Panama City has long been a central site of Afro-Panamanian life, resistance, and cultural production. From its founding in 1519, the city became a key node in Spanish imperial trade, dependent on enslaved African labor to transport goods across the isthmus. By the 17th century, Afro-descendants outnumbered white colonists in the capital, yet they remained socially and politically marginalized under a caste system that tethered rights to whiteness. Enslaved Africans resisted this system through maroon rebellions—most famously those led by Bayano—and built autonomous communities in the surrounding hills and jungles that disrupted colonial trade routes. In the early 20th century, Panama City again became a site of transformation as thousands of Afro-Caribbean workers from Jamaica, Barbados, and elsewhere migrated to construct the Panama Canal. These workers were subjected to Jim Crow-style segregation under the "silver roll" system, which reserved the lowest pay and poorest conditions for Black laborers. In response, Afro-Caribbean Panamanians developed a vibrant infrastructure of resistance through labor unions, such as the Canal Zone Workers Union, and civic groups like the Comité Pro-Reforma Constitucional. They also asserted their rights through education and the press—organizing schools, founding bilingual newspapers, and shaping political discourse through community advocacy. Cultural resistance flourished as well. The Congo tradition, born of maroon performance, continues in the city’s working-class neighborhoods and annual Carnival, while artists like Giana De Dier repurpose colonial archives to center Black Panamanian women’s memory and presence. The Afro-Antillean Museum—housed in a former Methodist church built by Barbadian canal workers in 1910—anchors this history in Panama City, preserving oral histories, photographs, and ephemera that trace Afro-Panamanians’ enduring contributions to the city. Yet economic disparities and structural racism persist, with Afro-Panamanians consistently underrepresented in national politics and disproportionately affected by poverty. Despite these ongoing inequities, Black residents of Panama City have shaped the city’s political struggles, cultural identity, and urban fabric through generations of organizing, artistic expression, and refusal.
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BCA is a platform dedicated to amplifying Black Central American history, culture, and scholarship. Through curated content, innovative programming, and collaborative initiatives, we explore the collective memory, cultural and political organizing, and creative place-making practices of Black Central American communities across the isthmus and its diasporas.
