Milli mála - 01.06.2016, Síða 120
CENTRAL AMERICAN COASTAL IDENTITY
120 Milli mála 8/2016
dominantly the United States, gained worldwide economic and
political dominance. The construction of the Panama Canal (1914)6
and increased trade relations across the Caribbean further contrib-
uted to the formation of multiethnic and plurilingual communities
across the region, promoting mobility, migration and more com-
plex cultural diversity.7
During the latter part of the twentieth century, social unrest,
ideological struggles, dictatorships and civil wars affected everyday
life and most political developments in all parts of Central and
South America. A fundamental factor was, without doubt, the
emerging demand for people to embrace national images and iden-
tities more fully, which led to a search for a common denominator
that could unite the different national communities, composed of
heterogeneous racial, ethnic, cultural and linguistic groups.8 Hand
in hand with Latin America´s efforts to redefine its image and posi-
tion itself on the international political platform as a cluster of in-
dependent nations bound by a shared history as colonized pueblos
and peoples, theoretical debates about what determines identity,
self and self-understanding were an ongoing research subject
amongst European intellectuals.
The changing theoretical debates on the formation of self – and
therefore identity – evolved from the theories of philosopher Sören
Kierkegaard highlighting subjectivity and personal experience as a
6 To complete the construction of the Panama Canal, thousands of migrant workers were lured to
the project by the promise of lucrative work. They came from Europe and the US, but mostly from
the Caribbean islands and the region itself. Olive Senior observes: “West Indians provided the bulk
of the workforce […] between 1850 and 1914 untold numbers sacrificed their lives, limbs and
mental faculties […]. Many West Indians remained as settlers, their descendants now citizens of
Panama; many returned home with enough of a nest egg to better themselves; and others launched
themselves elsewhere in the Americas as work beckoned.” From Dying to better themselves: West
Indians and the Building of the Panama Canal, Mona, Jamaica: UWI Press, 2015. Here, p. 17.
7 For further information, see: Soto Quirós, Ronald, “Imaginando una nación de raza blanca en Costa
Rica: 1821-1914”, 2008, pp. missing, http://alhim.revues.org/index2930.html [Accessed August
2016], and Gudmundson and Woulf, Blacks & Blackness in Central America: Between Race and Place,
Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2010.
8 For more see: Gudmundson and Woulf, Blacks & Blackness in Central America: Between Race and
Place, 2010. See also: Dixon, Qwame, “Race, Democracy and Black Social Movements in Latin
America“, in Experiencia de Democracia Particpativa en America Latina, Madrid; CIDEAL 2002, pp.
missing, and “Mestizaje and Racial Categories as Hegemonic Forms of Representation in Costa
Rican Literature”, Contracorriente, 2003, pp. missing.