Reading Response: Marixa Lasso’s Erased

Allison Brown HIST 4494 Dr. Hampton Feb. 16, 2022 Reading Response: Marixa Lasso’s Erased Marixa Lasso’s reading from Erased , discusses the political, economic, and social situation in Panama surrounding the construction of the Panama Canal in 1881. To briefly discuss the author, Lasso is an Associate Professor of Latin American History at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia with a specific focusErased in on the relationship between US ideas about Panamanian tropical environment and peoples and the depopulation of the Panama Canal Zone. The case study of Panama stands out in stark contrast to the countries of focus in previous weeks, Cuba and Puerto Rico. Not inherently based on extraction, agrarian benefit, or regional control in the Caribbean, Panama was of interest to the US because of its geopolitical value. The Panama Canal was necessary to counter other global trade routes which were unavailable at that time for the US to access. Additionally, the conversation regarding citizenship was entirely out of the question in Panama, in part due to physical distance and arguably also in part due to race. Panama represents new sorts of influence in Latin America–defined as neocolonial or neoliberal– which would shift US relations from the type of involvement exemplified in Cuba and Puerto Rico to a more dynamic and hegemonic presence in Latin America. A central argument in this reading is that of tropicalization and discourse prevalent in US expansion and influence. Lasso argues political discourse aided the phenomena of regional race relations by presenting Panama’s citizens, most of whom were black, as “natives” to Panama. This ideological shift made it easier to enforce depopulation policies against the “natives” that altered the Canal Zone’s environmental landscape by changing one of the most densely populated regions of the country into a jungle, seeming an “untouched” landscape. Lasso’s argument is similar to another discourse in the academic field of the “pristine myth”. This idea, initially phrased in William Denevan’s The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492 (1992) critically deconstructs the notions of earlier colonists. The myth stated that in 1492 the Americas were a sparsely populated wilderness, “a world of barely perceptible human disturbance”. However, Denvan’s work brings light to the numerous, advanced populations which did indeed develop and utilize the “pristine” land. In many ways, the pristine myth is applicable to the case of Panama in Lasso because of similar geographical imaginaries about the region, and in Latin America as a whole, and imposed beliefs about ecological conservation and upkeep. Lasso argues the US’ influence and construction of the canal in Panama was in part justified by this notion of the pristine myth, that Panama was essentially uninhabited and needed the infrastructure and technological developments. Questions for Discussion ● Is the US’ decision to influence/colonize/exploit Panama differently than Puerto Rico and Cuba due to the regional distance and race composition of Panama or more so a shift to a different type of influence in Latin America? If the latter, what does this reveal about future changes of influence and foreign policy in the Caribbean? ● How does the construction of “the Zone” in Panama relate to different racial hierarchies established in Cuba and Puerto Rico? Is the established racial hierarchy in Panama different in part to changing dialogues regarding race in the United States?