Panama is well known for being a multicultural country. Various cultures and subcultures exist here. We have a wide variety of ethnicities from all over the world. And of course within this great multicultural diversity we have the native ethnic groups of Panama. On the other hand we have the melting pot that began when the Spanish arrived to the isthmus to colonize. Among the ethnic groups that we can find in Panama we can mention Afro-descendants from different places such as Africa, the Antilles and the Caribbean. We also have the Chinese, Indians, Europeans among many more. Most of these ethnic groups arrived as labor for projects such as the interoceanic railroad and later the construction of the Panama Canal.
George came to the isthmus of Panama when he was 16 years old from an English colony in the Caribbean in Trinidad and Tobago, to work on the construction of the Panama Canal. George was my great-grandfather and I became interested in his history when my grandfather told me stories about his father. My grandfather who always told me stories about his father’s intrepid adventures, from how he arrived at the isthmus on a boat when he was just a 16-year-old boy.
My grandfather told me about his father’s life, George began working on the construction of the Panama Canal when he was very young. He lived in the Gamboa area and later settled in La Chorrera. He married a Panamanian, my great-grandmother, and they started a family.
According to my grandfather’s stories, his father spoke Spanish with a very peculiar accent because his first language was English and he learned Spanish here in Panama. George was a hunting fanatic and my grandfather said that during hunting days a group of workers and friends would get together and go into the jungle for days to hunt wild animals. Just like this brief story about my great-grandfather, there are many more, since during the construction of both the interoceanic railroad and the Panama Canal brought many emigrants from all over the world, which resulted in the great multicultural mix that exists today in Panama.
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