ABSTRACT
The figure of the nia or black phallus, as exposed by Cuna ethnography, alerts one to the sexual fear and excitement of the boundary created out of mimesis and alterity under specific colonial histories. The mosaic of alterities, with its hierarchy of attraction and repulsion, was not only colored by money into gold and silver; it was also sexualized. Racism toward blacks was surely important in Panamanian society before Roosevelt captured the Isthmus for US interests in 1903, but the mythology of color built into the cultural apparatus of work and bureaucracy organized to construct the canal surely took it to a higher level. The color of money officially designated race in the Canal Zone into two castes, gold and silver. Gold meant the United States "gold standard"-based dollar, which is what US whites were paid in.
