Reafricanización en una barbería panameña: conceptos emergentes de la etnia negra

The decoration of urban, youth barbershops reflects the growth of Afro- Panamanian identity, its ties to the Black Atlantic community, and the relative decline of mestizaje as a racial and ethnic conception. Intellectuals in Panama and across Latin America traditionally have emphasized the region�s indigenous and European heritage and the whitening of their populations through the process of racial mixing. In general, they have ignored their African cultural legacies and have attempted to contain them within particular areas. In Panama, blackness has long been associated with two minority groups. Afro-Colonials are the descendents of Spanishera slaves and live in Colon�s Costa Arriba and in the Darien and eastern Panama provinces. Afro-Antilleans trace their lineage back to West Indian immigration and reside in places such as Bocas del Toro, the city of Colon, and the capital�s Rio Abajo neighborhood. The barbershops and other forms of popular art suggest a new sense of blackness, one less contained by the old geographic parameters. Their creators operate outside official intellectual circles and utilize tactics typical of black, proletariat expression, associated with Caribbean festival traditions. Mixing music, written words, and beguiling imagery, they appropriate actors, singers, and other iconic figures and transform them with their intense rhythms, while exploiting their prestige and familiarity among viewers. The impact is to envelop customers in a boisterous sense of ethnic solidarity. The architects of re-Africanization rely less on African retentions, many of which have been absorbed into the project of mestizaje, and instead, they turn to diasporic culture to challenge blackness� concealment in the existing racial paradigms. This study examines the barbershops through the life of artist Víctor Hugo �Pirri� Rodríguez Maldonado (born in 1971).La decoración de las barberías de la juventud urbana refleja el crecimiento de la identidad afropanameña, su relación con el Atlántico negro y el relativo deterioro del mestizaje como una concepción etnicorracial. Las barberías y otros espacios del arte popular utilizan métodos de la expresión negra y proletaria relacionados con las fiestas caribeñas. Combinan música, pintura y prosa, apropiándose de actores, cantantes y otros íconos para transformarlos con sus ritmos intensos, mientras explotan su fama ante el público. Así, las barberías envuelven a los clientes en un espectáculo de solidaridad étnica. Como en otras partes de Latinoamérica, la reafricanización depende de la cultura diaspórica para vencer la supresión de la negritud en los paradigmas raciales existentes. Este estudio examina las barberías a través de la vida del artista Víctor Hugo �Pirri� Rodríguez Maldonado (nacido en 1971)

Octavio Méndez Pereira and panamanian foundational fiction

Utilizing Sommers concept of foundational fictions, this essay analyzes Octavio Méndez Pereiras novel Nuñez de Balboa (1934). The article argues that the novel became a vehicle of Panamanian nationalism, presenting the isthmus as an Hispanic, mestizo nation and as a country without ties to the Afro-Caribbean world. This vision arises principally from the books main characters, Balboa and the indigenous princess Anayansi. Their romance projects the idea of a homogenous nation, contrasting sharply with the tumult of early twentieth-century, including the immigration of thousands of West Indians. Nuñez de Balboa illustrates the cultural strategies of Panamas elite and its desire to control the process of modernization