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We Are a People of Stone and Mud: Nationalism, Development, and Nature in Panama’s Darién, 1968-1980

Andersson, Anthony W.

Abstract Details

2010, Master of Arts, Case Western Reserve University, History.
From the founding of its Republic in 1903, Panama has struggled for economic and political independence from the United States. After World War II, and especially under General Omar Torrijos, Panamanian nationalists looked to their neglected hinterlands for the human and natural resources that could power an independent nation. The Darién region in eastern Panama, a large and unknown tract of rain forest, became the object of a series of economic development projects that tried to put nature to work for the nation. Exploring the two largest of these projects, the Bayano Hydroelectric Dam and the Darién Gap Highway, this essay argues that nationalists in Panama, and their international benefactors, misperceived the environment they were working to “develop.” The collision of the environment that nationalists envisioned with the environment in reality crippled the projects themselves, and led to the creation of a new landscape that no one had planned for.
Marixa Lasso (Committee Co-Chair)
Peter Shulman (Committee Co-Chair)
Theodore Steinberg (Committee Member)
63 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Andersson, A. W. (2010). We Are a People of Stone and Mud: Nationalism, Development, and Nature in Panama’s Darién, 1968-1980 [Master's thesis, Case Western Reserve University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1275658499

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Andersson, Anthony. We Are a People of Stone and Mud: Nationalism, Development, and Nature in Panama’s Darién, 1968-1980. 2010. Case Western Reserve University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1275658499.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Andersson, Anthony. "We Are a People of Stone and Mud: Nationalism, Development, and Nature in Panama’s Darién, 1968-1980." Master's thesis, Case Western Reserve University, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1275658499

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)