| Historic Overview of the Interior When the Spanish invaded the Isthmus after 1502, they entered a land that was home to a rich diversity of cultures whose ancestors had lived there for over 11,000 years. Within a few decades, a pre-invasion population of perhaps a million had been reduced to a few thousand. The first Spanish governor, nicknamed “Pedrarias the Cruel” initiated the massacre, robbing and enslaving Panama’s native people. Most of those who survived fled to remote areas of the Isthmus forcing the Spaniards by 1520 to turn for exploitable labor to importing enslaved Africans, and soon afterward enslaved Indians from Nicaragua. For the next 500 years, at first Spain (until 1821) and later Colombia (until 1903) administered the Isthmus. Outside Panama’s small transit Zone (Panama City & Colon) lies the rest of Panama. Referred to as the “Interior,” this includes most of the territory of the Isthmus and until recently most of the country’s people. Through time many descendants of indigenous and African groups dispersed throughout the Panamanian “Interior” and settled in tiny communities of Campesinos, where they became subsistence farmers living in widely dispersed thatch-and mud houses/huts. How these poor farmers dealt with such a 400-year history of conquest, colonialism and capitalist oppression? Although we know much less about their side of the story from existing records, it is clear that they have not been passive victims of their history. Resistance began with fierce struggles against the Spanish invaders. In one documented case more than 9,000 Ngûbe-Bugle (Guaymí) people escaped the colonist grip by burning their own houses in a new mission town and fleeing to where they could live by their own traditions. Some rebellions during the colonial period were based in these remote communities. One such uprising in the jungles of eastern Panama during the 18th century reportedly led to the virtual abandonment by the elites of the whole, of what is now, Darien Province. As you know, enslaved Africans, who had been purchased from European slave merchants in the Caribbean and brought to Panama to work the mines, also opposed their conditions by escaping to the eastern jungles of the Isthmus. Many of these communities of ex-slaves (Cimarrones) or indigenous people still exist today. By the way, miscegenation among these two groups, along with the elites having free sexual access to the enslaved Africans and Indians, created a vast racial mixture and led to the advent of a graded structure of class and caste by the elites (“Limpieza de Sangre”), which was based on the color of one’s skin. Thus, the terms mestizo and mulatto-- those whose skin color is closer to white. This group usually could work for wages and enjoyed freedom of movement in the society. If traces of Indian or Black descent were too strong in the color of thier skin, however, they were classified at the bottom rung of the social order with the blacks and indians. The term mestizo was originally used to denote mixed Indian and Spanish parentage, but today it is used in an unrestricted fashion to refer to almost anyone having mixed racial inheritance who conformed to the norms of Hispanic culture, which is the majority of the "Interior" population. The graded structure in itself created jealousy and hostility, pitting Indians against Blacks and caste against caste which hindered the unity of the exploited masses. As you know, a white skin (even if poor) was a symbol of social superiority. Theirs, the peasants of the "Interior," was a subsistence economy. All households depended on community lands for their livelihood since most of their food came from slashing-and-burning small plots of land to plant each year using machetes and digging sticks. Household members supplemented agriculture with small-scale livestock and poultry raising and hunted fish, wild pigs and deer. They traded their goods to secure non-food products. Economic security depended on access to adequate community land. Because the Spanish colonists had been merchants and adventurers rather than farmers, the Spanish crown had retained ownership of all land on the Isthmus. Most lands, however, remained untitled (tierras baldías) and in the public domain, the crown recognized the right of farmers to use, but not own, as much as they needed. When the Isthmus became independent in 1903 and began experiencing an economic boom due to the construction of the canal, things began to change. The changes were all focused primarily in Panama’s transit zone, as the “Interior” was still not linked to the transit zone by penetrable/decent roads. Even when wealthy families forced the peasants off their land during this period, they were able to move to more remote areas and continued their way of life. They found abundant unused land for the taking, and there was no one hindering their movement. During the 1920s and 1930s they were able to continue the traditional slash-and-burn farming. However, when the US completed a paved highway between the “Interior” and the transit zone in 1941, wealthy Panamanian farmers appropriated almost 1 million hectares of government held land between 1950 and 1980, using them to graze cattle, plant commercial crops for export, or simply sit idle or underutilized. The Campesinos, 85% of whom did not hold title to lands were left with access to less land and food, at the same time their numbers were increasing. In pursuit of cash to buy food, many took advantage of new opportunities to cultivate crops for sale in the market. Cash cropping, however, often left them victims of fluctuating prices on the world market. One year they would be earning enough to meet their needs; the next, prices would fall and they would be fighting for survival. Commercial agriculture began to “squeeze” the small farmers. Inadequate supply of land, food and cash, therefore, pushed poorer farmers to seek work and a future in urban areas. Soon, however, they experienced the limit of opportunities available to poor, uneducated Campesinos. Few jobs awaited them in the transit zone, and those that did, like domestic service and construction were low paying and insecure. Lack of land in the countryside, and of decent jobs for rural migrants in the cities, meant growing poverty and income inequalities in Panama. In 1966, 5 percent of the population controlled 33 percent of Panama’s total income, while 50 percent were small farmers mostly earning less than $100 a year. In Latin America, only Brazil had a more unequal income distribution. A significant number of peasants in the countryside continue to live in “dire” poverty today. See the following story by Earl regarding the building of mud houses on the day of the Feast of the King, January 6, 2005, by the Campesinos. 
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