Copyright (c) 2025 Revista Panameña de Ciencias Sociales
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We commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 1925 Renters’ Strike. An event that shook Panama- nian social and political life in that decade. As a result of the Hay-Bunau Varilla Treaties of 1903, Panamanian society was marginalized from the direct economic benefits of the Panama Canal’s operations. The national bourgeoisie could only accumulate indirectly from the wages of the canal
workers by renting the wooden rooms in which they were crammed. But once the canal’s construc- tion was completed in 1914, many were unemployed, a development that combined with the glo- bal capitalist crisis of the 1920s. So, when the landlords of the rented rooms raised rents in 1925, the popular response was the organization of the Renters’ League and the call for a rent-free strike. To confront them, Rodolfo Chiari’s government invoked Article 146 of the 1904 Constitution, requesting the intervention of the American troops stationed in the Canal Zone. The repression resulted in deaths, injuries, arrests, and the deportation of union leader Blázquez de Pedro. These events are analyzed by various national authors, whose most relevant ideas we cite in this article to help us assess the magnitude of the event.
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