The Construction of Black Identity in Panama

• In Event: Latina/o Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Roundtable 6: Race, Ethnoracial Formation, and Boundary Making

Abstract

This paper examines how Afro-Panamanian identity is shaped, sustained, transformed, and at times undermined within a national context marked by globalization, racial mixture ideologies, and a long history of transnational movement. Drawing on more than twenty ethnographic interviews with lay community members, activists, grassroots organizers, leaders of Afro-Panamanian organizations, and scholars, the study asks how Blackness is produced and reproduced in everyday life and collective struggle in a country historically positioned as a crossroads of empire, migration, and commerce. Focusing on Panama City, Colón, and Bocas del Toro, I analyze how Afro-Panamanians navigate competing narratives of mestizaje, multicultural recognition, and national belonging. Interview data reveal how cultural practices, political organizing, historical memory, and transnational ties operate as key mechanisms through which Blackness is articulated and defended. At the same time, participants describe tensions produced by U.S. influence, canal-zone histories, foreign labor migrations turned citizenship, and contemporary forms of global integration that both open opportunities and generate new forms of marginalization. By centering the perspectives of people working within and beyond formal activist spaces, the paper highlights the uneven terrain on which Afro-Panamanian identification is negotiated. Rather than treating identity as fixed, I conceptualize Blackness as an ongoing social process shaped by historical legacies, institutional structures, and everyday practices. This research contributes to sociological debates on race, diaspora, and nation by demonstrating how Afro-descendant communities sustain collective belonging within a highly globalized Latin American context. It also expands scholarship on Afro-Latin America by foregrounding Panama as a critical site for understanding how Blackness is continuously constructed in relation to shifting political, economic, and cultural forces.

Author

• Maya Machado, University of California-San Diego