Early writings and the Baroque
Panama was first mentioned at the time of its discovery. In fact, in 1535 - thirty-two years after Christopher Columbus had landed and founded the original colony, Santa María de Belén - Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés (1478-1557), historiographer of the "Indies", published his Historia General y Natural de Las Indias , in which he mentions Tierra Firme, a vast territory named by the Spanish crown that included the Isthmus of Panama. Beyond its limited literary interest - the author had previously written a novel of chivalry - and although it is clearly an indictment of the Indians, to the benefit of the conquistadores, this text is nonetheless precious for its descriptions, particularly of flora and fauna. Juan de Miramontes Zuázola's epic poem Antarctic Weapons, completed around 1608, is another example of his vocation to freeze history. Having set sail in 1586, at the age of 19, to confront Francis Drake, he dedicated his verses to pirates... whom he never actually met. The 17th century was also marked by the death of the governor of Tierra Firme. His death caused such a stir that a collection of poems(Llanto de Panamá a la muerte de Don Enrique Enríquez) was dedicated to him and published in Madrid in 1642. The contributors: eight Spaniards but also six poets born in Panama, who can therefore be considered the first national authors. Among them, Mateo de Ribera, born in 1604, is the best known and was responsible for compiling the texts; Gines de Bustamante, a clergyman who is known to have attended university in Lima before returning to his native country; Diego Fernandez de Madrid, a soldier; as well as Bartalomé Avia Gutiérrez and Francisco de la Cueva, whose biographies are much more succinct. Antonio Serrano de Haro, a Spanish diplomat who rediscovered this forgotten work in the 20th century, gave them the name of the "Baroque Generation", to which we could attach Juan Francisco de Páramo y Cepeda because of the content of the songs he composed at the end of the century. In his Alteraciones del Dariel, he drew lyrical inspiration from the power struggles between pirates, colonists and the Gunas Indians, Panama's first inhabitants.
The 18th century was calmer, and much less literary, but the 19th century opened with an important text: La Política del Mundo, the first Panamanian play, written by Victor de la Guardia y Ayala, born in Penonomé in 1772. A well-traveled politician - he ended his life in Costa Rica in 1824 - he made his knowledge of world affairs the theme of his drama, not hesitating to criticize Napoleon's invasion of Spain in the first of his three acts. Justo Arosemena Quesada's (1817-1896) El Estado federal de Panamá (1855), his most distinguished essay, was also about politics, and earned him the reputation of being the father of Panamanian national sentiment, as he was already asserting the desire for independence that would soon once again agitate his country.
From Romanticism to Modernism
In the same vein, attachment to the homeland was to permeate the Romantic movement. This was a special period - Panama had broken away from Spain in 1821, and would soon do the same with Colombia, since independence was proclaimed in 1903 - and was conducive to defining a common national identity. Patriotism was thus more readily de rigueur than in European Romanticism. A handful of authors stood out from the rest, including Tomás Martín Feuillet (1832-1862), Amelia Denis de Icaza (1836-1911) and Jerónimo de la Ossa (1847-1907). The first embodies the figure of the accursed poet, abandoned as an infant, he only discovered the secret of his origins after the death of his adoptive parents, a trauma that engendered a persistent melancholy. His early death was equally tragic, assassinated during a military mission. He published in various newspapers - such as El Panameno and El Centinela - and penned great poems, the most famous of which is La Flor del Espiríritu Santo, dedicated to Panama's emblematic orchid variety. Amelia Denis de Icaza, her country's first female writer and the only representative of her sex during the Romantic period, enjoyed a quieter existence. However, her work is not exempt from an anger - if not sadness - exacerbated by the United States' stranglehold on Panama, a situation she discovered on her return from Nicaragua, where she had spent many years and forged a strong friendship with Rubén Darío. Highly involved in social issues, outraged by the ban on Panamanians entering the Canal Zone, her poems(Patria, A la Muerte de Victoriano Lorenzo, Dejad que pase, Al Cerro Ancón, Un ramo de reseda , etc.) were similarly fiery. Finally, in addition to his poetic texts, Jerónimo de la Ossa is best known for having written the lyrics of the national anthem - Himno Istemeño - at the request of his friend, composer Santos A. Jorge. Their song first rang out in 1903, the first line of the refrain(Alcanzamos por fin la victoria, Finally we have achieved victory) leaving no doubt as to their joy.
It is perhaps no coincidence that the same year saw the publication of Horoas lejenas y otros cuentos by Darío Herrera, a poet who was a precursor of Panamanian modernism, largely influenced by French writers. Panama was opening up to the international scene. Ricardo Miró, nephew of Amelia Denis de Icaza, made long trips to Europe, which influenced both his writing, which was also modernist, and his themes, as in his landmark work Patria (1909), in which he evoked his homesickness while working as a consul in Barcelona. The first part of the twentieth century was therefore a synthesis of two impulses, one outward-looking, the other inward-looking, where a more determined, more specifically Panamanian literature asserted itself, in the image of the poetry of María Olimpia Miranda de Obaldía (1891-1985) who, from her first collection, Orquídeas, in 1926, remained definitively unclassifiable. An intimate writer who was much loved by her fellow citizens, she joined the Academia Panameña de la Lengua in 1951 and received numerous awards throughout South America. 1902 was also an important year, with the birth of Ignacio de Jesus Valdés - the "people's journalist" who collected and published traditional tales - and Rogelio Sinán - a novelist, short story writer, playwright and poet described as avant-garde. It was the latter's meeting with Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral that was decisive, as they encouraged him to visit Italy to learn the language, where he discovered Dadaism and Surrealism, which were fundamental to his later poetic research. Stella Sierra (1917-1997) followed a similar path, albeit with a preference for Hispanic culture. Winner of first prize in the Ricardo Miró competition, she received many other honors for her collections(Canciones de Mar y Luna, Palabras sobre poesía, Libre y cautiva, etc.), which were acclaimed as far afield as Europe.
Contemporary literature
José María Sænchez Borbón (1918-1973), for example, chronicled Bocas del Toro, his native archipelago, in numerous short stories - some of which were translated into English and French, but also into German and Russian - in which he combined descriptions of harsh nature with the difficult conditions in which people lived. Joaquín Beleño also embraced this quasi-sociological vein, focusing in particular on work and its excesses. In Luna verde and Los forzados de Gamboa, he wrote about the Canal workers (in whose construction he participated), and in Banana flower about the overexploited Guaymís on the fruit plantations. Ramón Heberto Jurado (1922-1978), Ricardo Miró's son, almost dabbled in naturalism: his pessimistic vision of social injustice and a countryside sclerotic with superstition is evident in San Cristóbal. Finally, Changmarín, of Chinese and Creole origin, as his pseudonym reveals, also became a spokesman for the voice of the people, adapting his style to the working classes to make himself better heard. Firmly committed to politics, which earned him several prison sentences and exile in Chile in 1968, his protean work (ranging from poetry to children's literature) combines his convictions with a deliberately naïve sense of humor like no other.
Evolving in other spheres, Elsie Alvarado de Ricord (1928-2005), the first woman to head the Academia Panameña de la Lengua, Justo Arroyo (b. 1936), crowned Writer of the Year in 2000 by the Cámara panameña del Libro, and Gloria Guardia (1940-2019), whose least notable recognition is to have benefited from a writing residency at the Rockefeller Foundation, also won acclaim. They paved the way for a new generation who, in turn, would give new emphasis to Panamanian literature, with the vocation of tackling more universal and contemporary themes. Nor did these authors confine themselves to a single field, as in the case of Enrique Jaramillo Lévi, who published some fifty books but was also a publisher, or Conselo Tomás, who was as much a novelist as a puppet show performer. We could also mention Carlos Wynter Melo, born in 1971, who in 2007 appeared on the "Bogota39 " list of Latin American writers to watch, a fact confirmed by his successes Ojos para ver una invasión (2015) and Mujeres que desaparecen (2016). José Luis Rodríguez Pitti combines photography and writing, while Lili Mendoza's first book, Ghetto Baby, was adapted into a documentary format. For his part, Porfirio Salazar began with a collection of very short texts, Los poemas del arquero, before creating Grupo Umbral, which brings together young Panamanian writers. Jorge Cham, meanwhile, is forging a reputation as a cartoonist without abandoning his career as a robotics engineer.
