n organizational work, such as leading strikes and organizing black people, he moved to a higher-paying job in Costa Rica as a United Fruit Company banana plantation timekeeper. As a timekeeper, he kept track of the hours worked by company employees, many of them black West Indians like himself. He saw that the workers worked long hours in the swamps, where they battled snakes and other wild animals. They worked for low wages and their money often was often stolen or given to dishonest bankers (Lawler 25).
He soon quit this job over the exploitation of the peasants. After he quit the banana plantation, Garvey worked in other Latin American countries, such as Colombia, Venezuela, and in Central America. In Panama, thousands of blacks were helping to build the nearly completed canal that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was constructing. Black workers did much of the heavy excavating labor on the 50-mile length of the canal, but compared to their white co-workers, they were poorly paid and lived in separate and less adequate quarters (Lawler 28). In the tobacco fields and copper mines of Ecuador, Garvey discovered more West Indian migrants working in intolerable conditions.
In each country, he found the black peasantry exploited and the whites and mulattoes unwilling to aid them. Wherever he went he organized the local workers into workers' associations. However, none of the British consulates in these countries were willing to listen to his appeals for help. They did not want to risk upsetting their friendly relations with the local governments (Lawler 28).
After campaigning unsuccessfully for two years to improve the life of the West Indian workers, Garvey became discouraged. Wherever he went, he was harassed by the local authorities, who viewed him as a troublemaker. He went home briefly to Jamaica, but met with the same opposition to his pleas to help the West Indian blacks.
In 1912, Garvey went to L...