Afro-Panamanians
Encyclopedia
Afro-Panamanian are Panamanians of African descent. Afro-Panamanians are 15% of the population and it is estimated 50% of Panamanians have African ancestry. The Afro-Panamanian population can be broken into the "Afro-Colonial", Afro-Panamanians descended from slaves brought to Panama during the colonial period and the "Afro-Antillean", West Indian immigrants from Trinidad
Trinidad
Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands and numerous landforms which make up the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. It is the southernmost island in the Caribbean and lies just off the northeastern coast of Venezuela. With an area of it is also the fifth largest in...

, Barbados
Barbados
Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles. It is in length and as much as in width, amounting to . It is situated in the western area of the North Atlantic and 100 kilometres east of the Windward Islands and the Caribbean Sea; therein, it is about east of the islands of Saint...

, and Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

, brought in to build the Panama Canal
Panama Canal
The Panama Canal is a ship canal in Panama that joins the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean and is a key conduit for international maritime trade. Built from 1904 to 1914, the canal has seen annual traffic rise from about 1,000 ships early on to 14,702 vessels measuring a total of 309.6...

. Afro-Panamanians can be found in towns and cities Colón
Colón, Panama
Colón is a sea port on the Caribbean Sea coast of Panama. The city lies near the Atlantic entrance to the Panama Canal. It is capital of Panama's Colón Province and has traditionally been known as Panama's second city....

, Cristóbal
Cristóbal, Colón
Cristóbal is a port in the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal. It is located on the western edge of Manzanillo Island and is part of the Panamanian city and province of Colón...

 and Balboa
Balboa, Panama
Balboa is a district of Panama City, located at the Pacific entrance to the Panama Canal.- History :The town of Balboa, founded by the United States during the construction of the Panama Canal, was named after Vasco Núñez de Balboa, the Spanish conquistador credited with discovering the Pacific Ocean...

, Río Abajo
Rio Abajo
Rio Abajo is a West Indian neighborhood in Panama City, capital of the Republic of Panama. The unique culture of this area of Panama stems mainly from the Creole-speaking Caribbean people who relocated to the area from Anglophone islands in the Antilles more than a century ago, namely Jamaica and...

 area of Panama City
Panama City
Panama is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Panama. It has a population of 880,691, with a total metro population of 1,272,672, and it is located at the Pacific entrance of the Panama Canal, in the province of the same name. The city is the political and administrative center of the...

, the Canal Zone, and province of Bocas del Toro
Bocas del Toro
-Transportation:Bocas del Toro is accessible by air or boat. Most visitors fly into Bocas del Toro "Isla Colón" International Airport from Costa Rica or Panama City. Ferries connect Almirante and Changuinola to Bocas del Toro. The ferry from travels thru a canal built to serve local banana...

.

Early Period

The first blacks to arrive in Panama
Panama
Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The...

 came with Vasco Núñez de Balboa
Vasco Núñez de Balboa
Vasco Núñez de Balboa was a Spanish explorer, governor, and conquistador. He is best known for having crossed the Isthmus of Panama to the Pacific Ocean in 1513, becoming the first European to lead an expedition to have seen or reached the Pacific from the New World.He traveled to the New World in...

, in 1513. Panama was a very important territory because it had the shortest point from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Goods were taken from ports in Portobelo and Nombre de Dios, transported overland to ports in Panama City and reboarded on ships headed to South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...

. Initially, Indian labor was used. Due to maltreatment and disease, the Indian population was decimated. Bartolomé
Bartolomé
Bartolomé may refer to:Places* Bartolomé Island , a volcanic islet in the Galápagos Islands Group* Isla Bartolomé, Diego Ramirez Islands, ChilePeople* Bartolomé Estéban Murillo , Spanish painter...

 de Las Casas advocated getting slaves from Africa. By 1517, the trade in Africans were on the way. Initially slaves were used to work and maintain ships and port. It later turned to transporting goods across the isthmus. The transporting of goods was grueling not only the thousands of miles of terrain, but bad weather and attacks by Indians.

Cimarrones

Slaves used the isolating nature of transporting goods as an opportunity to escape. Many slaves escaped into the sparsely settled terrain and formed cimarroneras or marooned societies. These slaves were known as cimarrones. Cimarrones would mount attacks on transport caravans, to the point that it was very disruptive to trade by the 1550s. The most famous of these cimarrones was Bayano
Bayano
Bayano, also known as Ballano or Vaino, was an African enslaved by Spaniards who led the biggest of the slave revolts of 16th century Panama. Captured from the Mandinka tribe in West Africa, it is alleged that he and his comrades were Muslim...

. In 1570, all maroons were pardoned, to stop the raiding. Famous cimarrones proceeded to found cimarroneras. Luis de Mozambique founded Santiago del Principe cimarroneras. Antón de Mandinga founded Santa la Real.

Slavery

Slaves were used in many functions, in the area of Portobelo and Panama City. They worked as domestics in the house of their masters. Some engaged in the production of textile and dyes. Others were skill tradesmen--blacksmiths, carpenters, and cobblers. The discovery of gold also saw their use in mining. This strong dependency on slaves saw the increase in the slave population. For most of the 1600s and 1700s, Afro-Panamanians outnumbered whites. In 1610, The population consisted of 548 white men, 303 white women, 156 white children, 146 mulattoes, 148 West Indian black, and 3,500 slaves. In 1625, Afro-Panamanians numbered 12,000. In 1630, they numbered ten to one compared to the white population. By 1789, they were 23,000 of a population of 36,000. Some slaves were able to buy their freedom or were emancipated by their masters. A few free blacks were able to get an education. Some were artisans. A few were lowly bureaucrats in the government.

Independence

Around the early 1800s, Panama, part of Colombia, sued for independence, which they received in 1821. Independence brought about the end of slavery, but little changed for Afro-Panamanians. Changes did not come with independence and emancipation as was expected. Numerous race riots broke out in the 1830s, because of militant blacks who were impatient with the rate of progresses. In 1838, Panama City had a major race riot which was quelled by the white elite. Afro-Panamanian continued in a lower caste systems, with whites at the top, mulattoes who claimed to be white, natives above blacks. Job discrimination, social rejection because of color was rampant. Afro-Panamanian remained a world apart from the greater culture.

Antillean

In November 1903, the construction of the Panama Canal began. 50,000 workers were imported from Jamaica, Trinidad, and Barbados. The workers were referred to as Antilleans or derisively as chumbos. Antilleans and other black workers were paid less than white workers. Discrimination was rampant. Most supervisors were from the southern US, who implemented a type of southern segregation. The presence of West Indians had other repercussions. Creoles and mestizos who had a social status above blacks were lump with them. They were deeply offended and engage in rampant discrimination of all blacks outside of the general canal local. This led to great racial tension. Native blacks began to resent the West Indians, who they felt made things worse for them. In 1914, the Panama Canal was completed. 20,000 West Indians remained in the country. They generated a lot of xenophobia. In 1926, Panama passed laws decreasing immigration from the West Indies and later barring non-Spanish speaking blacks from entering the country.

Modern Status

By the 1960s, Afro-Panamanians began to organize themselves politically, aligned with the labor movement. National Center of Panamanian Workers(CNTP) was at the center of Afro-Panamanian rights. A few Afro-Panamanians broke into the upper circle. A few were elected to the national assembly of the People Party, aligned with CNTP. One Afro-Panamanian was elected to the supreme court. During the 1970s, they organized congresses dealing with issues surrounding Afro-Panamanians, like discrimination of the National Symphony Orchestra towards blacks. In 1980, Manuel Noriega
Manuel Noriega
Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno is a Panamanian politician and soldier. He was military dictator of Panama from 1983 to 1989.The 1989 invasion of Panama by the United States removed him from power; he was captured, detained as a prisoner of war, and flown to the United States. Noriega was tried on...

, who had African ancestry, was elected. He became authoritarian, turned off most of the populace. His African ancestry was cited as a reason for his unpopular action. The United States in 1989 invaded Panama and remove Noriega. The hardest hit were Afro-Panamanian neighborhoods. During the 1990s, more congresses were form to address the problems of Afro-Panamanians, like the destruction of black property during the invasion. Also the study of Afro-Panamanian took root. The Center of Panamanian Studies was formed. The University of Panama
University of Panama
The University of Panama was founded on October 7, 1935, with a student body of 175 in the fields of Education, Commerce, Natural Sciences, Pharmacy, Pre-Engineering and Law. , it maintains a student body of 74,059 distributed in 228 buildings around the country.The University of Panama was founded...

also began to focus more on Afro-Panamanian subjects as a discipline.
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