Nature’s Agents or Agents of Empire?

Abstract

This essay examines the role that entomological workers played in U.S. public health efforts during the construction of the Panama Canal (1904-1914). Entomological workers were critical to mosquito control efforts aimed at the reduction of tropical fevers such as malaria. But in the process of studying vector mosquitoes, they discovered that many of the conditions that produced mosquitoes were not intrinsic to tropical nature per se but resulted from the human-caused environmental disturbances that accompanied canal building. This realization did not mesh well with an American ideology of tropical triumphalism premised on the notion that the Americans had conquered unalloyed tropical nature in Panama. The result, however, was not a coherent counternarrative but a set of intra-administrative tensions over what controlling nature meant in Panama. Ultimately, entomological workers were loyal not just to the U.S. imperial mission in Panama but also to a modernist culture of science and to the workings of mosquito ecology as they understood them.

When climate change couples social neglect: malaria dynamics in Panamá

“…1 The Panama Canal was celebrated as a major achievement of civil and environmental engineering at the time, and its construction was also a major achievement for public sanitation. 2,3 Endemic yellow fever and malaria quickly waned after intense vector control measurements were taken in ‘a hotbed of malaria'.…”

“…4 Malaria control in the Canal Zone (name of the Panamá Canal under the colonial rule of the United States) emphasized the long-term benefits of environmental sanitation. 1,3 This priority was derived from the need to render the Panamá Canal suitable for the colonialist exploitation of a convenient trade passage. 1,3 Nevertheless, wider health benefits were observed by all residents of the Canal Zone and its surrounding neighbor, the República de Panamá.…”

“…1,3 This priority was derived from the need to render the Panamá Canal suitable for the colonialist exploitation of a convenient trade passage. 1,3 Nevertheless, wider health benefits were observed by all residents of the Canal Zone and its surrounding neighbor, the República de Panamá. 3,5,6 Malaria was rare in the Panamá Isthmus by the mid-1930s 6 and had almost disappeared by the mid-1950s.…”

Evidence and strategies for malaria prevention and control: a historical analysis

“…They almost certainly did, although perhaps in a more limited manner than often claimed. Changes in water flows and creation of new channels and water reservoirs also sometimes had detrimental effects and contributed to malaria epidemics, as through hydro-electric schemes in the USA, in the Panama Canal zone and irrigation in India to mention three well studied examples [6, 78, 79]. …”

“…The Zone was placed under a strict control as for yellow fever, leading to a marked reduction in the number of malaria cases (from 821/1000 in 1906 to 76/1000 in 1913 [5]); however, it appeared that this simply shifted the disease out of the area just adjacent to the Canal Zone to other places and populations of Panama, so that the final balance was not as positive as claimed. Indeed, medical entomologists showed that the diffusion of malaria in the construction area was due to human activities and attitudes [6]. On the whole, uncertainties and disputes around the effectiveness of the integrated interventions resulted from the lack of formal comparative studies, with inevitable confusion about which anti-malarial policies to apply, particularly at a large-scale level.…”