1This article aims to highlight the relational and interactional dimensions of the ethnogenesis of the raizal community by examining the boundaries within which “dichotomizations between members and outsiders are produced” (Poutignat and Streiff-Fenart 1995: 123). By disentangling national and socio-racial categorizations and identifications, it traces the local contingencies and the impact of international relation systems that have shaped the otherization processes behind this sense of identity. These “otherization processes” are understood as differentiations that serve as mechanisms for identification. The raizal self-identification, which emerged through differentiation from other Colombian ethnic groups, exemplifies the “dialectical relationship” between “identity and otherness” (Cuche 2016 [1996]: 101). This article seeks not only to move beyond the national context in which the raizal ethnic identification is rooted, but also to challenge the activist and instrumentalist perspectives that have dominated its interpretation, perspectives that view the community’s relationship with the nation-state as the primary driver of its identity development. Instead, the article proposes to analyze raizal ethnogenesis through the lens of otherizing dynamics at the intersection of post-slavery Caribbean societal development and emerging forms of Latin American nationalism. In this context, ethnogenesis refers to the socio-historical processes that led to the assertion of a distinct ethnic status within the national framework. A century before the emergence of the raizal ethnic group, how were citizenships and identities constructed and transformed on this archipelago? How did “race” and “ethnicity” intersect in the institutional formation of the raizal ethnic group? To what extent does the contemporary framing of ethnicity obscure the socio-racial dynamics behind this complex identity formation?
2The article first examines the socio-racial organization of society before the development of a raizal ethnic identity, and notably the post-emancipation transition from the British Baptist heritage after 1853. In light of the transnational aspirations typical of post-emancipation societies faced with Colombia’s national assimilationist policies, the article then turns to the socio-racial and national status of raizales who migrated to work on the construction of the Panama Canal in the 1920s. How were issues of race and ethnicity shaped by the history of these territories and their populations, and by the shifting currents of nationalism, transnational dynamics and pan-nationalism? How do these dynamics alternate in the pre-ethnic history of the raizal identity?
- 1 This article is based on data collected as part of a doctoral thesis defended in June 2022. The dat (...)
3In 1991,1 the Colombian state adopted a new constitution that fundamentally redefined the concept of nationhood. In contrast to the Eurocentric model of an indivisible nation, the Colombian nation was now officially recognized as multicultural and multi-ethnic. This radical shift, influenced by the longstanding struggles of indigenous and Afro-descendant groups throughout the twentieth century (Wade 1997), resulted in the legal recognition of various ethnic communities and the attribution of specific rights (Agudelo 2012, Cunin 2004).
- 2 In Spanish, the archipelago is most often identified by the name San Andrés, Providencia y Santa Ca (...)
4The archipelago of San Andres and Old Providence2 has belonged to Colombia since 1821. Situated off the coast of Nicaragua, its colonial and post-slavery history –dating back to the sixteenth century– has been shaped by shifting occupations and political instability, much like the wider Caribbean. After a “century of oblivion” (Vollmer 1997), during which the islands were largely neglected, the Spanish allowed British settlers from Jamaica to establish themselves on the islands in the late eighteenth century and to develop a plantation economy based on cotton (Parsons 1985, Clemente 1994, Petersen 2001, Ratter 2001).
- 3 Note that the term kriol refers to the Anglophone Caribbean meaning, and not to the Hispanic defini (...)
5The raizal political movement emerged on the islands in the twentieth century, deeply influenced by the national turn toward multiculturalism. Derived from the Spanish word raiz (“root”) the term raizal has been used since 1991 to designate the Afro-descendant community of the archipelago who speak an English-based Creole. Prior to this, “kriol” or “islander” were more commonly used. This article uses kriol interchangeably with raizal.3 The raizal “movement” encompasses a wide range of political organizations and remains highly heterogeneous (Leiva Espitia 2013). Its most significant political achievement has been to initiate this process of self-determination. Faced with the increasing influx of mainland Colombians beginning in the 1950s, the archipelago’s Afro-descendant residents began to identify as native to the archipelago (Le Guyader 2024: 3) to distinguish themselves from these newcomers.
- 4 Organización de la comunidad raizal con residencia fuera del archipiélago de San Andrés, Providenci (...)
- 5 Secretaría de Educación del Distrito.
6An official document titled Raizales, an Ethnic Group to Be Discovered: A Brief Overview of its History and Culture, drafted by the Organization of Raizales Residing Outside the Archipelago (ORFA4) and published in 2022 by the Department of Education of the City of Bogotá,5 describes the key legal milestones in the recognition of the raizal people. It notably highlights the Constitutional Court’s 1993 ruling (C-530) and states:
- 6 The term indígena refers to indigenous communities of pre-Colombian descent in mainland Colombia.
The culture of the raizal people of the islands is different from the culture of the rest of Colombians, particularly in terms of language, religion and customs, which grants the raizales a specific identity. This diversity is recognized and protected by the State, and contributes to the wealth of the nation. As emigration by both non-resident Colombians and foreigners grew on the islands, the cultural identity of the raizal people was affected, to such an extent that in San Andrés, for example, they no longer represent the majority population. This jeopardizes the preservation of the indigenous cultural heritage, which is also the heritage of the entire nation. (Ibid)
The report cites two additional court rulings to emphasize the Colombian state’s responsibility toward the raizal ethnic group, considered distinct from other ethnic groups, such as the indígenas6 communities and the continental Afro-Colombian population (ibid. 28). As part of the institutional and political recognition, a “raizal statute” (estatuto raizal) was drafted. Its first article, published in 2000, defines the raizal people as “the Anglo-African ethnic group traditionally established on the archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina, with its own language, culture, history and ancestors” (ibid. 27).
7The formation of this identity has drawn considerable academic attention, both in Colombia and internationally (Pedraza 1987, 1998, Guevara 2007, Valencia 2015). However, much of this scholarship focuses primarily on the processes of otherization between the raizales islanders and the Colombian nation-state. A common conclusion among scholars is that ethnic claims often served strategic or instrumental purposes (see Poutignat and Streiff-Fenart 1995: 105). Additionally, most historical studies of the archipelago predate the emergence of the raizal category (Turnage 1975, Wilson 1985, Edwards 1991, Kupperman 1993). While these studies are crucial for understanding the distinctive features of San Andres and Old Providence, they tend to overlook the socio-racial foundations underlying the political construction of raizal identity.
- 7 In the sense of English-speaking Caribbean.
8The official definition of raizal identity thus raises critical questions about the boundaries of this ethnic group, which defines itself according to the Colombian national framework while claiming deep historical, cultural and social ties to the English-speaking Caribbean. In this respect, the contribution of American historian Sharika Crawford is particularly novel: her research adopts a transnational perspective to examine the political history of the archipelago (2011, 2012) and her most recent article (2024) explores how island identity developed in contrast to both the Anglo-Caribbean heritage7 and autochthonous models. In line with Crawford’s transnational approach, this article analyzes the development of raizal ethnicity as a co-constructed process shaped by key experiences such as colonial slavery and its post-emancipation aftermath.
- 8 The qualitative methodology used in the study is based on the standard tools of ethnography. The et (...)
9One of the major epistemic contributions of my research8 is the identification of the post-emancipation period (1834-1920) as the memorial foundation of the political affirmation of raizal ethnicity as it emerged in the 1960s. The raizal movement places the emancipation process at the heart of the unique history of its community.
10Established at the end of the eighteenth century, the slave-owning society of the islands of San Andres and Old Providence was confronted with abolitionist ideas from 1834 onward, under the influence of the Archbold-Livingston family –a family of slave-owning planters established at the time on the island of Old Providence and in Jamaica. The family’s son, Philip Beekman Livingston, was entrusted with the task of freeing the slaves. He became a Baptist pastor and developed his local political career by advocating for abolition and emancipation on the island of San Andres, which had the largest enslaved population. In the nineteenth century, the pastor played a central role in San Andres’ post-slavery transition, which earned him significant political power. From the end of the nineteenth century, his central position had a strong impact, not only on the transnational nature of the archipelago’s political and economic orientation, but also on the socio-racial hierarchies inherited from the organization of slavery.
11Four factors explain the unique nature of the emancipation process on these islands. The first stems from the overlap of several legal decisions. Although the islands belonged to Colombia since 1821, the slave-owning planters were British. Two abolition decrees played a role in shaping this process: the British decree in 1834 and the Colombian decree in 1851, and as a result, the abolition process lasted almost twenty years.
12The second factor is the transnational career of Pastor Philip Beekman Livingston, who was born on the small island of Old Providence, studied in Jamaica, was later sent to London to work in a shipyard, and was baptized and trained as a Baptist pastor in the United States and Jamaica. By the end of the nineteenth century, the pastor had acquired complete authority over the islands and maintained ties with a network that included Jamaica, Great Britain, Colombia and, more closely, with the United States in economic and religious matters.
13My research has led to the hypothesis that Beekman Livingston attempted to follow the model of free villages described by historian Catherine Hall (2002), which involved the church purchasing land to be distributed among former slaves. However, some doubts remain, because the pastor’s intentions clashed with those of the planters, who retained legitimacy as slaveholders until 1851. The growing Baptist authority was thus unable to entirely abolish planter power.
14The third and fourth decisive factors in the development of post-slavery society on the islands are economic and socio-racial. Although cotton continued to be produced from 1872 to 1873 (Clemente 1994: 344), the island of San Andres experienced an economic and agricultural transformation driven by the export of coconuts to the United States. While the profits of this trade spared the island from the economic decline suffered by neighboring islands, the former masters –who held the monopoly– kept coconut prices low (Ross 2007: 16-17).
- 9 For further reading, I recommend the article published on July 18, 2023, by historian Jessica Pierr (...)
15In San Andres, the emergence of an elitist mulatto society during this period reflected the broader social and political influence of mixed-race individuals in the post-emancipation Caribbean (Pettey 2011: 876). The word “mulatto” is used here in the sense of miscegenation in a post-slavery society organized according to a socio-racial hierarchy that assigned higher value to lighter-skinned individuals (Sainton 2009: 68). Despite the importance of miscegenation in shaping the population of the islands of San Andres and Old Providence, racial identity continued to be represented socially by associating whiteness with the upper class and Blackness with poverty, as in other Caribbean societies (Wilson 1973: 96-98). In this sense, this historical and political category reflects a colorist9 social order.
16In 1865, Pastor Beekman Livingston –by then the most powerful man of the archipelago– married Josephine Pomare, a Black former slave, servant, and nurse who had cared for his first wife until her death in 1862. Despite the controversy it stirred among the local white elite (Crawford 2011: 34), the marriage between the pastor and the former slave, and the child born from their marriage, became emblematic of a post-emancipation society that legitimized miscegenation and promoted an egalitarian philosophy, notably embodied in the church’s efforts to redistribute land. However, the egalitarian ideal advanced by the Baptist worldview still produced a socio-racial continuum (Clemente 1994: 348) that excluded all Black and African heritage. Ultimately, post-emancipation society remained structured by a socio-racial hierarchy that underpinned the entire history of othering dynamics in the archipelago. Furthermore, toward the end of the nineteenth century, the young post-emancipation society experienced a resurgence of racism with the arrival of North American immigrants determined to erase any “Black” or “Afro” presence (Ross 2007: 18).
- 10 In the original text, the quote is in kriol: “Some is white and some is black, but most’s da color (...)
17This egalitarian ideal and the model of miscegenation play a key role place in contemporary raizal discourse, which seeks to portray the community as “mixed”. This is highlighted by raizal sociologist Dilia Robinson in the monograph completed for her 1974 sociology degree: “The racial problem on the archipelago can be summed up by a famous quote from a native: ‘Some are white, some black, but the most are the color of chewing tobacco’” (Robinson 1974: 42-4310).
18However, this contemporary understanding of the native kriol identity blending European and African heritage, that would be termed raizal a century later, was forged in the specific context of the island of San Andres, not the neighboring island of Old Providence. Although the ideal is now widespread within the raizal community on both islands, the “tradition of miscegenation,” according to Parsons, is far from being confirmed. The island of Old Providence remained “racially” divided after emancipation. This division is still evident today in the two clearly circumscribed Black neighborhoods (Bottom House and South West Bay). As Dilia Robinson noted, in the mid-twentieth century, another neighborhood, Smooth Water Bay, was still known for avoiding miscegenation to preserve whiteness. On the surface, this kind of endogamy cannot be found on the island of San Andres, which has long been perceived as “Blacker” than Old Providence. Nevertheless, it has maintained a well-established socio-racial hierarchy that values whiteness and the cultural legacies of Britain and the United States, as well as the legacy of the mulatto elite.
- 11 Field notebook extract, October 19, 2017, p. 187.
- 12 Field notebook extract, October 22, 2017, p. 210.
- 13 Field notebook extract, October 19, 2017, p. 187.
19In 2017, a 70-year-old Afro-descendant raizal activist told me, with some resignation: “We reject ourselves.”11 He went on to explain the lingering desire within his community to look like a “white English” man. A well-known writer from the archipelago tells the following story: “The first time my father saw me, on the corner of a small neighborhood grocery store, he said, ‘I thought you would turn out lighter.’”12 In everyday language, expressions such as “mulatto,” “brown,” “banana color” or “milky face”13 reflect the omnipresence of the social value ascribed to skin color and reveal a form of othering based on a racialized social perception. This final observation captures the profound paradox between a myth of egalitarian miscegenation and a deeply colorist social reality.
20The events that took place on the islands at the end of the nineteenth century were largely disconnected from mainland Colombia. Politically and culturally, the islands gravitated toward the nearby Caribbean region, notably the Caribbean coast of Central America and the Cayman Islands, and more specifically Bluefields and the Corn Islands in Nicaragua, which share the same kriol population. Until the 1850s, the archipelago’s population was composed of white and mulatto British settlers and planters, and a Black enslaved population. A few Colombian officers were stationed on the islands, but the archipelago remained on the margins of Colombia’s national project.
21The period following the abolition of slavery was marked by successive waves of migration across a broad area that included the United States, the greater Caribbean, Central America and even the island of Curaçao (Vollmer 1997: 62). During this time, the archipelago’s elite, closely tied to the Baptist church, consolidated its influence. By the end of the nineteenth century, the islands had stronger economic ties with the Greater Caribbean than with the Colombian mainland. Social dynamics during this period were not without conflict. The mulatto elite would often criticize the Caribbean newcomers for their Afro-Caribbean cultural and spiritual practices. This tension was also reflected in the Colombian press: “A Colombian reporter also made similar disparaging remarks about West Indian migrants infused with ‘disgusting African superstitions’” (Crawford, 2011: 45).
22Meanwhile, the islands developed closer ties with the United States. Following the end of Spanish and British colonization and the subsequent annexation by Colombia, the archipelago occupied a distinct transnational position, particularly in terms of trade. From the second half of the nineteenth century, the United States expanded its geopolitical influence in the Nicaraguan region, with the strategic goal of building an interoceanic canal. The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, signed in 1850 by the United States and the British Empire, “ceded control of the area to the U.S.A., without any consultation with Nicaragua” (Ross 2007: 15). On the island of San Andres, U.S. dominance was evident in the coconut trade and in the freedom of movement enjoyed by American nationals, some of whom were allowed to reside on the island and purchase land for the construction of warehouses (Petersen 2001: 61). These economic activities contributed to the development and modernization of the island, particularly the San Luis district, in the center of San Andres. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the presence of American traders left a lasting mark on the archipelago. Their racist attitude (Feiling 2017: 287-288) further reinforced the color-based social hierarchy described earlier.
23To conclude on the transnational identity of the archipelago in a post-emancipation context, three political upheavals that occurred in the early twentieth century had a significant impact on islander mobility. First, in 1903, Panama declared its independence from Colombia. That same year, France and the United States signed the Hay-Bunau Varrilla Treaty, which ceded control of the Panama Canal construction site to the United States. Finally, Colombia signed the Esguerra-Barcenas Treaty, ceding the Corn Islands to Nicaragua (Márquez Pérez 2013: 207), despite the longstanding political and cultural unity between Colombia and those islands (ibid., 208).
24The post-emancipation society established by Pastor Beekman Livingston and his mixed-race son was exceptional in the Caribbean context for its egalitarian vision, underpinned by favorable economic conditions in which trade with the United States played a decisive role. However, the Livingston era came to an end in the 1920s, after a century of political, economic and religious dominance. As the island’s economy entered a period of decline, the Colombian government began to assert its moral and political authority over the archipelago by implementing assimilationist policies. In this context, many islanders left the archipelago to seek employment in the construction of the Panama Canal. What happened to them during this migration? How did the socio-racial factor shape their experience in Panama?
25In the 1930s, “the island economy entered a deep phase of stagnation” (Clemente 1994: 348). The jobs created by the Panama Canal construction project offered an opportunity to escape this crisis. While most islanders followed migration routes to the city of Colón (formerly Aspinwall) in Panama, some emigrated to Costa Rica and Cartagena in Colombia. At that time, 20% of the archipelago’s population chose to emigrate (Vollmer 1997: 66). According to Clemente (1994: 349) between 1938 and 1941, the population of San Andres fell from 4,261 to 3,705, and the population of Old Providence dropped from 2,267 to 1,970. In 1953, James Parsons recorded the presence of 2,500 islanders in Colón. Since the early stages of the Panama Canal project, Caribbean immigration has concentrated in Colón, where a Jamaican population had been present since the mid-nineteenth century.
26The islanders of San Andres and Old Providence who emigrated to the Canal Zone joined this Caribbean working-class community and shared with them the burden of the paradox between the post-emancipation ideal of socio-racial equality and the “materiality” of a colorist hierarchy. To what extent did this working-class migratory experience affect the tensions between Colombian national assimilation, expressions of regional distinctiveness and the emergence of transnational or even trans-Caribbean racial consciousness?
- 14 Club Patriótico Colombiano.
- 15 Sociedad de Beneficencia y Auto-Progreso.
27The founding of the Colombian Patriotic Club14 in 1925 for emigrants from the archipelago, and the Mutual Aid and Self-Improvement Society15 in 1926 (Parsons 1985: 118) are proof of a certain corporative organization based on national identity, which was the criteria for membership in at least one of these groups. Parsons notes that the Patriotic Club had around 300 members between 1925 and 1930, and the Mutual Aid Society up to 500 members (ibid.), though he provides no further information about their composition, activities, or potential ties with the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) founded by Jamaican Marcus Garvey, whose actions in Panama focused on improving the conditions of Black Caribbean workers.
- 16 Political movement led by Black nationalist Marcus Garvey.
28To understand the role and experience of San Andres and Old Providence islanders in Colón, it is important to examine how identities were shaped in this specific migratory context and to compare this Caribbean-Panamanian experience with the later development of the raizal ethnicity. Walwin Petersen points out that islanders returning from Panama to the archipelago contributed to local development through their migratory experiences, notably by saving money and bringing back goods purchased in Panama (Petersen 2001: 144) –some of which can still be found in island homes today. However, they also returned deeply marked by the socialization experienced in the Canal Zone. These dynamics reflect the influence of Garveyism16 in Central America and raise the question of whether a pan-Caribbean or Antillean trans-Caribbean identity was beginning to emerge in opposition to new forms of Latin American nationalism.
29At the beginning of the twentieth century, American recruitment practices for the Panama Canal project mirrored segregationist laws in the United States and established a racially stratified labor system. The jobs promised by the Canal construction project attracted Black workers from both British and French colonies, generating one of the largest migration waves in U.S. history. The islanders who emigrated to Colón from the 1930s onward joined the different trade unions formed by Caribbean workers soon after the Americans took over control of the canal construction. What were the dynamics at work within this workforce, which was highly stratified and prone to division, even within categories? To understand the experience of archipelago workers, it is essential to examine the broader labor context of the Panama Canal and its impact on identity formation during and after their migration.
30Racial segregation, institutionalized through the Jim Crow laws, was the foundation of the wage hierarchy imposed on the Canal’s working-class community. The workforce was organized under the “Gold and Silver system” (Zumoff 2013: 429). White American citizens were paid in gold and enjoyed higher wages and better conditions than Black Caribbean workers, who were paid in silver (ibid.). Racial discrimination extended beyond wages to housing, education, healthcare, and access to public services (Harpelle 2003: 49). These conditions contributed to the death of nearly 20,000 workers (ibid.). The system of differential pay legitimized racial segregation and created a racist climate that replicated these dynamics within the working-class community. Anguizola described this phenomenon as “triple racial antipathy,” that reflected the hostile relations between different categories: “[…] the Panamanians versus Caribbean Negroes, the Americans versus Panamanians or Negroes of Spanish American heritage, and Antillean Negroes versus white Americans” (Anguizola 1968: 354).
- 17 Unión Obrera Panameña Latinoamericana de la zona del Canal.
- 18 Federación Obrera de la República de Panama (FORP).
31Inhumane working conditions led to resistance and protest. The first strike occurred in 1904, repressed by Panamanian police acting in support of U.S. authorities. Five months later, 500 Martinican immigrants “refused to disembark at Colón from the French steamer Versailles” (ibid.). The 1920 strike by “Silver” workers, from February 24 to March 3, marked the first attempt to unify the lower-paid workforce, suggesting a potential merger of Hispanic and Caribbean working classes (Zumoff 2013: 443). However, the opposite occurred: the strike deepened divisions between the Hispanic labor movement, mostly Panamanian, and the Caribbean movement. The Panamanians continued to demand access to Gold Worker status and priority employment over Caribbean workers (ibid.). Their group founded the Latino-American Panamanian Workers Union of the Canal Zone,17 which affiliated with the Panamanian Labor Federation.18 Caribbean laborers were not represented in the Workers Union, and the Federation even held a vote to determine whether they should be expulsed from Panama (6 unions approved and 5 opposed it). As a result, they intensified their own forms of resistance rooted in Black nationalism and Garveyism, and distanced themselves from trade union models that represented primarily Hispanic working-class interests (ibid.).
- 19 Notably from Barbados and Jamaica.
- 20 The indigenous people that form the majority population on the Caribbean coast of Central America a (...)
32For American employers, English-speaking Caribbean workers19 were considered an elite segment of the workforce because of their proficiency in English and the higher level of education (Harpelle 2003: 41) in the British colonies than in the former Spanish colonies. This perceived elite status created tensions between Caribbean and Hispanic workers and prevented Caribbean migrants from being assimilated in the diverse Panamanian Hispanic group comprising Miskito Amerindians, Afro-Amerindians, Garifunas20 and Afro-descendants or “colonial Blacks.” On the contrary, these dynamics strengthened national distinctions. Panamanian identity was based on a sense of “Hispanicity” defined in opposition to Anglo-Saxon influence (Zumoff 2013: 431), that echoed the Colombian vision of a national identity and the longstanding colonial rivalries between the British and Spanish empires.
33The weakening of Caribbean unity was thus partly due to perceptions that these communities threatened the emerging national identity of various countries in the region (Harpelle 2003: 41). Once again questions arose about the identity of the San Andres and Old Providence community. While they were Colombian citizens and had been required to learn Spanish since the early twentieth century, their mother tongue remained English-based Creole along with the English taught by the Baptist church. To what group did they belong? Although employers grouped them under the single broad category of “Blacks,” the many differences and rivalries in terms of class and Pan-Caribbean identity within this category (Harpelle 2003) made it difficult to foster solidarity. The UNIA sought to overcome these divisions by denouncing island-specific loyalties, notably by describing terms such as Jamaicanism, Barbadianism and Panamanianism as “foolish” (Burnett 2013: 42). Meanwhile, the British government had little interest in encouraging Afro-Caribbean solidarity or a pan-Caribbean sentiment, fearing that such movements could ignite anti-colonial resistance (ibid.: 44).
- 21 Arnulfo Arias was President of Panama from 1940 to 1941 and from 1949 to 1951.
34From the moment of their independence, the new Latin American republics sought to define and affirm their national identity by promoting the idea of a homogeneous population, ideally of European descent. Within the migratory context of the Panama Canal Zone, national policies were generally hostile to the integration of Afro-descendent Caribbean immigrants. Between 1934 and 1935, the United States reportedly spent around twenty thousand dollars to repatriate Caribbean families (Anguizola 1968: 358). However, during the Second World War, Caribbean workers were once again recruited to help defend the Canal. Many islanders from San Andres and Old Providence seized this opportunity to emigrate, particularly after the Arias21 government passed a new nationalization law that granted Panamanian nationality to any person of “the Negro race” who requested it (ibid.). While the law somewhat improved the treatment of Caribbean migrants, it was not consistently enforced. Panama’s migration policies created a legal limbo for many children of Caribbean immigrants, leaving the first and second generations born in Panama stateless (Clarke 2006: 94-95).
- 22 Interview of Colombian anthropologist Ana Isabel Márquez Pérez, Old Providence, 2016.
35Depending on the migration wave, some islanders from San Andres and Old Providence became naturalized Panamanians, while others held dual Colombian and Panamanian nationality. The legacy of this migration experience is still evident today: many islanders travel regularly to Panama (San Andres airport’s only international connection in 2017 was to Panama) and maintain close family ties there. In Panama and other countries where the banana industry heavily depends on Caribbean labor, the descendants of these workers gradually assimilated into the population of the Hispanic republics. Thus, while some families settled in these countries, others emigrated to the United States or Canada (ibid.). The Canal experience also led to inter-Caribbean marriages and new migration patterns. For instance, the Rapon family of Martinican descent, now living on Old Providence can trace its roots to this trans-Caribbean22 working-class experience.
- 23 On August 31, 1920, the UNIA proclaimed the Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the W (...)
36The labor system that sustained the construction of the Panama Canal for nearly a century serves as a revealing case study of post-slavery identity formation in a migratory setting. In Central America, dynamics of otherness and racial hierarchy persisted –legitimized by the American regime and imbedded in the nationalist frameworks of the new Hispanic republics. The UNIA’s pan-Caribbean ambitions ultimately collapsed under the weight of insular and class divisions, despite its relative success in Nicaragua, where events such as the 1922 commemoration of the Negro National Holiday in Bluefields confirm its impact (ibid., 6323). However, this solidarity remained superficial, as collaboration between groups was hampered by complex and overlapping differences of class and skin color (ibid.). At the same time, national policies across Hispanic republics consistently resisted efforts toward Afro-Caribbean unity. As UNIA branches declined and the push for national assimilation of the descendants of Caribbean immigrants intensified, new waves of nationalism led to the Hispanicization of these groups beginning in the 1950s (Clarke 2006: 97-98).
37The disintegration of the post-emancipation political organization on the islands of San Andres and Old Providence in the early twentieth century was compounded by the growing influence of the Colombian government. Like its neighboring Hispanic republics, Colombia sought to impose its national identity on what had become a strategic territory. While this article does not aim to fully explore the concept of “Colombianization,” which refers to the policy of assimilating islanders into the Colombian national project, it will attempt to highlight some of the key issues it raises, particularly in relation to the discriminatory treatment of Black workers in Panama and the broader national identity policies pursued by the young Hispanic republics.
38The assimilationist policy of the Colombian government unfolded in several phases, the earliest of which involved the mass conversion of islanders to Catholicism and the mandatory use of Castilian Spanish. This religious and linguistic transformation was based on a Eurocentric perception of the Other, with missionary monks and nuns viewing their work as the “civilization” of the “savages” (Ratter 2001: 76-77). Similarly to what was seen in Panama on the Canal construction site, the Colombian government sought to sever ties with American contractors and the Caribbean diaspora. It actively worked to disengage the islands from the transnational space it had been part of, notably by replacing “Jamaican” teachers with bilingual ones in public schools (ibid.) and by offering scholarships to encourage islanders to study in Colombia’s main cities. Considerable measures (in education and employment) were taken by the Colombian government to redirect the islanders away from their traditional connections with the Caribbean coast, Jamaica, and the United States, and instead toward mainland Colombia.
39By the end of this first assimilationist phase, emigration of islanders to Panama had increased. From 1913 to 1940, the islands were largely cut off from the transnational networks that had developed in the post-emancipation period. The only ones to escape the process were the islanders who had migrated to Colón, where their Anglo-Afro-Caribbean Protestant culture inherited from the plantation system (Vollmer 1997: 63) resonated with the English and French-speaking Caribbean working-class community. This phase of assimilation into the Colombian state also entailed an administrative transformation of the archipelago that reshaped power structures (Archbold Nuñez 2015: 18). The political, economic, and socio-cultural consequences of these changes intensified from the 1950s onward.
40This article demonstrates the importance of re-examining the boundaries and dynamics of othering that shaped the formation of the raizal identity, long before the visible changes that occurred on the archipelago in the 1960s, largely presented as the catalyst of this claim of ethnicity. Although the archipelago has been part of Colombia since the early nineteenth century, its post-slavery society shared more similarities with neighboring Caribbean societies and was already integrated into a transnational political and economic space closely tied to the United States. The kriol islanders’ experience of migration to Panama in the early twentieth century introduced them to a new level of othering, as they joined a Caribbean and Hispanic working-class community subjected both to the American segregationist system and to exclusionary nationalist policies in the Hispanic republics. The labor movement led by Marcus Garvey in Central America sought to forge a transnational Black working-class community, uniting Caribbeans from different regions, including those who migrated from the Caribbean coast of Central America. However, growing internal divisions weakened the movement, and the vision of a pan-Caribbean citizenship eroded. In the meantime, the pressure to assimilate into Colombian –and even Panamanian– national identity intensified.
41With the adoption of the new constitution in the 1990s, Colombia embraced a multicultural, multi-ethnic view of nationhood. As mentioned in the introduction, the Colombian state recognized ethnic groups and granted them specific rights, notably in terms of land ownership and education. The raizal community has come to rely on this framework to stay alive. This “ethnic” positioning is not only a survival strategy in the face of the identity crisis caused by mass continental immigration in the 1950s-1960s; it is also a way for the raizal community to negotiate its sense of belonging within the nation, simultaneously claiming the national identity while asserting its difference from it.
42Our investigation shows that while the raizal ethnic identification stems from this differentiation, it also builds on a legacy of citizenship formation that is rooted in the transnational history of the kriol islanders, who have now become raizales. However, their relationship with this ethnic category remains ambivalent. As Peter Wade notes, studies about Blacks have been established in academia as the study of race, while studies of indigenous people have been associated instead with studies of ethnicity (Wade 2010: 80). Was the raizal category thus constructed to avoid the racial marker traditionally associated with Black communities? The fact that islanders identify neither as “afros,” nor as “Colombians” but as “raizal” –an ethnic category that is not associated with either national or racial markers, suggests a certain distancing from, or even erasure of, their Black identity, which is nonetheless inextricably linked to the history of their community. Raizal ethnogenesis can therefore be understood as an extension of the tension in their identity between the ideal model of egalitarian miscegenation and the colorist legacy of intra-community social dynamics. Finally, the distinctiveness of the Panamanian migratory experience invites us to expand our reflections to include the contemporary socio-racial dimensions of raizal ethnic identification beyond the archipelago and mainland Colombia.