Borderland on the Isthmus: Race, Culture, and the Struggle for the Canal Zone (American Encounters/Global Interactions) - Tapa dura

"This readable yet academically documented book contributes to American and Canal Zone historiography. It will interest general readers as well as students of postcolonial history, American imperialism, and late twentieth-century US history." -- Robin E. Zenger * Hispanic American Historical Review * "Borderland on the Isthmus is an outstanding achievement, highly recommended for scholars of empires in general and the US empire in particular, borderland studies, US diplomatic history, Latin American studies, gender studies, cultural studies, and social history." -- Atalia Shragai * Canadian Journal of History * "Borderland on the Isthmus is the most thorough and best depiction of day-to-day reality in the post-war Canal Zone to date.... The theoretical questions that linger here... make this anthro-historical study all the more important to read for historians interested in Latin America and the US empire." -- Ezer Vierba * Journal of Latin American Studies * "The book should be required reading for anyone seeking to get a sense of life around the Panama Canal, especially in World War II and the postwar decades." -- Noel Maurer * Journal of American History * "Donoghue's social history of the Canal Zone is an indispensable source for our understanding of the good, bad, and ugly of this experiment in a (perhaps) American empire." -- Russel Crandall * American Historical Review *

The construction, maintenance, and defense of the Panama Canal brought Panamanians, U.S. soldiers and civilians, West Indians, Asians, and Latin Americans into close, even intimate, contact. In this lively and provocative social history, Michael E. Donoghue positions the Panama Canal Zone as an imperial borderland where U.S. power, culture, and ideology were projected and contested. Highlighting race as both an overt and underlying force that shaped life in and beyond the Zone, Donoghue details how local traditions and colonial policies interacted and frequently clashed. Panamanians responded to U.S. occupation with proclamations, protests, and everyday forms of resistance and acquiescence. Although U.S. "Zonians" and military personnel stigmatized Panamanians as racial inferiors, they also sought them out for service labor, contraband, sexual pleasure, and marriage. The Canal Zone, he concludes, reproduced classic colonial hierarchies of race, national identity, and gender, establishing a model for other U.S. bases and imperial outposts around the globe.