Book Review: A Reinterpretation of Panamanian Transitism

One of the features of the scientific method is the questioning of established knowledge. According to Mario Bunge, scientific knowledge can be unpleasant, often contradicts the classics, and sometimes tortures common sense and humiliates intuition. In Panamá, modelo dual y excluyente (Panama, Dual and Exclusionary Model), Dídimo Castillo Fernández, a Panamanian sociologist and demographer based in Mexico City whose professional career has been devoted to the study of the labor market, the changes in the world of work associated with neoliberal globalization, and the relationship between development models and demographic processes, questions the approaches of Panamanian social science theorists such as Hernán Porras, Alfredo Castillero Calvo, and Marco Gandáseguí and risks proposing new interpretations of the data they employed.

Castillo suggests that, ever since the colonial period, the predominant development model has been exploiting the resources available in one’s geographic location, which has produced a division in two of social, economic, and political spheres with a transit area linked to the global economy through the service sector and little development of the industrial and agricultural sector (a process driven by a rentier class that depends on capturing the state to maintain its dominance) and a rural area with little connection to this dynamic. Because the weak landowning class has failed to maintain a line of capital accumulation based on the agricultural sector, the emergence and consolidation of a rural proletariat such as occurred in other regions of Latin America has been impossible, and this is part of the reason for some contradictory aspects of the Panamanian social formation—its sustained economic growth vs. reduction of the proportion of wages in the gross domestic product, its high minimum wage for the region vs. a rate of informality that is almost half of its labor market, and its medium-to-high development index vs. its high level of social inequality. In other words, this is a vulnerable development model that shows signs of exhaustion and is territorially and socially fragmented.

While the above interpretation largely corresponds to what the classics of Panamanian social science would say, a careful reading raises questions about their approaches. One of these is related to the thesis advanced by Castillero Calvo and Gandásegui of the early incorporation of the country into globalization as a result of its geographic location and its role in the European commercial expansion during the colonial period, making sixteenth-century Panama the continent’s most important goods and services center. For Castillo, this thesis must be challenged for two reasons: First, transit and the acceleration of the flow of capital did not have a major impact in the interior of the country until well into the twentieth century. Second, the sphere of flow is confused with production and separated from class relationships. The integration of the country into trade relationships does not mean its inclusion in the production process.

Another controversial topic explored in his book is the emergence of Torrijismo and what it meant for the Panamanian social formation. Castillo argues that, in contrast to what happened in other regions, where it was the result of the pressures of a strong working class, a late-welfare-state model was promoted in Panama by the state itself, which served as an intermediary between the working class and the rentier bourgeoisie. However, it is not clear how a state captured by a business elite to maintain its privileges and benefits was transformed into a welfare state with a new social pact—in other words, in the face of a weak working class, partly due to the size of the industrial sector, which social groups pushed for this transformation.

With this contribution, Castillo invites us to reflect on the challenges that this dual, exclusionary development model poses for Panamanians in the construction of an inclusive, integrated society that bridges the socio-territorial inequality gap. To save this model, a social force that pursues new lines of accumulation and exploits them sustainably for the benefit of the community is definitely required.