Are Panamanians of Caribbean Ancestry an Endangered Species? Critical Literary Debates on Panamanian Blackness in the Works of Carlos Wilson, Gerardo Maloney, and Carlos Russell

Abstract

Contemporary Panamanian writers of West Indian descent shed light on the formation of black Anglophone Caribbean identity in a nation constructed around non-blackness. As writers of Panamanian and Caribbean ancestry, Carlos Wilson, Gerardo Maloney and Carlos Russell navigate geographically and linguistically between the West Indies, Panama and Africa. Their literary texts challenge dominant discourses of homogeneity and whiteness in favor of a black one that promotes a Caribbean heritage through a consciously racialized discourse. Indeed, they strive to be both Panamanian and Caribbean in a nation that views both in conflict. As a result, their works on West Indian nationalism challenge, refute and spur critical literary debates on blackness in a country that has suppressed a black national and literary identity since Colonialism.

Keywords:

• Afro-Caribbean
• Panamanian West Indian
• racism
• identity
• nation-building
• race-mixing

Notes

Notes

[1] The term generation refers to those writers of Caribbean ancestry in Panama born between 1934 and 1945. Thus, it refers to the literary generation and not the years that the writer's ancestors have resided on the Isthmus. Members of this literary generation include Gerardo Maloney (born 1945), Carlos Russell (born 1934), Carlos Wilson (born 1941), and Melva Lowe de Goodin (born 1945), the latter who is analyzed in a separate study (see Watson 2005).

[2] The term duality is used to emphasize that Panamanian West Indians belong geographically and culturally to both Panama and the Caribbean. It is not my intention to exclude their multiple allegiances to Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States.

[3] The Jim Crow system in the American South was based on a racial hierarchy that relegated blacks to an inferior status of whites. It led to segregation laws that prevented blacks from attaining the same status as whites. In the Canal Zone, this racial hierarchy led to the creation of a dual pay system (Gold Roll and Silver Roll) that provided US workers with more economic and living privileges than other citizens. Those designated as Gold Roll employees were primarily whites from the United States, and those on the Silver Roll were ‘colored’ Panamanians, black West Indians, Europeans, and Colombians (Conniff, 1985, pp. 32–36; Greene, 2009, p. 127). Gold Roll employees earned twice as much as Silver Roll employees for the same position.

[4] In the United States, one drop of African blood means that you are black.

[5] Mulato refers to someone of African and European heritage. Although moreno refers to someone who is brown in terms of physical appearance, it can also describe someone of African ancestry but often subtly points to the person's blackness. However, this term is ambiguous because it can categorize someone of non-African descent who has dark features. Negro symbolizes someone who is of African heritage and visibly black.

[6] Stutzman (1981, pp. 68–69) lists five thematic components of Ecuadorian nationality that led to the exclusion of ethnicity in Puyo, Ecuador: (1) the capital is the center of the nation; (2) the nation is urban, and therefore excludes the indigenous peoples that surround the capital; (3) a minority elite controls the nation; (4) the nation is mestizo; and (5) cultural change comes from the outside.

[7] Chombo is a term of disrespect used against Panamanian West Indians.

[8] The Carter−Torrijos treaty guaranteed that Panama would gain control of the Panama Canal after 1999, which would end the control that the United States had exercised since 1903.

[9] For more information on Panamanian nation-building and the mestizaje rhetoric, see Peter Szok's (2001) ‘La última gaviota’: Liberalism and Nostalgia in Early Twentieth Century Panamá.

[10] In 1941 President Arnulfo Arias instituted Law 26, which made it a requirement to speak Spanish to become a citizen. West Indians were encouraged to give up their own culture and adopt that of Panama or leave (Conniff, 1985, p. 4).

[11] Romaine (1995, p.121) defines code-switching as ‘the juxtaposition within the same speech exchange of passages of speech belonging to two different grammatical systems or subsystems’.

[12] Russell's collections of poetry − Miss Anna's Son Remembers (1976), An Old Woman Remembers (1995), and Remembranzas y lágrimas [Memories and Tears] (2001) − and book-length essay The Last Buffalo: ‘Are Panamanians of Caribbean Ancestry an Endangered Species?’ (Russell, 2003) all propose similar questions of Caribbean identity loss in Panama.

[13] The terms ‘English-based Creole’ and ‘English’ are used interchangeably to identify the language spoken by the West Indian population. However, it is important to recognize that the English referred to is an English-based Creole. In the Dictionary of Panamanian English, Thomas Brereton (2001, pp. v–vi) acknowledges: ‘The language spoken by the Caribbean people who immigrated to Panama, their descendants and by others who have learned it from them is an English-based Creole. Creoles are languages with multilingual roots and are primarily lexified by one language but show influences of one or more other languages in their lexicon, syntax, and phonology. Throughout the city of Panama the language of Antillean Panamanians is commonly known as English’.

[14] Aguiluchos are students of Panama's National Institute, a school once known for its high educational standards.