A Marvel of Engineering

Cutting across the Isthmus of Panama is the 82-kilometer Panama Canal, an artificial waterway situated in Panama. Along with the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal is one of the two most strategic artificial waterways in the world. Completed in August 1914, it is a vital waterway as it connects the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. The canal is integral for international merchant trade, but more so for the United States which commissioned the canal’s construction. The canal significantly cut the traveling time for ships sailing between the east and west coasts of the United States. In the canal’s absence, these American ships will have to round Cape Horn in South America. Following the canal’s completion, this voyage has been sliced by about 8,000 nautical miles (15,000 km).

The construction of the canal, however, was no easy feat. The first attempt to construct a canal that cuts through the isthmus began in 1881. The Colombian government – Panama was formerly a part of Colombia – granted a concession to the privately owned Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interocéanique, a company led by Ferdinand de Lesseps, the same man who paved the way for the construction of the Suez Canal. de Lesseps gained public support due to his success at the Suez Canal. However, contrary to expectations, the progress was slow and costly. Almost 20,000 workers perished from the harsh conditions and from yellow fever and malaria. The abrupt changes in the project blueprint did not help de Lesseps’ cause. With the French public soon losing faith in de Lesseps, financing for the project ran out, leading to the company’s collapse and the eventual abandonment of the project.

These events were referenced in Panamanian American writer Cristina Henríquez’s latest novel, The Great Divide, which was published this year. The focus of the novel, however, was the construction of the canal by the Americans following the failed attempt of the French. In 1902, the United States purchased the French assets in the canal zone. The U.S. Isthmian Canal Commission tried to strike a deal with the Colombian government, proposing a treaty that would grant rights to build the canal to the United States. The Colombian government which governed the territory rejected the proposal. When Panama sought its independence a year later, the United States fully supported the move. Shortly after Panama declared its independence on November 3, 1903, the United States was finally able to secure rights for the construction of the canal.

“So they would cut the mountains, they said, break the spine, and once that was done, the water from both oceans would gush forth from each end and join to create a way through. A delusional dream. Putting not one but two oceans in a place where for millions of years there had only been land. Who would believe such thing?”

~ Cristina Henríquez, The Great Divide

The Great Divide, however, commenced when the work on the canal was already underway. It also focused on charting the fortunes of two main characters. It was 1907 and sixteen-year-old biracial girl Ana Bunting found herself alighting in Panama after riding in a stowaway that transported her from her home in Barbados to Panama. Despite her age, she had acquired a sense of maturity and even bravery. With her tenacious personality, she crossed the seas hoping to find a job that would earn enough money. The money will be used to pay for the surgery that her sister needs; her older sister Millicent has fallen ill with pneumonia. Before sailing for Panama, she heard rumors of high wages in the bustling company towns that were erected to support the building of the massive canal. She was among a flock of West Indians who sailed in the hopes of a better future.

Meanwhile, seventeen-year-old Omar Aquino sought gainful employment at the company working on the canal. He found a job at the excavation site he was one of the few native Panamanians employed there. However, unlike Ada, he had a different motivation for working at the canal. By working at the excavation site, he was creating a space between him and his father. His father Francisco was a fisherman who tried to raise his son in the same vocation. Omar, however, does not have the natural instincts for fishing his father had. Left alone at home, Omar found himself leading a “purposeless life.” Digging the earth somehow provided Omar a new purpose. However, this new sense of purpose further placed a proverbial wedge between Omar and his father; his father does not have a favorable opinion of the canal.

A chance encounter between the two main characters led Ada into the household of John Oswald, an affluent and idealistic American malaria researcher. John arrived in Panama with his wife, Marian, driven by his own ambition. He wanted to discover the cure for malaria and finally eradicate it. However, it was not a philanthropical venture because John was cognizant that should he succeed, he would be catapulted to global recognition: “Anyone responsible for eradication, well, those are the men that will go down in history.” What he did not expect was that Marian would fall ill, not with malaria but with common pneumonia. It was ironic as it was a disease she could have obtained back home in the Smokey Mountains. To help nurse Marian back to health, John employed Ada.

Their individual threads are just among the many threads woven into the lush tapestry of the novel. As the story moved forward, more characters were introduced. Their voices make a cacophony and yet the story flows seamlessly between their perspectives. In Barbados, Ada’s mother Lucielle was as tenacious as her younger daughter. She was the antithesis of the Barbadian sugar planter who was in love with her. He had a weak constitution and did not fight for her. Meanwhile, at the excavation site, we hear Omar’s fellow diggers bantering. At the Oswald household, Ada met an abrasive house cook from Antigua who kept undermining her. Adding texture to the story was an eclectic cast of secondary characters which included charming mail boys, an intuitive fortune teller, and even a self-absorbed physician who thought that patients would believe his diagnosis if he just acted confident.

“She wondered what her father would think of the rain here. It often came in a surge. The wind picked up and sent the tops of the trees nodding about, and the rain slashed through the air. And then, abruptly, it would stop, as if the sky had snapped shut, and the sun shone again. But the intermission, she had learned, was usually brief, just long enough for the clouds to gather more rain before unleashing it again.”

~ Cristina Henríquez, The Great Divide

The Panama Canal is the physical manifestation of the Great Divide. But in the Panamanian American’s latest novel, the great divide is as much physical as it is allegorical. It took on different forms. One of the most palpable divides pertains to race. The Panamanians and West Indians converge at the construction site to be laborers. They were under the employ of white North Americans. The North Americans, along with the Caribbean planters were cruelly racist and exploitative of people of color. There was a glaring schism, almost akin to the segregation era American Deep South, between these two main classes. The American bureaucrats and their ilk live comfortably in spacious mansions on top of the hill. Ada also learns of the order that existed; Gold for the Americans and Silver for the rest, yet another form of the divide that permeated the story.

Living on top of the hill was almost symbolic of the North American’s social status, and ironically, in a country not their own. Meanwhile, the laborers were forced to endure unlivable conditions in cram-full dormitories or makeshift shafts. They willingly endure these conditions as it means they will save more money. There was a glaring dichotomy in the economic and social statuses of these two groups of people. The laborers’ plight was exacerbated by the harsh working conditions. They had to deal with physical work hazards and the scorching tropical heat. Their biggest threat, however, came in the form of malaria, yellow fever, and even depression, on top of their longing for a semblance of their home. By the time the canal was completed, roughly 5,000 laborers had perished from these grueling conditions.

The Great Divide does not only probe into the picture but it also delves into the inner lives of the character. This focus on their interiors created compelling character studies. In their lives, Henríquez captured other manifestations of divides. In Francisco and Omar’s thorny relationship, she painted the schisms that exist within households. Francisco was overcome by grief and was haunted by his past, precluding him from creating a bond with his son. Their rift only widened when Francisco stopped talking to Omar after Omar started working at the excavation site. Father and son were divided by silence and grief. A divide also existed between John and Marian, one that was driven by ambition and gender. Marian has always lived under the shadow of her ambitious husband. A scientist herself who had a passion for botany, Marian gave up her dreams to support her husband’s endeavors.

These individual threads converged and diverged as the story moved forward. Their intersections created a kaleidoscopic world that captured stories that have long been buried in the recesses of history. These threads and the novel’s wonderful elements were astutely woven together by Henríquez’s lyrical prose into a lush tapestry. In The Great Divide, we read about how they try to overcome these divides, both the tangible and the intangible. Those who learn to listen and see somehow manage to find a way to navigate these dire straits. Those who refused to see beyond what was in front of them were swallowed by the ground. There were, however, too many voices that crisscrossed the story. Ironically, this preoccupation with different threads drives the readers’ attention away from the main characters who remain fully realized individuals.

“With some effort she turned, lowered herself down on her back, stretched her arms out to each side, her palms upon the dirt, which was pebbly and rough, and closed her eyes. A breeze whispered through the air. The birds sang in the trees. It was a beautiful world. Tears seeped from the corners of her eyes and dripped down to the dirt as she thought how she had almost left it, but thank God she had not.”

~ Cristina Henríquez, The Great Divide

In her third novel, Henríquez did not sugarcoat, laying out the landscape vividly; her descriptions of the setting were sublime. The duplicity of the American bureaucrats was palpable; they did waste time in cutting a deal with the newly installed Panamanian government which was still reeling from the adverse impact of the Panamanian Civil War. The canal’s construction was a thorny subject for the locals like Francisco who resented it. Some locals were forced to vacate their villages and hometowns to make way for the canal. However, they did not go down without voicing their sentiments. A demonstration of passive resistance against the orders to dismantle her hometown, for instance, was organized by the wife of fishmonger Joaquín. As history bore witness., their calls were muted by the din and the American ambition.

The Panama Canal is a feat of modern engineering, undoubtedly. It was ambitious and nearly impossible. Making this ambition possible were the people who were on the ground. People – from diverse backgrounds – carved out the earth for the grand American ambition. It is easy to forget about them in light of the engineering marvel. It is in giving voices to these long-forgotten heroes that Henríquez’s third novel finds its strength. With their various threads intersecting at the isthmus of Panama, Henríquez transports the readers to a part of contemporary history that is rarely written about in literature. These are also individuals who had dreams and to reach them, they had to overcome various divides. The Great Divide is an intricately woven story of various characters whose lives shifted due to a monumental historical event.

“There had been a brief opportunity, an opening, and he should have taken advantage of it, he knew, but he had faltered and every second that elapsed thereafter had compated his failure until after a minute, the whole thing was hardened again. Some irreevocable threshold had been crossed.”

~ Cristina Henríquez, The Great Divide
Book Specs

Author: Cristina Henríquez
Publisher: Ecco Books
Publishing Date: 2024
No. of Pages: 320
Genre: Historical

Synopsis

It is said that the canal will be the greatest feat of engineering in history. But first it must be built. For Francisco, a local fisherman who resents the foreign powers clamoring for a slice of his country, nothing is more upsetting than the decision of his son, Omar, to work as a digger in the excavation zone. But for Omar, whose upbringing was quiet and lonely, this job offers a chance to finally find connection.

Ada Bunting is a bold sixteen-year-old from Barbados who arrives in Panama as a stowaway alongside thousands of other West Indians seeking work. Alone and with no resources, she is determined to find a job that will earn her enough money for her ailing sister’s surgery. When she sees a young man – Omar – who collapsed after a grueling shift, she is the only one who rushes to his aid.

John Oswald has dedicated his life to scientific research and has journeyed to Panama in singleminded pursuit of one goal: eliminating malaria. But now his wife, Marian, has fallen ill herself, and when he witnesses Ada’s bravery and compassion, he hires her on the spot as a caregiver. This fateful decision sets in motion a tale of ambition, loyalty, and sacrifice.

Searing and empathetic, The Great Divide explores the intersecting lives of activists, fishmongers, laborers, journalists, neighbors, doctors, and soothsayers – those rarely acknowledged by history even as they carved out its course.

About the Author

Cristina Henríquez was born in Delaware to a Panamanian immigrant and a New Jersey translator. She attended schools in the United States and spent summers in Panama. In 1999, Henríquez graduated from Northwestern University where she majored in English. She earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Henríquez’s interest in writing started in high school. Post-university, she wrote stories that have appeared in various publications such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Glimmer Train, The American Scholar, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, and AGNI, along with the anthology This is Not Chick Lit: Original Stories by America’s Best Women Writers. In 2006, she published her first collection, Come Together, Fall Apart. She published her debut novel, The World in Half, in 2009. The Book of Unknown Americans, her sophomore novel, was published in 2014 to critical acclaim. It was a New York Times Notable Book of 2014. It was also longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Her latest novel, The Great Divide was published in 2024.

Her non-fiction has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, TIME, Real Simple, The Oxford American, and Preservation, as well as in the anthologies State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America and Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary: Women Writers Reflect on the Candidate and What Her Campaign Meant. She is also a recipient of the Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation Award, a grant started by Sandra Cisneros in honor of her father.

Henríquez is currently residing in Chicago, Illinois.