ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the ecocritical agency of hybridity in proposing that the Panamanian isthmus, in its prolonged contact with Euro-American incursions and colonial practices, became a hybrid and shifting zone, as much a process as a discrete place. As culture and nature become a hybrid compound and, as such, deflate the certainties of closure offered by Cartesian dualisms, “it curves epistemologies into new orbits,” and allows for new ways of thinking about the ecological agency and the environment. The land in Panama became hybridized during the course of the construction of the railroad and canal, ironically increasing the breeding grounds for the mosquitoes that transmit malaria. In 1913, artist Jonas Lie traveled to Central America to create images of the late construction phase of the Panama Canal. Americans cut their imperial teeth and anthropocentric ambitions in the tropics with the building of the Panama Railway in the 1850s.
