Panama City's Afro-Antillean Museum preserves Canal workers' forgotten heritage

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During the construction of the Panama Canal hundreds of thousands of workers were imported from Jamaica and other Caribbean islands and were settled in tenement housing on the outskirts of Panama City.

Each house was constructed as small as possible, often no more than a wooden shack raised on posts to keep the insects out, with communal bathrooms and a zinc roof. It was in one of these tenement neighbourhoods, known then as Guachapalí, today as El Marañón, that canal workers constructed the Cristian Mission Chapel in their off hours, from 1909-1910.

Countless church services, weddings, funerals and baptisms were performed there, and those worshiping inside would have experienced and withstood the post-canal deportation schemes, denials of citizenship, and attempts at cultural erasure imposed on their community, as well as the eventual governmental recognition of their rights and way of life.