From temporary migrants to permanent attractions : tourism, cultural heritage, and Afro-Antillean identities in Panama

Responsibility: Carla Guerrón Montero
Publication: Tuscaloosa : The University of Alabama Press, [2020]
Copyright notice: ©2020
Physical description: xiv, 208 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

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Green Library

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Call number	Note	Status
F1577 .B55 G83 2020		Unknown

Description

Creators/Contributors

Author/Creator: Guerrón-Montero, Carla María, 1970- author.

Contents/Summary

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index

Contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction
Chapter 1. Panamenismo and Panamenidad: Converging Ideologies in the Construction of Panamanian National Identity
Chapter 2. Panama's Temporary Migrants: The Afro-Antillean Presence in the National Narrative
Chapter 3. "Panama Is More Than a Canal": The Twenty-First Century and the Panamanian Tourism Industry
Chapter 4. Touring the Archipelago of Bocas del Toro
Chapter 5. Afro-Antilleanness Represented: Museums, Theme Parks, and the Manufacturing of History
Chapter 6. The Permanent Attractions: Music and Cuisine as Malleable "Ethnic Commodities"
Chapter 7. Conclusions: Afro-Antillean Identity Construction, International Tourism, and the New Symbols of Panamenidad Glossary Notes References Index.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Publisher's summary

A new reading of Panama's nation-building process, interpreted through a lens of transnational tourism. Based on long-term ethnographic and archival research, From Temporary Migrants to Permanent Attractions: Tourism, Cultural Heritage, and Afro-Antillean Identities in Panama considers the intersection of tourism, multiculturalism, and nation building. Carla GuerrOn Montero analyzes the ways in which tourism becomes a vehicle for the development of specific kinds of institutional multiculturalism and nation-building projects in a country that prides itself on being multiethnic and racially democratic. The narrative centers on Panamanian Afro-Antilleans who arrived in Panama in the nineteenth century from the Greater and Leeward Antilles as a labor force for infrastructural projects and settled in Panama City, ColOn, and the Bocas del Toro Archipelago. The volume discusses how Afro-Antilleans, particularly in Bocas del Toro, have struggled since their arrival to become part of Panama's narrative of nationhood and traces their evolution from plantation workers for the United Fruit Company to tourism workers. GuerrOn Montero notes that in the current climate of official tolerance, they have seized the moment to improve their status within Panamanian society, while also continuing to identify with their Caribbean heritage in ways that conflict with their national identity.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)