Resumen de Panama as Palimpsest: TheReformulation of the ‘TransitCorridor’ in a Global Economy

Thomas Sigler

• The interface between economic globalization and territorial formation has been afundamental concern to scholars from a wide range of disciplines as both supra- andsubnational configurations increasingly supplant the role of the nation-state so as toachieve purported political or economic objectives. Though extensive literaturesdocument this process, considerable lacunae exist with regard to the understandingthereof within a socio-historical framework. This article invokes the concept of‘palimpsest’as a metaphor through which one reads the re-inscription of multiple layersof the built environment or territory vis-à-vis the widespread changes within Panama’s‘transit corridor’— a densely settled territorial strip extending from the northern city ofColón to Panama City in the south. Though much of this transformation has beenattributed to the newfound economic stability of the Panamanian state, I argue that thesestructural changes are best understood in the context of prior developments on theIsthmus of Panama dating back centuries. To this end, both structural and poststructuralarguments are invoked so as to transgress a narrow focus on Panama as a fixedterritorial entity.