established was one of the reasons why, over the 75 years since the canal began operating, Panamanians have felt they were being treated as inferiors. There, up against their borders, were privileged people, people working in their country, making use of their resources, isolated from them by the higher American standard of living and culture for which they had to beg for crumbs from the table. That may not be colonialism by some definitions, but it was hardly the kind of generous spirit that we like to think of as motivating Americans in our relations with the less privileged in our own country, as well as the less- developed countries outside our borders.
So, whether or not we are a colonial power is not a question that I think is particularly relevant if we have to argue about what the definition is. But if we measure the performance against what I think most Americans would regard as fair treatment, the record supports the conclusion that, over 75 years, we have always manifested a generous spirit toward the Panamanians and toward their country and their government. Indeed, the conclusion is unavoidably 180 degrees opposite to that.
Mr. President, I shall not devote more time to this point at this time. I express my appreciation to my good friend from Alabama for yielding to me. I shall now resume my seat and listen to his amendment and to his case for it.