Panama in Black: Afro-Caribbean World Making in the Twentieth Century by Kaysha Corinealdi (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Panama in Black: Afro-Caribbean World Making in the Twentieth Century by Kaysha Corinealdi Claire Alarid (bio) A Review of Panama in Black: Afro-Caribbean World Making in the Twentieth Century by Kaysha Corinealdi Panama in Black: Afro-Caribbean World Making in the Twentieth Century by Kaysha Corinealdi is a much-anticipated and crucial dive into the history of Afro-Caribbean diasporic communities, which White and Western academia often ignore or misrepresent. Corinealdi, a historian of modern empires, migration, gender, and activism in the Americas at Emerson College, delivers a powerful reading to challenge the narrative of Afro-Caribbeans and people of African descent as perpetual outsiders. By considering how Afro-Caribbean Panamanians helped construct their communities and the wider isthmus through activism, internationalism, and vision, Corinealdi dispels the myth of passive or reactionary participation, which targets communities of African descent across the globe, including in Panama. Corinealdi organizes her history both chronologically and thematically, using critical historical events to situate the larger themes and ideas the Afro-Caribbean diaspora has shaped in Panama and, later, the United States. Her first chapter, an introduction dedicated to the foundations of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora in Panama and the constructs which helped drive their activism, contains the bulk of Corinealdi's theoretical approach to this subject. Importantly, she outlines the opposing view that Panama was not the center of U.S. empire-making. Rather, it was an "inherently Iberian space" and a country intent on protecting itself from '"undesirable" and helpless Black foreigners (Corinealdi 2022, 3). Corinealdi argues otherwise, focusing on Afro-Caribbeans in Panama (and elsewhere) as producers of knowledge and active participants in their history, not passive bystanders "merely at the service of imperial and national structures" (Corinealdi 2022, 20). Corinealdi thus uplifts and promotes Black internationalism and multiculturalism, a vision for economic and political upward mobility, and Black enterprises that actively shaped the diaspora and the larger Panamanian culture. Chapter one, "Panama as Diaspora: Documenting Afro-Caribbean Panamanian Histories, 1928–1936," focuses on the Panama Tribune, a newspaper unique in its centrality as a source of current events and ideological vision for Afro-Caribbeans in Panama. The Tribune, Corinealdi argues, was a source of world-building that appealed to the working class owing to its candid discussions on immigration policy, discrimination, education, and labor through a critical and aspirational lens (Corinealdi 2022, 29). Important to Corinealdi's discussion is the established male-dominated leadership in the Black press internationally and the way the Tribune subverted this norm through a women's [End Page 123] section. In this section, writers like Linda Smart Chubb could freely discuss issues of interest to the diaspora and the role of women, who had long been erased as key contributors to the community and continued to experience exclusion (Corinealdi 2022, 33). By providing examples of the few women contributors with significant and often controversial ideas, many of which faced severe criticism, Corinealdi highlights that even within oppressed groups, some continue to face marginalization. Gender inequality within the diaspora received little recognition in the community, raising questions about the role of the patriarchy in shaping Afro-Caribbean Panamanian history. In this chapter, Corinealdi adds subtle commentary which feels poignant and relevant, musing about the opinions and feelings of the women mentioned without overstepping the limits of the historical record. Notably, she also focuses on the Tribune's merits and flaws, adding a refreshing nuance that neither oversimplifies nor overly complicates the diaspora and its actions. Corinealdi additionally emphasizes the international role of the paper, which connected local and national issues such as new immigration and citizenship laws to transnational and anti-imperial diasporic communities, asserting Panama as a place of inspiration, reflection, activism, and entrepreneurship valuable to Afro-Caribbean and Black communities globally (Corinealdi 2022, 38). In chronicling the history of the Tribune, Corinealdi simultaneously provides a look at the history of Panama, at the time entrenched in the passage of racist immigration laws aimed at non-Spanish speaking members of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora. As Corinealdi provides context for the Panama Canal Zone, a territory legally controlled by the United States, and Western imperial influence that helped shape these policies, she decenters...