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Abstract
In text and performance, Melva Lowe de Goodin's play De/From Barbados a/to Panamá delivers a two-pronged intervention in narratives of West Indian history in Panama. While the play offers Panamanian audiences of West Indian descent syncretic representations of a unified ‘West Indian’ cultural and racial identity, De/From Barbados a/to Panamá also advocates to national audiences for the inclusion of West Indian presence and influences in Panamanian history. Drawing upon a range of resources and methodologies, this production history of De/From Barbados a/to Panamá demonstrates links between the play and ongoing tensions among Afro-Panamanian communities in and outside Panama, as well as diachronic ties to West Indian Panamanian community activism throughout the 20th century. Combining fact and fiction in its representations, De/From Barbados a/to Panamá situates the transformation of history within national educational institutions to serve as a teaching tool for varied audiences while enacting a critique of normative Panamanian pedagogical methodologies and historical narratives.
Notes
Notes
[1] ‘A few years ago, my son Oriel rejected my suggestion that he was representative of Afro-Panamanian blackness [note: McLean translated this term for me as ‘blackness,’ but the word ‘negritud’ also conjures the Negritude movements in Latin America and the French Antilles]. He rejected it with a question to which I could not respond: ‘What have the Antillean blacks done for Panama other than build the Canal?’ I responded that I knew that we had made a major contribution to the nation, but there was no documentation of this fact; I promised to find out. This work is the result of many years of research and interviews’ (McLean, Citation2003, p. 7).
[2] ‘Latin Panamanian’ is a somewhat infelicitous term referring to Panamanians who self-identify as persons of at least partial European descent rather than as afroantillanos or afrocoloniales.
[3] ‘West Indian Panamanians’ are Panamanians of West Indian descent. Probably due to the predominance of Anglophone island origins, the denomination ‘West Indian’ has typically been employed in reference to labor migrants to Panama from the Caribbean. ‘“Latin” Panamanians’ connote those Panamanians who, regardless of racial phenotype, evince Latin American cultural trappings like language (Spanish) and religion (traditionally Catholicism). US citizens living and working in the Canal Zone included civilian ‘Zonians’, who worked for the Panama Canal Company/Canal Zone Government, and military personnel.
[4] Interview, Melva Lowe de Goodin, 7 July 2008, University of Panama, Panama City.
[5] In his study of Jamaican theater, Errol Hill notes the complex ties possessed by the postcolonial nation to its history of white British theater-going practices, slave performances, carnival and harvest festivals, and religious ritual, from which Caribbean theater artists such as Derek Walcott, Dennis Scott, and the Sistren Collective have drawn in forming their interrogations of Caribbean cultural identity. Hill also notes that elements of British popular theater, which thrived in Jamaica, have been retained and adapted to the contemporary cultural milieu (see Hill, Citation1992).
[6] The recently inaugurated Martinelli presidential administration plans to abolish the Instituto Nacional de Cultura, replacing it with a merged Ministry of Culture and Tourism. This move may foretell other changes to the current relationship between the Panamanian government and theater management and operation.
[7] See Boxes 29–30, George W. Westerman Papers, MG 505, Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.
[8] See Box 9, Folder 9, Ewart Guinier Papers, MG 420, Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.
[9] On West Indian labor resistance, see Burnett (Citation2004) and Donoghue (Citation2006, pp. 37–55).
[10] See Conniff (Citation1985), Lowe de Goodin (Citation1999a), Major (Citation1993), Maloney (Citation1989), McCullough (Citation1977) and Westerman (Citation1970).
[11] Although Panama has not included racial statistics in past censuses, the Canal Zone has done rigorous statistical analysis by race on segregationist grounds. Andrews estimates Panama's Afro-Panamanian population to be 64 per cent in 2000, and Michael Conniff states that the influx of West Indian workers expanded Panama's population by at least one-quarter (29 per cent). Currently, SAMAAP and other antiracist groups in Panama are sponsoring a movement to include racial characteristics in the national census, and initial surveys to this effect are scheduled to go into effect in March 2009 (Minutes, SAMAAP Meeting, 19 July 2008, Museo Afro-Antillano, Calidonia, Panama City).
[12] George Priestley (Citation2004, pp. 50–67) discusses the various permutations of West Indian/Afro-Panamanian identity.
[13] See Smart (Citation1984).
[14] Interview, Melva Lowe de Goodin, 16 July 2008, Chanis, Panama City.
[15] Note that here I am discussing cultural traits and activities considered ‘West Indian’, and declining to address issues related to racial difference. There is a growing field of scholarship on the vexed interrelations of race and culture in Panama, as well as in neighboring Latin American regions with similar racial dynamics. Peter Szok (Citation2001) contends that Panamanian national ‘traje típico’ such as the pollera and the montuno and other cultural and folkloric institutions are widely considered to have originated in the cultural production of descendents of the ‘afrocoloniales’, African slaves brought to Panama by the Spanish. Many escaped cimarrones and freed slaves across Central and South America settled in ‘black Atlantic’ coastal communities. During the past few decades, afrocoloniales and afroantillanos in Panama have made progress toward achieving racial solidarity under the banner of afropanameñismo, but cultural difference remains between the two groups, creating an afroantillano (West Indian Panamanian) political agenda that oscillates between a political platform of antiracism and a campaign for cultural pluralism, equal visibility in national cultural representations, and mutual respect. This latter aim can be seen in the annual Antillean Fairs that precede Carnival, for example, or in afroantillano struggles to preserve English language use in the face of anti-Anglophone prejudice (which could be viewed as the vestiges of anti-US sentiment). At the same time as many Panamanian politicians and commentators have remarked on Panama's lack of racism before the US occupation–noting, in effect, that Panamanian racism was molded by the Jim Crow segregation of the Canal Zone, and that Panamanians did not object to West Indians’ racial phenotypes but rather to their cultural difference–West Indian Panamanian activists have sought to critique this rhetoric by exposing the subtler and less evenly institutionalized valences of Panamanian racism in practices such as hiring, education, housing, and access to resources. ‘El Día de la Etnia Negra’ (The Day of Black Ethnicity–whose title provides a neat summary of the intertwining of race and culture in Panama) and the current campaign for a racially inflected census may be seen as gestures toward a mapping of racial statistics onto factors like population density, income per capita, access to healthcare, roads, employment, and other government-provided services, homeownership, infant mortality rates, and levels of education. Whether or not the outcomes of the census initiative will provide increased clarity and discussion as to issues of racial discrimination or contestation among those who downplay the extent of racism in Panama remains to be seen.
[16] See, for example, the films Diggers (Citation1984) and Diarios del Canal (forthcoming 2011).
[17] This phrase is derived Stuart Hall's essay ‘New Ethnicities’ (Hsing-Chen & Morley, Citation1996, pp. 441–449).
[18] As Julie Greene (Citation2004, pp. 78–98) argues, this color line solidified after initial problems stemming from racial and ethnic ambiguity.
[19] The 1985 version of De/From Barbados a/to Panamá was also adapted and truncated for inclusion in Bruce Quinn's 1999 Panama Canal Handover Gala, a massive spectacle in the former Canal Zone commemorating the canal's handover to Panamanian sovereignty.
[20] Interview, Reverend Michael Dresbach, 11 July 2008, Iglesia de San Cristóbal, Parque Lefevre, Panama City.
[21] See journalist Eric Jackson's annual commentary on the fairs, for example Jackson (Citation2004).
[22] Advertisements for the Congreso were broadcast between acts of De/From Barbados a/to Panamá on Canal 11, and the television station later aired the Congreso for a national viewing public., Lowe de Goodin notes the television station's role as a community-oriented and education forum, airing programs such as ‘Así Somos’, which treats local community and cultural activities and was also advertised in the segment on De/From Barbados a/to Panamá, as well as televised course lectures for rural Panamanian townships lacking secondary schools.
[23] Interview, Melva Lowe de Goodin, 30 July 2008, University of Panama, Panama City. Post 2001, SAMAAP has been funded primarily through local and overseas donations and fundraising efforts.
[24] Interview, Melva Lowe de Goodin, 16 July 2008, University of Panama, Panama City.
[25] Interview, Bruce Quinn, 30 June 2007, Steps Dance Studio, Panama City.
[26] Interview, Melva Lowe de Goodin, 19 July 2008, Museo Afro-Antillano, Calidonia, Panama City.
[27] Martinique and Guadeloupe are reported to have sent the second-largest and third-largest workforces to the US-led Canal Zone: 5542 and 2053 individuals, respectively (Westerman, Citation1980).
[28] For information on French Antilleans in Panama, see Marrero Lobinot (Citation1984) and Rey (Citation2005).
[29] See Fanon (Citation1986).
[30] The category of ‘West Indian Panamanians’ is a loose and baggy one in many respects, and specifically in terms of race, culture, nationality, geographic distribution, and economic motivations. Regarding labor, many past and present historians of the West Indian-descended community in Panama endeavor to represent the West Indian Panamanian community as comprising both ‘diggers’ and those drawn to Panama from sites in the Caribbean for a variety of other reasons. Along with Anthony McLean, George Westerman, and others, Lowe de Goodin emphasizes that many West Indian Panamanians did not play a major role in the construction of the Panama Canal but rather established and occupied a variety of other key positions in Panamanian and Canal Zone social networks, working in a range of high-profile service-sector positions within Panama's professional-managerial and political classes and as artisans in the Canal Zone. Regarding West Indian Panamanians’ strategic positions in late-20th-century US−Panama relations, George Priestley (Citation2004, pp. 53–54) contends that high-ranking members of the West Indian Panamanian community in New York played a key role in mediating the Carter−Torrijos Treaty, which culminated in the handover of the Panama Canal.
[31] Watson (Citation2005b, pp. 163–179) discusses afroantillano activism and organizing in the mid-to-late 20th century. Moreover, several strong West Indian Panamanian organizations exist outside Panama, including the Panamanian Council of New York.
[32] Michael Conniff (Citation1985, pp. 132–133) notes that the 1950s and 1960s saw the rise of West Indian political inclusion and successful struggles for social change using the West Indian Panamanian (or ‘criollo’) swing vote. George Westerman spearheaded many policy changes, developing ties to African American political leaders and international bodies through his diplomatic work in the United Nations.
[33] See Lowe de Goodin (n.d.), ‘El idioma inglés y la integración social de los panameños de origen afro-antillano al carácter nacional panameño’, as cited in Watson (Citation2006, p. 32).
[34] Many Latin American scholars and politicians have trumpeted their nations as ‘racial democracies’ (as in Gilberto Freyre's treatment of Brazil), ‘cosmic races’ (José Vasconcelos in Mexico), or places where ‘race does not exist’ due to mestizaje (miscegenation), although these views are increasingly controversial and have been thoroughly challenged in arenas of public debate and within the scholarly community.
[35] With the passage of the Remón−Eisenhower Treaty in 1955 and efforts on the part of unions, the number of Latin Panamanians on the Canal Zone labor force increased.
[36] By ‘post-construction’, I refer to the settlement of laborers after the completion of the Panama Canal in 1914.