Skin Color Politics, African Diaspora and Latinos in America and Latin America: Panamanian Author Anthony Polanco [SERIES] ---PART IV

By Nicole Akoukou Thompson First Posted: Mar 06, 2014 05:39 PM EST

Continuation of Skin Color Politics, African Diaspora and Latinos in America and Latin America: Denouncement of Ethnic Identity [SERIES]--PART I and Skin Color Politics, African Diaspora and Latinos in America and Latin America: Skin Lightening Creams [SERIES]--PART II and Skin Color Politics, African Diaspora and Latinos in America and Latin America: Skin Tone and Self-Identity [SERIES] PART III

Panamanian Anthony Polanco, author of Verses from the Diaspora: A Poetic Tale of the African Diaspora, is from the tropical and river-laced Panama City, an area known as "Paradiso" (meaning Paradise), which is part of the Panama Canal Zone. In his youth, Polanco also resided in a province called Chilibre that neighbors the districts of Las Cumbres, Mayor Diaz and Pedregal, and has a tropical monsoon climate. The residents of both Paradiso and Chilibre represent a variety of skin tones, shining in every conceivable shade of brown, bearing the semblance and essence of West Indian, Indian, Sicilian, African and Afro-colonial Panamanian ancestry. Africans migrated into the area due to the slave trade, which ignited the large Afro-Latin population in the region.

Polanco, 26, sat down with Latin Post and spoke about his mixed Panamanian roots, his upbringing in the United States as a Spanish-speaking Latino with a dark complexion, and Panama's gaze on skin politics.

Panama is the southernmost country of Central America, bordered by Costa Rica and Colombia. Its inhabitants' ethnic makeup is 66 percent Mestizo (mixed white and Native American), 16 percent Blacks/African descent, 8 percent white, and 10 percent Amerindian; the Amerindian population including seven indigenous peoples. Panama's second largest population is Panamanians of African descent.

At three or four years old, Polanco and his parents moved to California, United States from Panama. The West South Central area of Los Angeles proved to be diverse, and was well-populated with other Afro-Latinos of multiple origins: Honduran, Peruvian and Venezuelan.

As Polanco matured, he began to notice a discomfort from other non-Black Latinos when he spoke Spanish. He surprised them, and they would often opt to respond to him in English, refusing to respond in Spanish. Or they would simply ignore him if he spoke in Spanish because, as a person with a darker complexion, his Spanish was somehow less authentic.

It was around that time of non-acceptance that his father, who was a compass for a young Polanco, was deported; his father revoked because of his undocumented status. The deportation of his father left him raw and more aware of his Afro-Panamanian roots.

"It made me realize the clash of cultures, an ability to speak Spanish while being Black; it got me to learn more about being Afro-Panamanian," Polanco said to Latin Post. "The fact is, there is a huge Afro-Panamanian population in Panama. Before [the deportation] happened, I never questioned a sense of being Afro-Latino or being Afro-Panamanian. Up until that point, I just thought of myself as simply being Panamanian. The difference is ethnicity in Panama."

Subsequent to the deportation, Polanco and his sister moved to Dallas. Dallas proved to have a massive Latino population, which was predominately Mexican or Mexican American. Once he integrated into the community, he was often told, "Oh, you're not Black, you're Panamanian... you're Latino," stated as if it was a compliment.

When Polanco turned 18 years old, he enrolled in The University of Texas at Arlington, and was able to do research that would help him to revisit his homeland of Panama, and reconnect with his father and other family members that he hadn't seen in years. One person that Polanco sat down with was his grandmother, a self-educated Afro-Colombian woman whose parents came from Colombia. She shared thoughts on the burden and "ugliness" that's associated with blackness, and beauty that she believed to be exclusive to fairer complexions.