Panama - People
Panamanians' culture, customs, and language are predominantly Caribbean Spanish. The majority of the population is ethnically mestizo or mixed Spanish, indigenous, Chinese, and West Indian. Spanish is the official and dominant language; English is a common second language spoken by the West Indians and by many businesspeople and professionals. More than half the population lives in the Panama City-Colon metropolitan corridor.
Panama is rich in folklore and popular traditions. Lively salsa--a mixture of Latin American popular music, rhythm and blues, jazz, and rock--is a Panamanian specialty, and Ruben Blades its best-known performer. Indigenous influences dominate handicrafts such as the famous Kuna textile molas. Artist Roberto Lewis' Presidential Palace murals and his restoration work and ceiling in the National Theater are widely admired.
As of 2009, more than 100,000 Panamanian students attended the University of Panama, the Technological University, the Autonomous University of Chiriqui (third-largest in the country), and the University of Santa Maria La Antigua, a private Catholic institution. Including smaller colleges, there are 88 institutions of higher education in Panama. The first 6 years of primary education are compulsory. As of 2007, there were there were about 445,000 students enrolled in grades one through six. The total enrollment in the six secondary grades for the same period was about 260,000. More than 90% of Panamanians are literate.
Despite spending of approximately 12.6 percent of the central government budget and 2.5 percent of GDP on education, approximately half of students fail their university entrance exam. The 2015-2016 World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report ranked Panama 94 out of 140 countries for quality of education and pointed to an inadequately educated workforce as the most problematic factor for doing business. This poor showing underscored the 2010 OECD Program for International Student Achievement (PISA) analysis, which ranked Panama second worst among participating Latin American countries.
Lighter-skinned persons continue to be disproportionately represented in management positions and jobs that required dealing with the public, such as bank tellers and receptionists. Minority groups were generally integrated into mainstream society. Prejudice was directed, however, at recent immigrants and the Afro-Panamanian community. Cultural and language differences and immigration status hindered the integration of immigrant and first-generation individuals from China, India, and the Middle East into mainstream society. Additionally, some members of these communities were themselves reluctant to integrate into mainstream society.
The Afro-Panamanian community continued to be underrepresented in positions of political and economic power. Areas where they lived conspicuously lacked government services and social investment. In October the National Assembly passed a bill to create a National Secretariat for the Development of Afro-Panamanians to focus on social and economic advancement of that minority group. The bill also provides for a mechanism for the secretariat to work with the national census to ensure an accurate count of Afro-descendant residents in the country.
The law prohibits discrimination in access to public accommodations such as restaurants, stores, and other privately owned establishments; few complaints were filed. The Ombudsman’s Office intervened in several cases before students with Rastafarian braids were permitted entry into public school classrooms.
The law affords indigenous persons the same political and legal rights as other citizens, protects their ethnic identity and native languages, and requires the government to provide bilingual literacy programs in indigenous communities. Indigenous individuals have the legal right to take part in decisions affecting their lands, cultures, traditions, and the allocation and exploitation of natural resources. Nevertheless, they continued to be marginalized. Traditional community leaders governed legally designated areas for five of the country’s seven indigenous groups. The government did not recognize such areas for the smaller Bri Bri and Naso communities.
Societal and employment discrimination against indigenous persons was widespread. Employers frequently did not afford indigenous workers basic rights provided by law, such as a minimum wage, social security benefits, termination pay, and job security. Laborers on the country’s sugar, coffee, and banana plantations (the majority of whom were indigenous persons) continued to work in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. Employers were less likely to provide adequate housing or food to indigenous migrant laborers, and indigenous children were much more likely to work long hours of farm labor than nonindigenous children.
The Darien is a strategic region with a fifth of the country's land mass and only two percent of the total population. Its inhabitants are among the poorest in the country. The distance between the province's 600 communities makes it difficult for the government to deliver public services. Given the weak presence of the state, the region also has one of the highest rates of unregistered citizens. They are therefore not eligible to vote. However, in recent years the Electoral Tribunal has been making a concerted effort to register voters in the Darien.
Blacks, indigenous (Embeni and Wounaan), and peasant ranchers compose the three groups located in the Darien. Most ranchers come from the Azuero Peninsula, and are the newest migrants to the area. They have cut forests to graze cattle, grow agricultural products, and extract timber from the jungle. Blacks work in the areas of small business, fishing, animal husbandry and agriCUlture, while the indigenous are the most disenfranchised group, struggling to survive within the borders of two protected autonomous territories or Comarcas that cover some two-thirds of the land mass of the Darien.
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