Panama is a Central American country, Spanish-speaking, known worldwide for its canal. Its entire north coast is Caribbean, from Bocas del Toro in the west to Guna Yala in the east.
Guna Yala is an autonomous Indigenous territory. The Guna people govern about 360 Caribbean islands and the coast beside them, keeping their own laws, dress, and customs.
Bocas del Toro is a Caribbean archipelago near Costa Rica. Its people are Afro-Caribbean and speak English Creole, the same culture as the coast of Limón across the border.
The Panama Canal runs between the Caribbean and the Pacific. Its Caribbean end is at Colón, a port city whose people descend from Jamaican and Barbadian workers who came to build the canal in the early 1900s. They are the same labor diaspora that settled Limón in Costa Rica.
Portobelo is a Spanish colonial port on the same coast. It is the home of Congo culture, Afro-Panamanian, descended from people who escaped slavery, and of the Black Christ festival each October.
Panama's north coast is Caribbean along its whole length. It shares the sea, the islands, and the African and Indigenous cultures of the rest of this shore.
