Caroline Lieffers: The Panama Canal’s Forgotten Casualties

The construction of the Panama Canal employed more than 40,000 labourers, of which at least 5,609 were killed and hundreds, if not thousands, were permanently injured on the job. In an article published on 16 April 2018 by The Conversation Canada, 2015 Foundation scholar Caroline Lieffers exposed the “horrifying conditions” of the canal’s construction, which all too often remain masked behind the United States’s celebratory and philanthropic rhetoric. Caroline concluded that “for the dream of moving profitable goods and military might through a reluctant landscape,” blood was shed, bodies were maimed, and too many labourers were left uncompensated for their losses. 

Caroline Lieffers is a 2015 Foundation scholar and a doctoral candidate in the history of science and medicine at Yale University. Read her article here.