Panama The Society and Its Environment
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PANAMANIAN SOCIETY OF the 1980s reflected the country's unusual
geographical position as a transit zone. Panama's role as a
crossing point had long subjected the isthmus to a variety of
outside influences not typically associated with Latin America. The
population included East Asian, South Asian, European, North
American, and Middle Eastern immigrants and their offspring, who
came to Panama to take advantage of the commercial opportunities
connected with the Panama Canal. Black Antilleans, descendants of
Caribbean laborers who worked on the construction of the canal,
formed the largest single minority group; as English-speaking
Protestants, they were set apart from the majority by both language
and religion. Tribal Indians, often isolated from the larger
society, constituted roughly 5 percent of the population in the
1980s. They were distinguished by language, their indigenous belief
systems, and a variety of other cultural practices.
Spanish-speaking Roman Catholics formed a large majority. They
were often termed mestizos--a term originally denoting mixed Indian
and Spanish parentage that was used in an unrestrictive fashion to
refer to almost anyone having mixed racial inheritance who
conformed to the norms of Hispanic culture.
Ethnicity was broadly associated with class and status, to the
extent that white elements were more apparent at the top of the
social pyramid and recognizably black and Indian features at the
bottom. Members of the elite placed a high value on purported
racial purity; extensive ties of intermarriage within the group
tended to reinforce this self-image.
Class structure was marked by divisions based on wealth,
occupation, education, family background, and culture, in addition
to race. The roots of the traditional elite's control lay in the
colonial era. The fundamental social distinction was that between
wealthier, whiter settlers who managed to purchase political
positions from the Spanish crown and poorer mestizos who could not.
Landholding formed the basis for the elite's wealth, political
office for their power. When the isthmus became more pivotal as a
transit zone after completion of the canal, elite control became
less focused on landholding and more concerned with food processing
and transportation facilities. Occasionally a successful immigrant
family acquired wealth as the decades passed. Nevertheless, the
older families' control of the country's politics remained
virtually intact until the 1968 military coup.
The relationship between landowners and tenants or squatters,
between cattle ranchers and subsistence farmers, was the dynamic
that underlay social relations in rural Panama in the twentieth
century. Cattle ranching had expanded to meet the growing demand
for meat in cities. Small farmers cleared the tropical forest for
cattle ranchers, planted it for one to two seasons, and then moved
on to repeat the process elsewhere. As the population and the
demand for meat increased, so too did the rate of movement onto
previously unsettled lands, creating a "moving agricultural
frontier."
Migration, both to cities and to less settled regions in the
country, was a critical component in contemporary social relations.
City and countryside were linked because the urban-based elite
owned ranches or plantations, farmers and ranchers provisioned
cities, and migration was an experience common to tens of thousands
of Panamanians. Land and an expanding urban economy were essential
to absorb surplus labor from heavily populated regions of the
countryside. It remained to be seen how the social system would
function in the face of high urban unemployment in the more
straitened economic circumstances of the late 1980s.
Data as of December 1987
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