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Panama The Middle Class
The middle class was predominantly mestizo, but it included
such diverse elements as the children and grandchildren of black
Antilleans, the descendants of Chinese laborers on the railroad,
Jews, more recent immigrants from Europe and the Middle East, and
a few former elite families fallen on hard times. Like the elite,
the middle class was largely urban, although many small cities and
towns of the interior had their own middle-class families. The
middle class encompassed small businessmen, professionals,
managerial and technical personnel, and government administrators.
Its membership was defined by those who, by economic assets or
social status, were not identifiably elite but who were still
markedly better off than the lower class. As a whole, the middle
class benefited from the economic prosperity of the 1960s and early
1970s, as well as the general expansion in educational
opportunities in the late twentieth century.
Members of the middle class who had held such status for any
length of time were rarely content to remain fixed on the social
scale. Emulating elite norms and attitudes, they exerted great
effort to continue their climb up the social ladder. They were
aware of the importance of education and occupation in determining
status and the compensatory role these variables could play in the
absence of family wealth or social background. Middle-class parents
made great sacrifices to send their children to the best schools
possible. Young men were encouraged to acquire a profession, and
young women were steered toward office jobs in government or
business. In contrast with the elite, the middle class viewed
teaching as an appropriate occupation for a young woman.
Nationalist sentiment served to unify the diverse elements of
the middle class in the decades following World War II. University
students, who were predominantly middle class in family background,
typified both the intense nationalism and the political activism of
the middle class. Political observers noted a sharp class cleavage
in the political consciousness of the Spanish-speaking natives and
the more recent, unassimilated immigrant families. Middle-class
immigrants tended to be preoccupied with commercial pursuits and
largely conservative or passive in their politics.
Data as of December 1987
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