Mexico was not the only Latin American country that did not welcome black soldiers during World War II. When the U.S Navy assigned 250 African American enlisted personnel to the Panama Canal Zone, the U.S ambassador to Panama urged the secretary of state to cancel the assignment because of the risk of protest from the Panamanian government, which denied entry to "persons of the colored race." In 1941 the Panamanian president, Arnulfo Arias, an admirer of Hitler and Mussolini while ambassador to Italy in the 1930s, amended the constitution to deny entry of all immigrants of the "black race whose native language is not Spanish, of the yellow race, and the races originating in India, Asia Minor, and North Africa." Article 23 of the new constitution also revoked the citizenship, retroactively, of children of Panamanians whose parents were of African or Asian descent.
President Arias spoke of the necessity of "improving the biological conditions" of Panamanians and was especially critical of the U.S policy of having imported thousands of "colored aliens" from the West Indies and Asia to construct the Panama Canal. The foreign minister defended Article 23, declaring that Panamanians were "anxious to guard against the danger that Panama, situated at the crossroads of the world, should degenerate from a Spanish-speaking, white nation into...a Babel of tongues, and an utterly bastardized race."
Foley, N., 2010. Quest for equality. Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
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