THE AMERICAS 74:4/October 2017/513–546 COPYRIGHT BY THE ACADEMY OF AMERICAN FRANCISCAN HISTORY doi:10.1017/tam.2017.88 THE 1925 TENANTS’STRIKE IN PANAMA: West Indians, the Left, and the Labor Movement I n September-October 1925, there occurred in Panama a tenants’ strike that helped defne the development of the left and workers’ movement in that nation. This article presents an overview of the strike—important because no synthetic English-language account exists—and then analyzes the role of black West Indians in the event. 1 West Indians were prominent among the ranks of workers in Panama, and among the slums of Panama City and Col ´ on. Nonetheless, they were not central to the rent strike. This absence refects the historic relationship between West Indian and Hispanic workers in the isthmus, the effect of the recent defeat of strikes led by West Indians in the Panama Canal Zone, and the lack of attention paid to attracting West Indian support by the Hispanic leadership of the tenants’ strike. 2 This division No piece of scholarship is possible without help and collaboration, especially this article, which sometimes seemed to be taking longer to complete than the Panama Canal. I thank the many scholars and libraries who helped me in my research, either by reading my work, providing hard-to-fnd materials, or providing encouragement. These include Carla Burnett, Marco A. Gand´ asegui Jr., Julie Greene, Rolando de la Guardia Wald, Christian Høgsbjerg, Ernesto Isunza Vera, Ricardo Melgar Bao, Jessica Millward, Jos´ e Morales, and Arturo Taracena Arriola. I also thank the librarians and archivists at the Carl Brigham Library of the Library of Congress, the National Archives in Kew, the New York Public Library (main research library and the Schomburg Center), New Jersey City University’s Frank Guarini Library, and the Prometheus Research Library. I also wish to thank the peer reviewers for The Americas, as well as its editor, Ben Vinson III. 1. The best source for the strike is Alexander Cuevas, whose study has been reprinted in various forms. See Alexander Cuevas, “El movimiento inquilinario de 1925,” Tareas 14 (April 1964-March 1965): 5–38; Cuevas, “El movimiento inquilinario de 1925,” Loter´ ıa 213 (October 1973): 133–161; Cuevas, “El movimiento inquilinario de 1925,” in Panam ´ a: dependencia y liberaci´ on, Ricaurte Soler, ed. (San Jos´ e: Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana, 1974); and Cuevas, El movimiento inquilinario de 1925 (Panama City: Cuadernos Populares, 1980). Cuevas’s study is excellent, although it is based only on Spanish-language sources, and it also refects the political agitation of 1964. While the present article draws upon an array of primary sources, the most valuable include two daily Panamanian newspapers, the Spanish-language Estrella de Panam ´ a and the English-language Star and Herald. Both papers were sold together—the Spanish paper had begun as an insert to the English—and shared the same publisher, Tom´ as Gabriel Duque, the secretary of Agriculture and Public Works under president Rodolfo Chiari. However, while both papers at times shared stories, the print versions often differed, sometimes in obvious and sometimes in subtle ways. They are thus treated as two different papers. Other useful, if biased, English-language sources are a British diplomatic report, the Panam´ a and Canal Zone Annual Report, 1925, made by Major Charles Braithwaite Wallis, March 15, 1926, to Sir. Austen Chamberlain, A 1821/1821/32 in FCO 371/1158, British National Archives, Kew; and the coverage in the American Communist Party’s Daily Worker, especially October 15, 1925. See also Robin Elizabeth Zenger, “West Indians in Panama: Diversity and Activism, 1910s-1940s” (PhD diss.: University of Arizona, 2015), chapt. 3. 2. Neither “West Indian” nor “Hispanic” is a perfect term. In the context of this article, “West Indian” (and Antillano) refers to black people from the British (and to a lesser degree French) colonies in the Caribbean, while Hispanic refers to Spanish-speaking people. 513