ABSTRACT
Tracing the evolution of the Jamaican migrant working class involves two levels of analysis: global commercial competition, and organization of the labor process in which these migrants were engaged. Differences of opinion existed in Jamaica among planters and capitalists about the recruitment of men for Panama. This conflict over labor’s right to leave the island in much the same way as labor had left the estates continued to deepen in the coming years. A multitude of articles about the purported unity of capital and labor in the various Panama undertakings were published during the next half-century. They distorted the real social relations by failing to note the direct and indirect beneficiaries of the surplus value ultimately created by this labor and glossing cavalierly over the dark side of the labor processes involved. This tone was more than an expression of the euphoric nationalism of the North American journalists.
