After the Panama Canal Zone
By Amy Connors
An empty classroom at the Panamanian Navy School in the township of La Boca, near the Bridge of the Americas.
PHOTOGRAPH BY MATÍAS COSTA/PANOS
In August, 1914, the American steamship Ancon_ _completed the first official trip along the Panama Canal. In the following decades, life for the U.S. officials and military personnel who oversaw the Panama Canal Zone was "a kind of paradise," said the Madrid-based photographer Matías Costa, who has made several visits to the region in recent years for his project "Zonians." The Zone dwellers, he told me, enjoyed "an American lifestyle in the middle of the jungle, with a whole structure for their leisure."
Under the terms of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties of 1977, the Canal Zone was abolished in 1979 and the territory turned over to the Panamanian government. The photographs in "Zonians," taken between 2011 and 2014, explore what remains of the former Zonian community. Costa was drawn to the project when he realized that the end of the colonial presence in Panama had created "a community in diaspora, a changing territory, and a search for identity," as well as "the feeling of belonging to a space that is more like a fable than anything real." His photographs capture both an "ambience of melancholy" and the stubborn pride of former Zonians. Many participate in an annual reunion in Orlando, Florida, where some of Costas's photos were taken.
Amy Connors is a member of The New Yorker's photo department.
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