ABSTRACT
For almost five hundred years, Panama has suffered from a special anonymity, though it has shared its entire history with European, Central American, North American, and South American development. From the 1500s, when Spanish conquistadors landed on its Caribbean shores, to the 1800s and construction of its interoceanic canal, and finally to political independence in the early twentieth century, the isthmus of Panama has served as the so-called Bridge of the Americas. It has been the stage on which millions of people have played out their lives as they crossed the isthmus from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific and back.
