On a recent trip to Panama, I was stunned by how many other Black Americans I met. There were many who were on holiday, but also a bunch of transplants. For the people who were putting down roots, the story was always the same. They felt like they could breathe in Panama. No one was making them feel like they didn’t belong, they could blend in, they didn’t have to deal with the weight of racism that is a constant presence in the United States.
I stayed in Panama City for a month, took a bunch of tours and Spanish classes. So I got to learn a bit about the city and some other parts of the country. Although I, like my American counterparts, enjoyed the ease of navigating a place where the color of my skin didn’t single me out, I was perturbed when I realized that all of the places that people told me were the poorest and most dangerous, were places that to my eyes seemed majority black. Notably people mentioned Curundú and Chorrillo in Panama City, and Colón on the Caribbean coast.
It made me wonder if that oh-so familiar song of worse outcomes for people of African descent (afro-descendientes) was present in Panama as well. Perhaps it was just harder to spot because the stark contrast of black vs. white doesn’t exist in the same way that it does in the States. I was curious if, statistically, Afro-descendientes have worse socioeconomic outcomes than others. Even if race did not seem to be an issue on the surface. I decided to go to the data to see.
Black Panama vs. Panama for Black Americans
My heart sank as I sat in class watching a video about a white guy’s foray into Curundú in Panama City. My Spanish instructor and I had talked about its reputation for being super dangerous, and since I told him I wanted to learn about Panama, I guess he thought it would be an interesting watch. I had already ridden through Curundú, briefly, on my way out of the city for some excursions. And I had seen the people in the streets, dirty, seemingly high. I had seen buildings that looked unmistakably like the projects. So when I watched the video, I wasn’t shocked.
I was however, disappointed that the hood in Panama looked so much like the hoods in the U.S. The only thing that did shock me were the parts in the video where you saw actual shanty towns set up in the area. There were makeshift buildings that people had thrown together with tin and whatever else. It made me sad.
And, I was surprised that that level of poverty existed in the same city where I was experiencing a relatively soft life. My neighborhood was just a few neighborhoods over from that shanty town. My high-rise apartment had a balcony that overlooked a sliver of the sea. It had air-conditioning, a gym, a rooftop pool, co-working space, and a nice cafe on the first floor. The area had restaurants and cafes whose prices were pretty much on par with those at home, i.e. not cheap.
I could enjoy all the things that I could enjoy at home, without the weight that comes with being Black in America. I could experience new things and not be made to feel like I didn’t belong or was an outsider. That felt really good. And I realized that it’s probably the reason why so many Black Americans were coming to Panama and loving it. But I found myself feeling weighed down by the socioeconomic complexity of Panama. I felt that although my race wasn’t a hindrance on the surface, it may be that the privilege of being American and a visitor was skewing what it meant to be Black in the country.
My visit to Colón before I returned home really solidified that idea for me. Colón is clearly a Black city, a port city on the Caribbean side of the isthmus. It used to thrive because of the Canal, and honestly I had no idea why it wasn’t still thriving. The Canal was still there, and it’s even a stop for cruise ships (although the ships stop right in front of a duty free mall, so I doubt people actually venture further than that).
Now, it looks like it is crumbling, and in some parts like a bomb hit it. My guide and I drove up the main boulevard – it was lively. Tons of people on the streets, selling things, chatting, and chilling. And all the faces I saw were black. But the liveliness of the people did not hide the clear disrepair and poverty of the city. Also, at one point I saw a naked man walking in the street down that boulevard, dazed. My guide told me he was high. No one seemed to bat an eyelash. That made me sad. I wondered, “why does the Black city look like this”? I wanted to understand if this was a trend, and if it was a trend, was it structural.
Black in Panama is Complicated
Unlike in the U.S., in Panama there are seven different categories that a person of African descent can check on the census: Afrodescendant, Afro-Panamanian, Moreno, Black, Afrocolonial, Afro-Antillean, and Other Afro. 49% of Panamanians that identify in this demographic identify as Other Afro. Just 3.8% select Black, which makes sense to me. I learned that this term carried a lot of stigma. Also many Latin American countries have a self-narrative of a mixed culture, so it makes sense that many wouldn’t identify as just Black. As I looked at the data I wondered what does “Other Afro” even mean? It’s obvious that being Afro in Panama is complicated. And is shaped not just by history but societal norms and the stories we tell ourselves.
I looked at census data from 2023 and a study on multi-poverty indicators across the country for the same year. My goal was to understand if the poorest townships (corregimientos) tended to have largely Afro populations. In Panama City corregimientos tend to be akin to neighborhoods. I realized that the trends weren’t as straightforward as that. Here’s what I found.
The Rural and Urban Divide
Large urban areas such as Panama City and the area around it making up the Panama district (distrito) of the country have better outcomes around poverty than the country overall. So comparing corregimientos in that district to those in rural areas is not comparing apples to apples. There’s just a different standard of living inside the city.
Charting Afro Areas and Poverty
The chart above shows us the relationship between Afro population percent and incidence of poverty for a corregimiento. When we do a correlation, we see that the relationship is negative (-0.219). This would be interpreted to mean that a larger proportion of Afro population means lower poverty. That seems intuitively off. We can see from the scatter of the data that if anything, there is no relationship between these two things.
The chart below is the same data, but only for corregimientos in the District of Panama. (Corregimientos where more than 80% of the population identified as indigenous have been removed to avoid skewing the data).
When we look at this subset of data, now we see a positive correlation of 0.41! The data is signaling that a higher proportion of Afro population corresponds with a higher poverty incidence. This is a classic case of Simpson’s Paradox. That is, it is an example of a statistical phenomenon where a trend or relationship that appears in different groups of data disappears or completely reverses when those groups are combined.
Be Mindful of Indigenous Populations
Indigenous populations dominate some areas. And these villages do not follow the same standards of living as other parts of the country. They live in a very traditional way, pushing them into high incidence of the poverty metric. You can see from the data that some of the corregimientos with the highest proportion of indigenous have the highest incidence of poverty.
Below I look at Afro percent of the population and poverty at the higher level, district. This also yields a negative correlation of -0.414. BUT, the circled cluster of points in the top left all have an indigenous population greater than 80%. When these points are removed the relationship is more neutral. The correlation becomes -0.057.
Colón, which I mentioned visiting, has a population of 240K. It also has the second highest Afro population percentage of districts in the country. Despite the crumbling buildings and disrepair I saw while I was there, the data shows that it’s poverty rate doesn’t even reach the average for those districts outside of Distrito de Panama–42%.
Perception of Black in Panama
So to be clear, we’re seeing that overall in the country, a higher density of Afro-descendientes does not trend up with a higher incidence of poverty at the district or at the corregimiento level. But we see that these trends can exist when we consider areas of a specific district. This is true for corregimientos in Distrito de Panama.
So this made me wonder why is it that the neighborhoods that I was warned about are largely Afro, even though they are not the poorest? Below are the top 20 corregimientos with the highest incidence of poverty in Distrito de Panama. They are colored by Afro population percent. Curundú, El Chorrillo, and Santa Ana are the neighborhoods that I was repeatedly warned about as being dangerous. I was told not to go there. We see that they have the highest Afro populations, but their poverty incidence is not higher than the mean of the district.
Perhaps these areas are the most dangerous–that’s a question for another dataset. But, I find it interesting that the neighborhoods I was warned about are literally the most Afro in the district. It’s definitely something to think about as we navigate this question of outcomes (and even perhaps perceptions) of afro-descended people in the country or at least the largest city.
Race, Perception, and Numbers
As a Black person from the United States, I have a very specific conception of race and how it functions in society. I know all too well that race is tied to economics, education, health outcomes, and a host of other things. And I know that these trends are not by chance – they are the result of systemic policy and practice. So, I understand why Black Americans would find a sense of calm in Panama. It’s a place that from so much influence from the U.S. feels familiar, but without the weight of being sized up, judged, and determined worthy of access by the color of your skin.
And because I have this very specific conception of race, it stood out to me when places that seemed “Blacker” in Panama were characterized as poorer and more dangerous. I guess my spidey senses went off. But digging into the data just reinforces why it is not always helpful to bring a personal conception of something to a totally different context.
For one thing, Black/Afro is more complex in Panama. Without the dichotomy of black and white that exists in the US, to be Afro has a broader meaning, and clearly is less of a signal of life outcomes. In general, Afro doesn’t necessarily signal socioeconomic challenges. And this is exactly what racism is not.
Still, local perceptions and characterizations of Black spaces as well as the disaggregated data I saw, whispers that there is perhaps something at play here. In Distrito de Panama, which makes up 27% of the population, there is a positive relationship between Afro populations and poverty. People in the city see Black spaces as undesirable. And I’m sure there are real reasons for this. But why are these the spaces that are repeatedly called out and not others?
These are just things to think about. They could be explored more with other types of data, such as crime data, to see if these call-outs are truly warranted. Or are they an indicator of negative perceptions of Blackness, even in a country dominated by people of color. I’m not saying that Black Americans shouldn’t enjoy Panama. Or that we always need to carry the baggage of our experience and project it onto other places. Quite the opposite. What I am saying is that it doesn’t hurt to understand the racial dynamic of a place, especially if a major draw of that place is tied to escaping that particular dynamic.
Sources
https://hdr.undp.org/content/2023-global-multidimensional-poverty-index-mpi
