This is the final blog post in a series written by the 2026 recipients of the Duke University Libraries Summer Research Fellowship for LIFE Students. You can read the first, second, and third blog posts. Linda Garziera is a junior majoring in Economics.
“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
— Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky
The summer after my freshman year, I had the chance to participate in the inaugural program of DukeEngage in Panama. For two months, my cohort worked with the local grassroots organization Asociación Deportiva Curundú (ADC) on fighting inequality through sport, education and nutrition. As a fundraising consultant, I was focused on securing partnerships and donations from local organizations. At the same time, our program director and Duke University professor, Dr. Javier Wallace, arranged a number of trips and experiences to expose us to the history and culture of the country.
Early in the program, we drove to two cemeteries. Even twenty-five years after the United States gave up its control over Panama, that history remains alive. The “white” cemetery, protected by a painted gate, rose up on a hill dotted with gray headstones and flowers. Just next to it, a dirt road led to the cemetery for Black and Indigenous natives. From the bus, I could only see a few derelict slabs of stone marking the earth. A mango tree was shedding its fruit on the tombs. Beyond, undocumented, lay thousands of men who lost their lives to the canal.
That type of contrast lived everywhere in Panama City.
With a skyline to rival Dubai or New York, Panama City also has visible homelessness, poverty and social inequality. Luxury hotels and casinos look over neighborhoods without organized trash collection, stable plumbing and safe living standards. We worked with the community of Curundú, originally an informally grown residential area, subject to real funding barriers as well as stigma from outside its borders. Uber drivers would warn us about visiting as we headed there for our weekly dinners with the founders of ADC. During our eight weeks in the program, we heard such a variety of stories that we became convinced the only real way to understand the city was to live it ourselves.
We were staying in a former U.S. military base, “Fort Clayton,” that had been transformed into an educational center for non-profits, schools and art boutiques. So while it was outside the “real city,” it had history. And unlike most outsiders, we were able to compare the “shiny” parts of Panama City with the lived experience of many locals, including children in the ADC program.
Still, even after the summer, I had questions. If anything, getting to know the locals and getting to explore more of the history raised more questions.
My classes in Economics had taught me to look for data to model the real world. How was government funding distributed across the city? Did the historical borders for the Old Canal Zone align with modern-day neighborhoods? What was the role of newspapers in changing the public opinion of certain areas? How did the city develop after centuries of international control? Who were the forces behind urban progress, uneven development and gentrification in the “rich” areas of the city?
I needed a deeper understanding to answer these questions. I needed to take a look from the outside in.
Thanks to the Duke University Libraries Summer Research Fellowship, I was able to spend the latter part of my summer researching these topics. I was able to learn about archival research methods, sentiment analysis and overlaying GIS maps. I dove into urban studies and urban planning theories. Most importantly, I was able to deepen my connection to Panama City in such a way where when I return, I will do so with new eyes and extra colors.
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When it comes to reflecting on my summer research work, I would describe it as thorough, enlightening and slightly messy. Because I wanted to tackle a number of topics and understand the connection between my questions, I had to explore a variety of data. I looked at historical borders through archives, map records, newspaper clippings over time, government funding, GIS maps, and housing rents. While I was aiming to leverage my background in economic data analysis to find some causal claims, I realized that to attack all these topics, I needed to approach my findings descriptively. Ultimately, this paid off. Instead of confining me to one data set, I was able to find patterns across observations.
For instance, using GIS maps from the Smithsonian library, I was able to verify that Curundú only has three education centers and two healthcare centers. Just outside it, in the Bella Vista corregimiento, lie 90 healthcare centers. This was supported by government funding data for social work.
In another visual analysis, I noticed how areas outside of the Old Colonial Zone had fewer major roads. The United States gained control of the canal project in 1904, and began restructuring the existing settlements alongside Gatun Lake, Changres River and Lake Alajuela as part of a zoning project. Denominated the “American Canal Zone,” the United States invested in the formation of housing, cafeterias, hotels, water systems, sanitation, pest control and other infrastructure to serve the canal workers.
Who lived in each area of the zone was determined by a policy-imposed social status, with workers segregated into “Gold Roll” and “Silver Roll” groups, based on their salary (gold or Panamanian silver coins) and race. Besides pay, this status determined the type of housing, schools, food, laundry services, vacation, and medical care available to the workers. My analysis of the GIS road network aligned with the historical data: Areas outside of the Canal Zone had been devoid of major funding, leading to uneven development and splintering urbanism.
To learn about gentrification and modern urban development, I was able to rely on Internet Archive records to observe house listings going back to 2012. In a few cases, I was able to compare historical prices to modern ones, and even undertake a visual analysis using archival photographs (from the Panama Canal Museum Collection), rental listing photos and recent Google Maps photographs.
Perhaps most interesting to the storytelling lens, I was able to track how media can shape the public perception about a place. Newspapers have adopted conflicting language to describe communities like Curundú. Sometimes the community was described as “in progress,” “in rehabilitation,” “transformed,” and other times as “poor,” “dangerous,” and “unkept.” After the government spent $108.8 million to improve housing conditions in the neighborhood, newspapers began adopting language that was positive. One particular headline stood out to me.
“Curundú, un barrio entre la pobreza y el progreso”
“Curundú, a neighborhood between poverty and progress”
— La Prensa, Panamá
In part, my DukeEngage program attempted to teach us the importance of stories on the perception of communities. A goal of the summer was to help the organization rewrite these narratives from the inside out. We wanted to prove, through sport, that people living in Curundú were as passionate, hard-working and welcoming as anyone from any other part of the city. Therefore, the analysis of the media was particularly interesting to me.
Adopting this research process wasn’t easy. I was used to structured methods that didn’t rely as much on creativity and making-do. Often, the records and data platforms were exclusively in Spanish. I was able to unblock certain paywalls thanks to Duke Libraries. Certain data sets, however, were disorganized and lacked updates. Annoying at first, the messiness easily became one of the most interesting outcomes of this experience. Without the academic pressure of class, I was able to engage with a variety of data from both primary and secondary sources, and compare that to my experience in Panama.
Last year, I wrote a few articles highlighting the work of the grassroots organization; they were published in Panamanian newspapers. I am hoping to combine this research into a new article, with the hopes of bridging my experience in DukeEngage with my newfound understanding of Panama City. If anything, I hope to bring a deeper level of understanding to next year’s Duke in Panama cohort, which I’m confident will continue the good work of the ADCxDuke connection.
Thank you to Duke University Libraries and the LIFE Grant Committee for this incredible opportunity to advance my research.
The post LIFE Summer Research Grant Reflections: Urban Lines, Storytelling & the History of Panama City appeared first on Duke University Libraries Blogs.
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