Panama ETHNIC GROUPS
San Blas Cuna Indian villages
Courtesy Organization of American States
Cuna girls in traditional dress
Courtesy Agency for International Development
Because the isthmus holds a central position as a transit zone,
Panama has long enjoyed a measure of ethnic diversity. This
diversity, combined with a variety of regions and environments, has
given rise to a number of distinct subcultures. But in the late
1980s, these subcultures were often diffuse in the sense that
individuals were frequently difficult to classify as members of one
group or the other, and statistics about the groups' respective
sizes were rarely precise. Panamanians nonetheless recognized
racial and ethnic distinctions, and considered them social
realities of considerable importance.
Broadly speaking, Panamanians viewed their society as composed
of three principal groups: the Spanish-speaking, Roman Catholic
mestizo majority; the English-speaking, Protestant Antillean
blacks; and tribal Indians. Small numbers of those of foreign
extraction--Chinese, Jews, Arabs, Greeks, South Asians, Lebanese,
West Europeans, and North Americans--were also present. They
generally lived in the largest cities, and most were involved in
the retail trade and commerce. There were a few retired United
States citizens--mostly former Canal Zone officials--residing in
Chiriquí. The Chinese were a major source of labor on the transisthmian railroad, completed in the mid-nineteenth century. Most
went on to California in the gold rush beginning in 1848; of those
who remained, most owned retail shops. They suffered considerable
discrimination in the early 1940s under the nationalistic
government of President Arnulfo Arias Madrid, who sought to rid
Panama of non-Hispanics
(see The War Years
, ch. 1).
There were also small groups of Hispanic blacks, blacks
(playeros), and Hispanic Indians (cholos) along the
Atlantic coast lowlands and in the Darién. Their settlements,
dating from the end of the colonial era, were concentrated along
coasts and rivers. They had long relied on mixed farming and
livestock raising, adapted to the particular exigencies of the
tropical forest environment. In the mid-twentieth century, they
began marketing small quantities of livestock, tropical fruits,
rice, and coffee. In the 1980s, they were under pressure from the
mestizo population, as farmers from the central provinces expanded
into these previously isolated regions
(see Rural Society
, this
ch.).
Data as of December 1987
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