ABSTRACT
Nearly a decade ago, noted Panamanian West Indian writer Carlos “Cubena” Guillermo Wilson (1941) stated, “I write to bring to light the contributions of Africans and their Latin American descendants to the histories, cultures, and identities in the Americas because in the offi cial texts they are conspicuously absent”/“Escribo para dejar constancia del aporte de los africanos y sus descendientes latinoamericanos a las historias, las culturas y a las identidades en las Américas, porque en los textos ofi ciales brillan por su ausencia”1 (Seales Soley 68). It is no surprise then that the second novel of his trilogy, Los Nietos de Felicidad Dolores (The Grandchildren of Felicidad Dolores 1991), “writes back” to the center and incorporates the contributions of the African Diaspora populations who Wilson references. During the nation-building period (1880-1920), Panamanian nationalists promoted cultural, racial, and political whitening, which forced the Black masses into obscurity and consequently wrote Blacks out of Panamanian national history. This cultural whitening was aimed directly at the English-speaking Black West Indian population who did not coincide with the national imaginary. As a result, Wilson writes back to the center because Panamanian West Indians have been discriminated against on the basis of race, religion, and language. Wilson’s novel rewrites Panamanian history by incorporating the Afro-Caribbean experience into the national dialogue on race, ethnicity, and identity. The novel’s didacticism, historical revisionism, and quest for a heterogeneous national identity make it a contemporary Afro-Hispanic historical novel, which revises the historical and literary portrayal of Diaspora Spanishspeaking Blacks. As an Afro-Hispanic historical novel, The Grandchildren challenges past assertions of Blacks in Panama and incorporates the Diaspora into the national dialogue. As a postcolonial text, it gives a voice to the Panamanian West Indian who has been silenced since he/she ventured across the Atlantic over a century ago.
