Historia general de Panamá

Abstract

The National Committee for the Centennial of the Republic commissioned this ambitious publication in celebration of Panama’s century of independence. Bringing together the work of 38 authors in 90 chapters, its scope stretches from pre-Hispanic times to the present. The dean of Panamanian historians, Alfredo Castillero Calvo of the University of Panama, organized and edited the work. The Historia general seeks to document the emergence of the Panamanian nationality, first during its early germination as a unique subculture at the crossroads of Spain’s American empire, then as it sought identity in the quest for autonomy within the Colombian nation, and finally as it struggled under the suffocating tutelage of the United States to realize genuine independence. The three volumes are divided into five tomes: the first volume, addressing the colonial period, comes in two parts; the second, treating the nineteenth century, in just one; and the third, covering the twentieth, in the final two. Attractively produced, the work abounds with plates, photographs, maps, charts, and tables.Volume 1 contains 35 chapters. The first two, featuring the pre-Hispanic period, were authored by Richard Cook and Luis Alberto Sánchez. Castillero Calvo — the standing authority on colonial Panama — penned 31 of the remaining 33. The culmination of his life’s work, some of Castillero’s chapters update previous publications, while others he authored expressly for this effort. Superbly crafted, all are based upon exhaustive research in the Spanish and Colombian archives. This volume is loaded with heretofore unknown dimensions of Panamanian history, and, in a larger sense, it provides important insights into the Spanish American colonial experience.Of particular interest to the general reader will be the chapters addressing colonial commerce, a subject on which Castillero has developed special expertise. He analyses the workings of the system of galeones, from the production of silver in Potosí on through its arrival in Spain. In so doing, he goes beyond institutional formalities to examine the physical conditions affecting navigation, the character of the shippers themselves, and issues concerning infrastructure. Special emphasis involves, of course, the trans-isthmian phase of the process. Castillero shows that while silver crossed over to Portobelo from Panama City relatively quickly, merchandise traveling in the opposite direction moved slowly, first following the coast and then the Chagres River to Cruces. It completed the final trek to the Pacific by mule train. Merchants and carriers might be tied up for as much as eight months on the isthmus before turning toward Peru. The Nombre de Dios/Portobelo fairs were thus only one chapter in a very tedious and complicated process. And most fairs were held in April and May, not when royal policy prescribed. Finally, Castillero provides a detailed account of the complex system of taxation imposed upon trans-isthmian commerce.Equally impressive is Castillero’s depiction of the colonial elite, which enjoyed a prominent role in managing the trans-isthmian trade. Proceeding via a prosopographical reconstruction, he documents the networks of power that endured over generations, the matrimonial strategies entailed, and how the quest for royal office became involved. The oligarchy emerged very early, arising from among Sevillano colonists between 1530 and 1560. While displaying nascent capitalistic inclinations, of course, the emerging elite concurrently exhibited lingering feudal values. When oficios vendibles y renunciables became readily available, elite families were able to stabilize their positions through appropriating offices in the royal administration. A study of the ayuntamiento documents its function as an instrument of local control, while another on the audiencia shows how the Panamanian aristocracy came to dominate the agents of royal authority. By means of marriage, the elite integrated into its families the Spaniards who arrived to assume administrative positions and military offices or to enter mercantile pursuits, a process that persevered throughout the colonial period and that in some form or another has lingered into modern times.The Panamanian elites were characterized, Castillero argues, by a diversity of interests involving not only the trans-isthmian trade and public and ecclesiastical offices but also enterprises such as transportation services, urban rentals, mining, ranching, and even pearl fishing. As the sixteenth century advanced and an expanding flow of Peruvian silver passed along the isthmian treasure route on its way to Europe, local dealers executed some 10 percent of the business at the Portobelo fairs themselves. Further, Castillero documents a heretofore unknown trade with the Orient, as Panamanians exchanged pearls for silk and porcelain. Indeed, in a chapter on daily life, he shows (primarily from wills) that an extraordinarily rich material culture developed at the isthmian crossroads.A combination of broad, long-term developments and immediate disasters converged during the mid – seventeenth century to produce a period of intense crisis and a resultant decline in Panama’s fortune. A drop in imperial gold and silver production and the collapse of the system of galeones; an interruption of the slave trade following the Portuguese rupture with Madrid; and famine, epidemics, and shipwrecks all exacerbated by pirate raids (including Morgan’s destruction of Panama City in 1671) — led to economic collapse and to demographic decline. Castillero focuses upon this conjuncture to analyze the survival of elements of the old elite and the personality of a diminished colonial establishment.With the irregularity of galeones during the early eighteenth century and their discontinuation after 1739, Panamanian income came to depend more and more on military subsidies from Peru, which dated from 1663. Three chapters analyze the military and its personnel, the fortifications, and the related finances. Another addresses other aspects of the Bourbon reforms, especially the critical contribution made by the tobacco monopoly to the colonial treasury. The different manifestations of the slave trade, and the contraband that accompanied it, are yet other areas of Panama’s economic activity, but Castillero shows that imaginative efforts to develop a new, productive motor for the isthmian economy during the second half of the century essentially failed.Castillero has made a particularly noteworthy contribution during his career in recognizing the role of cities as the basic instrument for organizing Panamanian space, and a synthesis of that work appears here. Intriguing is his argument that the planners of the new Panama City (constructed on a new location following the brutal sacking and destruction of Old Panama by Henry Morgan) limited the city’s size to a mere 300 solares to ensure that only whites might dwell within its walls. Other inhabitants were forced outside in an arrangement that, Castillero believes, may well have been unique in Spanish America. Considerable attention is also dedicated to the architectural character of civil and religious buildings.Other chapters analyze the demise of the indigenous population during the conquest, the early disappearance of the encomienda, the process of mestizaje, and the slave system. An extensive piece on the conquest and colonization of Veragua, whose dukes were descendents of Columbus, brings to light new information on the incorporation of that vital western district into the royal domain. The church, its multiple personalities, and its diverse roles receive special treatment. Two chapters address the character of the Panamanian diet — where, Castillero argues, Spanish tastes persisted among the elites until well into the eighteenth century, at which point native contributions such as corn and plantains gained broad acceptance. This occurred at a time when, as his price analysis shows, a depressed economy narrowed culinary options. Abundant, and relatively inexpensive, beef completed the Panamanian diet.Angeles Ramos Baquero adds to the material on the colonial period with two excellent chapters. One documents the widespread importation of sculpture and of painting, as well as production by local artists (little of which, unfortunately, has survived). The other deals with colonial silversmiths. A certain amount of the specie coming north from Peru remained in Panamanian hands, of course. Working prosopographically, Ramos assembles the biographies of over one hundred such silversmiths, and she documents their prominent but heretofore unknown contribution to Panamanian material culture.Volume 2 consists of 20 chapters dedicated to the nineteenth century and the period up to the declaration of Panamanian independence from Colombia on November 3, 1903. It covers a wide variety of topics, although not as many as for the colonial period or the twentieth century. The volume focuses on political realities (especially as they related to Panama’s difficult relationship with Bogotá), economic developments (particularly the reemergence of Panama’s role as a trans-isthmian crossroads), and the planning for the construction of the canal and the subsequent French experience. Castillero Calvo authored three of the chapters himself: two on aspects of the early economy and one on a reinterpretation of the Panamanian independence movement of 1821. He further coauthored, with Michael Conniff, another on the planning for the canal. A diversity of themes occupies the remainder of the volume, including environmental change, nineteenth-century literature, and urban life during the 1880s.The volume opens with a real surprise. During the British alliance following the French invasion of Spain and during the subsequent wars for independence, Panama regained its previous stature as a commercial crossroads. Much of the silver leaving both Upper Peru and New Spain, Castillero argues, abandoned the traditional remission routes out of Veracruz and Buenos Aires and passed instead through Panama on its way to Jamaica to pay for English products. Panama City’s population, which had stagnated at some 7 – 8,000 inhabitants, burgeoned, reaching nearly 11,000 by 1822. This population growth was accompanied by a resuscitation of the historic elite. In the second chapter, Castillero first links this favorable turn of events to the early Panamanian fidelity to Spain, but he then shows how the new socioeconomic realities that appeared both in the capital and the interior after 1818 opened the door to an eventual break, albeit under Colombian tutelage. Panama thereafter slipped into commercial paralysis and decline until the discovery of gold in California; the hemisphere’s first transcontinental railroad reestablished the isthmus as an important interoceanic crossroads and turned a sleepy, backward region of the Western Hemisphere into the recipient of the world’s most advanced communication technologies. A brief economic slump followed the construction of the transcontinental railroad in the United States, but interest in an interoceanic canal restored the isthmus permanently to its historic role.Fernando Aparicio contributed most of the material on nineteenth-century political realities, with chapters on the federal state (1855 – 63), the Constitution of Río Negro, the “Regeneration” (1886 – 1903), and, significantly, two more treating society and the political events of 1903. While the federal state accorded Panamanians a welcome measure of self-government, the repression imposed under Núñez set in motion the nationalist forces that eventually found expression in the Panamanian Declaration of Independence. Much more was involved in establishing an independent nation, Aparicio argues, than the imperialism of the United States.The third volume’s 32 chapters address a rich variety of subjects, ranging from the standard political, economic, and social concerns to more specialized topics such as rural society, gender, medicine, the welfare system, architecture, cultural institutions, and leisure concerns, including sports and music. Quite apart from the influence that the foreign-operated canal and its zone imposed, these chapters show that Panamanians continued to develop a culture and an identity quite their own. The all-pervading theme, nevertheless, concerns Panama’s relationship to the United States, the operation of the canal, and the conflicts and struggles entailed therein, climaxing, of course, with the reestablishment of Panamanian sovereignty over its alienated territory.Among the diverse subjects addressed, a number command particular attention. Conniff contributes a succinct chapter on the construction of the canal. Carlos Bolívar Pedreshi provides a detailed Panamanian perspective on his country’s unequal negotiations with the United States up to the failed treaty of 1967, while Reymundo Gurdián Guerra — reaching back to the tragic confrontation of January 1964 at Balboa High School — ably traces the changing character of the bilateral relationship on up to the transfer of December 31, 1999. Given their importance for the operation of the inter-oceanic canal, Guillermo Castro’s chapter on environmental factors holds special importance. Others addressing Afro-Antillean and Chinese labor recruitment highlight the theme of immigration during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Nicolás Ardito Barletta, a former president of Panama and vice president of the World Bank, contributes a learned commentary on the development of the powerful Panamanian banking industry, while Humberto Jirón Soto shows how Panama exploited its geographic advantage to secure the registry under its flag of a prominent share of the world’s merchant marine.The Historia general should serve as a basic reference work for any library dealing with the history of Latin America. It is a unique, massive contribution, without precedent in Panamanian historiography by reason of its breadth, the depth of its analysis, and the quality of its research. Most of the authors are Panamanian. The hope is that this effort might arouse greater public interest in the national heritage. In this sense, Castillero Calvo argues, these volumes and their many chapters should not be taken as the final word but rather as the departure point for renewed debate about the past. As those who have worked in Panamanian history know, but others are not always aware, Panama is much more than the by-product of United States imperialism.