AFROMESTIZO
THE THIRD ROOT
African
Heritage of Central America
By Kent C. Williams
©2001 - Kent C. Williams, Santa Rosa,
California
Afromestizos:
The story of the descendants
of African peoples in Panama is not only the story of the first persons of
African origin in modern times to arrive on the mainland of the Americas, but
also the story of a community that has long struggled to obtain basic civil
rights. Just as in Costa Rica, Panama (and the Canal Zone) had at one time an
official policy of racial discrimination against its citizens of African
descent.
In 1496 Columbus’ brother
Bartholomew established the first permanent European settlement in the Americas
at Santo Domingo (Hispaniola). By 1501, Rodrigo de Bastidas had explored the
Caribbean coastline of Central America and became the first European to set foot
on what is today Panama. The following year, Columbus attempted to establish a
colony here but it did not survive a series of native attacks and was abandoned
within a year. It was not until 1509, that the first permanent European outpost
on the mainland of the Americas become permanently established when Diego
de Nicuesa founded Nombre de
Dios at mouth of the Rio Chagres. That
same year, on the Gulf of Uraba (in what is now Colombia) another settlement was
founded and given the name of San Sebastian de Uraba by its founder Alonso
de Ojeda. This settlement was moved by Balboa to the eastern coast of Panama
and renamed Santa Maria la Antigua del Darien. In 1519, Santa Maria was
relocated to the other side of the isthmus and renamed Panama, the forerunner of today’s Panama City.
Panama has not always been
considered a “Central American
nation” in the historical and cultural sense.
For several centuries it was a part of Colombia, and the history of its
African descended peoples are actually a
part of that country’s history up until the time of Panama’s independence in
1903. Panama was not a part
of the five nation “Central American Federation” and most Central
American’s in the other republics do not consider Panamanians to be “Central
Americans”. Geographically perhaps, but not politically or historically. This
could be the reason why historians have long considered the arrival of the first
black people in Central America to have occurred with De Avila’s landing on
the North Coast of Honduras in 1524 and not the with their arrival with
Balboa in 1513.
My paper attempts to look at
the entire region of Central America. For this reason I include Panama here as a
Central American nation. A nation that has the longest history of black
settlement of any country on the mainland of the Western Hemisphere.
Among the nations of Central
America perhaps only Belize could be considered more “ethnically diverse”
than Panama. Mestizos of native
American, African and European ancestry make up 67% of its population. Persons
of African ancestry, including a large number of persons of mixed African and
European heritage, account for 14% of the population. Some historians have
estimated that up to 50% of the population of Panama has some African ancestry.
Those persons of European
ancestry (mainly Spanish, Italian, Greek and English) make up 10%, native
Americans 6% and Chinese 3% of the population. There are also smaller minorities
of Arabic speaking peoples, Jews
and East Indians.
On September 26, 1513 Vasco
Nunez de Balboa reached the shores of the Pacific. Having crossed the
isthmus from its Caribbean side he is credited by historians with the
“discovery” of the Pacific
Ocean. Among those with him at the time of the discovery
was the Afro-Hispanic nobleman Nuflo
de Olano as well as thirty other men of African heritage. Balboa decided to
sail upon the newly discovered waters of the Pacific and two small ships were
subsequently constructed on the Caribbean side of the isthmus and
transported (in sections) across Panama to the Pacific coast. The
Africans with him, as well as large numbers of native Americans, were largely
responsible for the building and transporting of these first two vessels, the
first substantial vessels to be
constructed on the Pacific shores of the Americas.
In 1519 Panama City was founded by
Pedro Arias de Avila on the Pacific coast.
A trail called Las Cruces had
been discovered between the town of Panama and the Caribbean. Soon Panama City
became one of the wealthiest cities of the Spanish Empire. Latter a new road
(the Camino Real) was built between
Panama and the Caribbean port of Nombre
de Dios. By 1594 the nearby
town of Portobelo became the
principal Spanish Caribbean port in Central America, a position it maintained
for over 150 years. These towns had become very important to the Spanish because
the gold and treasures being taken from Peru and the Philippines were shipped to
and stored in these settlements. Carried overland by mule-pack from Panama City
to the Caribbean port towns of Nombre de Dios (and latter Portobelo) the
treasures were then shipped to
Cadiz (Spain).
Large numbers of African
slaves were brought to Panama to transport goods across the isthmus as well as
load and unload the ships at both ends of the
Camino Real. Other Africans were also sent to work in the nearby gold mines
of Veraguas and Darien. These mines were producing two tons of gold per year during
the 16th century. A large slave market known as the House
of the Genovese was set up in
Panama City (Panama Viejo) and thousands of slaves were sold here to
Spanish planters and miners in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, as
well as to miners and planters in Panama itself. There were already 4,000
Africans in Panama City by 1610.
As early as 1531 a slave
rebellion in Panama had been reported. Other rebellions took place and are among
the earliest slave rebellions in the history of the Americas. Large numbers of
slaves escaped during the colonial era fleeing into the remote jungles of the Darien
(in eastern Panama). The Spanish called these runaway slaves cimarrones (“the wild ones”) and from this word comes the
English word maroon which describes communities
of fugitive slaves who escaped and
lived in remote areas on the islands of the Caribbean as well as in Central and
South America. Maroon communities were established in the Darien during the 16th
and 17th centuries. Native Americans helped these runaway slaves and
soon villages were established, crops planted and a king selected.
King Bayano was the most famous of the Afro-Panamanian kings. He
organized groups of Africans and natives into parties that descended upon and
attacked the mule-trains traveling the
Camino Real. Great quantities of gold,
silver and precious stones were captured, and only after great difficulties was
the Spanish commander, Pedro de Orsua, successful in capturing King Bayano and
his raiders. Taken before the Spanish viceroy,
King Bayano signed a peace treaty with the Spanish, the provisions of
which stated that the escaped slaves of Darien would remain free and could live
peacefully in their villages so long as they did not admit any newly escaped
slaves into their communities. According to J. A. Rogers in Sex
And Race (Vol. II) “Bayano
was taken before the Spanish viceroy, who not only received him with honors for
his bravery and resourcefulness but sent him a free man to Spain where he lived
in luxury from the loot he had captured”.
Starting in the late 1530’s
British, Dutch and French pirates became a serious threat to the Spanish in
Central America. From the 1560’s into the 18th century British
pirates, along with their African and native allies, attacked Spanish ports and
inland cities as far north as El Salvador and Honduras and south into Nicaragua,
Costa Rica and Panama. The Panamanian towns of Nombre de Dios, Portobelo and
Panama City were all particularly vulnerable to attack because so much of value
was being transported and stored in these towns. In 1572 the English pirate Sir
Francis Drake plundered the port of Nombre De Dios. Both Africans and native
Americans joined the English and Scottish pirates in their looting and
plundering of the Spanish towns.
The Spanish moved their
operations (in 1594) to nearby Portobelo. It quickly became the most important
Spanish port on the Caribbean coast of Central
America until 1668 when the Welshman Sir Henry Morgan attacked and destroyed
much of it. Three years latter he returned and sailed up the Rio Chagres and
attacked, plundered and almost completely destroyed
Panama City. Arriving safely back on the Caribbean coast with 200 mules
loaded with gold and riches, he
sailed home in glory and latter became governor of Jamaica. Two years after
Morgan’s attack, the Spanish decided to move Panama City to its current
location a few miles west of the old city. The ruins of Panama
Viejo can still be seen to this day. When Portobello was again destroyed by
the British in 1739, the Spanish
authorities decided (in 1746) that it would be better to ship their South
American treasures around Cape Horn then risk any more attacks on Panama.
Today the descendants of the cimerrones
still live along the rivers and coastal areas of the Darien. Known as the Playeros (beach people)
they are both Spanish speaking and Roman Catholic. As late as the
1820’s, runaway slaves continued to join maroon
communities despite the treaties that had been signed with the Spanish
prohibiting these communities from accepting runaways. A certain amount of
intermarriage between Africans and
native Americans of the region has taken place over the past four and half
centuries.
Most Playeros are fishermen or small scale farmers growing crops such as
bananas, rice and coffee as well as raising livestock. The island of
Isla Grande (near Portobelo)
has an interesting community of 300
Playeros. The community lives from
fishing and coconut production and is famous for its annual Carnival celebrated
a few days before Ash Wednesday. The conga
is danced in the streets and traditional folk costumes are worn by the local
population. On the Pacific side of the country the Pearl
Islands (off the coast of the Darien) were also settled by escaped slaves
who’s descendants still live there. At the turn of the 20th century
blacks form Colombia arrived in the Darien to work on banana plantations
located in the southeastern areas of the region.
Many of the Afro-mestizos of Panama
have assimilated over the past five centuries into mestizo culture and are today a part of the cultural “mainstream” of Panamanian life. The
traditional folk music of Panama’s mestizos
clearly shows strong African rhythmic influences, perhaps stronger then in any
other folk music found in Central America. Panama’s popular dance music also shows a strong African influence.
Africans brought to Panama during
the colonial era living in the areas around Panama City, as well as in the
rural areas west of the capital, blended their culture with native and
European elements to create the mestizo
population of today. This process has been repeated as we have seen throughout
all of the countries in the region.
A few examples of a well
known Panamanians of African descent include President Carlos Mendoza, who was of African
and European descent and served as Panama’s president during the building of
the Panama Canal, classical composer Roque Cordero (b. 1917), baseball great Rod Carew (b. 1945) and the pop singer Edgardo “El General”
Franco who made the singing Rap in
Spanish popular throughout Latin
America.
Afro-Antilleans:
In 1846, the government of
Colombia signed a treaty with the United States permitting the construction of a
railroad across Panama that would run from Panama City to Colon.
The town of Colon was founded in 1850 as the terminus of the Panama
Railroad. It was originally
called Aspinwall. In 1848 gold was
discovered in California and thousands of prospectors set out from the U.S. and
Europe making their way to California via the isthmus of Panama. The
construction of the Panama Railroad
commenced in 1849, but by the time of it’s completion in 1855 the peak years
of the prospector migration had passed. The money the prospectors used while
passing through Panama did help however to finance the railroad and provided
Panama City with an economic boom that it had not seen in decades. The new
railroad proved to be a great financial success for its investors. During the
years of the building of the railroad Afro-Antilleans from Jamaica and other
parts of the British West Indies were recruited as laborers. The completion of
the railroad across Panama cost the lives of many workers and upon completion of
it some Afro-Antilleans remained in
Panama, while others returned to their homes in the West Indies.
The next major movement of
Afro-Antilleans into Panama occurred when the French attempted to build a
trans-oceanic canal across the isthmus. Ferdinand de Lesseps organized the Compagnie
Universelle du Canal Interoceanique
and work was started in 1880. Afro-Antillean laborers were
once again recruited. The loss of life from yellow fever and malaria
proved to be staggering. By 1889 de Lesseps company had gone bankrupt. Over
22,000 workers had lost their lives during these years. Again, some
Afro-Antilleans decided to remain in Panama while others returned home.
The third and most important
movement of Afro-Antillean settlement in Panama came with the building of the
Panama Canal under the direction of the American Panama Canal Company. In 1903 the United States wanted to purchase
from Colombia the “concession” to build the canal. Colombia refused, and the
United States backed an uprising in Panama that resulted in the Panamanians
declaring their independence from Colombia. Panama remained a U.S. protectorate
until 1939 and American interests in the republic remain strong to this day.
Work on the canal began in
1907 and was completed in 1914. During the building of the canal
Afro-Antillean laborers by the thousands were recruited from Jamaica,
Barbados and Trinidad. By 1910 the PCC employed more than 50,000 workers,
three-quarters of them Afro-Antillean. When the
canal was completed many of
these workers stayed on to work for the Panama
Canal Company. They made their homes in the American controlled Canal
Zone as well as in and around Panama City. Only employees of the PCC were
allowed to live in the Canal Zone.
During the early years of the
building of the canal most U.S.
citizens working on the canal preferred to be paid in gold. Afro-Antilleans
however were paid in silver. From this developed the classifications of
a “gold” or “silver”
employee. The terminology was eventually extended to all of the Canal Zone. It
basically took the form of racial segregation similar to that fond at the time
in the American south. Water fountains, rest rooms and other public facilities
were designated “gold”
or “silver” and black and white communities in the Canal Zone lived
in segregated communities. Separate pay scales for blacks and non-blacks
remained in force until the signing of the Panama Canal Treaty in 1977. The so
called “gold” and “silver”
classifications that were used to keep the canal segregated were discontinued in
the 1960’s. But the “gold” and “silver” term of reference was still in
use for many years after its official discontinuance, much to the resentment of
the Afro-Antillean community.
The Americans had originally
favored English speaking workers from the British West Indies just as they had
favored them in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala. They were hard
workers who understood and spoke the language of the North American employer.
They were also regarded as “cheap labor” and faced racial discrimination not
only by North Americans but by Panamanians as well. As
a result, Afro-Antilleans built up their own “insular culture”
separate from their Hispanic and American neighbors. Stressing the maintenance
of their traditional ways, they also strongly believed that education would lead
to greater advancements for them and their children. This has in fact been the
case in recent years, but the community still suffers from various forms of
racial and cultural discrimination.
During the years before World
War II, the community was noted for its loyalty to the British Crown. Many
Afro-Antilleans planned to go back home after they had earned enough money in
Panama to retire. Many were still British citizens, and a belief within some
sectors of the community of a certain “culturally superiority” over their
Spanish speaking neighbors created resentments between them and Spanish speaking
Panamanians.
Afro-Antilleans also settled
outside the Canal Zone in nearby Panama City. Here they formed their own English
speaking Protestant community complete with churches, schools and businesses.
During World War II hostilities between Afro-Antilleans and Panamanians
increased as Afro-Antilleans became more entrenched in the canal labor force.
This lead to actions taken by the Panamanian government depriving many
Afro-Antilleans of their Panamanian citizenship during the years 1941 to 1946.
As a result of this, Afro-Antilleans
united together even more to fight this legally sanctioned discrimination. The
memories of these shameful acts by the Panamanian government have not been
forgotten by the older generation. Since World War II immigration from the
British West Indies has remained negligible, and the slow process of
assimilation into Panamanian mestizo culture has been the
result.
Some things have not changed.
At the top of Afro-Antillean society are the Protestant ministers as well as
professionals such as doctors, lawyers and white-collar workers. Some of
Panama’s wealthiest families are of mixed African and Spanish ancestry. Poorer
blacks were also able to obtain “upward mobility” through service in the
Panamanian National Guard. Many were recruited into these units during the
1930’s and 40’s when few other avenues of advancement were open. The younger
generations of Afro-Antilleans have in recent years often rejected their parents
culture, adopting the Spanish language and Roman Catholic faith of their mestizo
neighbors. Others, who were born in the Canal Zone and attended English language
schools, were often unable to identify with either West Indian or Hispanic
culture finding themselves on the margins of three cultures. The economic
situation of many Afro-Antilleans living in the former Canal Zone reflects the
legacy of American discrimination against this Panamanian minority, many remain
poor and economically down trodden.
Discrimination has not always
emanated from the U.S. presence in the country. The anti-black policies of the
Panamanian government during the administration of President Arnulfo Arias
(1931-1941) was blatantly racist. Arias went so far as to call for the
deportation of all Afro-Antilleans, East Indians and Chinese in Panama. The
early 1940’s were also among the most difficult for the black community. By
the 1980’s a greater awareness of black pride and political activism resulted
in the holding of three “Black Panamanian Congresses” in 1980, 1983 and
1988. This was an organized effort to reassert the Afro-Antillean position in
Panamanian society by building a greater solidarity within the community itself.
The situation surprisingly improved for the black community during the rule of
General Noriega and today things seem to be better then in past years. The
formal segregation that was once found in the Canal Zone has ended, the
Panamanian government has enacted laws to ensure “equal treatment” for all
of its diverse ethnic groups and a greater awareness of black culture and
tradition continues to grow within the community.
Important areas of settlement
of the Afro-Antillean community include towns and cities in the former Canal
Zone such as Colon, Cristobal and Balboa, as
well as the Rio Abajo area of Panama
City. Another region of Panama that has a large Afro-Antillean
population is in the northwestern province of
Bocas del Toro.
Bocas del Toro is located on the
Caribbean coast just south of Costa
Rica. Here the United Fruit Company introduced bananas at the turn of the century. Just as they
had in Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras they recruited Jamaicans in large
numbers to work on the United Fruit
plantations. During the 1940-‘50 period disease virtually wiped out the banana
plantations. Cacao and abaca became
the main crops. After a resistant strain of banana was introduced cacao and abaca
was replaced, and once again the region became an important banana producing
area. Most of the Afro-Antillean population is concentrated in the town of Bocas
del Toro as well as in Almirante.
The village of Bastimmentos is almost
entirely of African ancestry. It is an island located 20 minutes from Bocas.
There are four distinct
variations of Creole English spoken by Afro-Antilleans in Panama. The variations
of Creole English spoken throughout
Central America belong to the Western
Caribbean Creole family of
languages. The variety of Creole English spoken in the Bocas del Toro province
is called Guari-guari and has an
English base with Guaymi, Spanish, and possibly French influences. There is also
one small Creole French speaking
community in Panama that originally came from the Caribbean island of St. Lucia.
They speak what is known as San Miguel
Creole French and are the descendants of Creole French
speaking Afro-Antilleans who arrived in Panama as laborers during the 19th
century.
Afro-Panamanians have a long history of struggling
for their freedom. From the earliest days of Spanish rule many were determined
to live as free men and women in their own communities under their own rulers.
In no other Central American nation were Africans as successful in obtaining
these freedoms as they were in Panama with the existence of the 16th
and 17th century maroon
communities of the Darien. Latter, during the 19th and 20th
centuries, thousands of Afro-Antillean workers gave their lives in the building
of the Panama Railroad and Canal. Proud of their West Indian culture and way of
life, they worked to overturn unjust American and Panamanian laws that
discriminated against them. Although the fight for full equality in Panama is
not over, and as late as the 1980’s the Afro-Antillean community still faced
official government policies that were directed against them, the future of the
community seems to indicate that Afro-Panamanians can keep both their unique way
of life as well as play an increasingly important role in the life of
Panama. A role that they have been playing now for nearly 500 years.FORWARD TO BELIZE
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