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Erased: The Untold Story of the Panama Canal Hardcover – February 25, 2019

by Marixa Lasso (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 88 ratings
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The Panama Canal's untold history―from the Panamanian point of view. Sleuth and scholar Marixa Lasso recounts how the canal’s American builders displaced 40,000 residents and erased entire towns in the guise of bringing modernity to the tropics.

The Panama Canal set a new course for the modern development of Central America. Cutting a convenient path from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans, it hastened the currents of trade and migration that were already reshaping the Western hemisphere. Yet the waterway was built at considerable cost to a way of life that had characterized the region for centuries. In Erased, Marixa Lasso recovers the history of the Panamanian cities and towns that once formed the backbone of the republic.

Drawing on vast and previously untapped archival sources and personal recollections, Lasso describes the canal’s displacement of peasants, homeowners, and shop owners, and chronicles the destruction of a centuries-old commercial culture and environment. On completion of the canal, the United States engineered a tropical idyll to replace the lost cities and towns―a space miraculously cleansed of poverty, unemployment, and people―which served as a convenient backdrop to the manicured suburbs built exclusively for Americans. By restoring the sounds, sights, and stories of a world wiped clean by U.S. commerce and political ambition, Lasso compellingly pushes back against a triumphalist narrative that erases the contribution of Latin America to its own history.

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  1. Print length
    352 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Harvard University Press
  4. Publication date
    February 25, 2019
  5. Dimensions
    5.5 x 1 x 8.25 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0674984447
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0674984448
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Erased is the most splendid of ghost stories. Tracing the hidden history of the depopulated ‘lost towns’ of the Canal Zone, Marixa Lasso reveals a traumatic transformation of the landscape as important in its impact as the construction of the Panama Canal. The result is a powerful and dramatic tale of lost histories that illuminates our understanding of Panama and its relationship to the United States.”―Julie Greene, University of Maryland

“Erased shows how the construction of the Panama Canal hid forced depopulation behind the artificial transformation of the landscape, building segregated urban centers on the myth of a pristine tropical landscape. The book challenges narratives of industrialization and urban change that have for too long neglected the history and the places of the people who built the basic infrastructure of modernity.”―Pablo Piccato, Columbia University

“Commandeering rafts, steamboats, or railroads, countless isthmian black settlers for centuries had brought the Caribbean and the South Sea together. In the 1910s, the Canal Zone turned these modern black urbanites into unwelcome refugees. Their towns disappeared under water or tropical vegetation. The Canal also wiped out the memory of vibrant black republican institutions, the foundational vanguard of global political modernity. This book expertly dissects the myth of Western Civilization, namely, how a unified capitalist world became two imaginary ones: an entrepreneurial, law-abiding, technically advanced white Canal Zone, on the one hand, and a violent, pardo, primitive tropical banana republic, on the other. Eye-opening.”―Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, University of Texas at Austin

“Stimulating…Erased is in effect a justification of Latin America in the face of northern cultural and economic domination.”―Andreas Campomar, The Spectator

“More than a history of how the U.S. reduced Panama’s most populous and developed stretch of territory to tropical wilderness. It is an account of the rhetorical erasure of Panamanian civilization and modernity and the long-lasting political consequences this erasure had for the region…Helps readers reimagine the role of Panama in its own history.”―Choice

About the Author

Marixa Lasso teaches history at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Prior to that she was a tenured Associate Professor at Case Western Reserve University. She received grants from the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Humanities Center to support her research on this book. She has also held fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, the Fulbright Foundation, and the Wenner Gren Foundation. In 2016 Lasso was the Sheila Biddle Ford Fellow at Harvard’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. Her work has been translated into Spanish and Portuguese.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harvard University Press (February 25, 2019)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0674984447
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0674984448
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.2 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1 x 8.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 88 ratings

About the author

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Marixa Lasso

Marixa Lasso

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Marixa Lasso teaches History at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. She is the author of the books Erased: The Untold Story of the Panama Canal (Harvard University Press, 2019) and Myths of Harmony: Race and Republicanism during the Age of Revolution, Colombia 1795-1831 (Pittsburgh University Press, 2007). Professor Lasso is a contributor to numerous books and has published in journals like the American Historical Review, Citizenship Studies, and Environmental History. She has also held grants and fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Humanities Center, the Social Science Research Council, Fulbright, and the Wenner Gren Foundation. During the Fall of 2016, she was the Sheila Biddle Ford Fellow at Harvard's Hutchins Center for African & and African American Research. Her work has been translated to Spanish and Portuguese.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
88 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

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Mario A. yearwood
5.0 out of 5 stars How the building of the Panama canal negatively impacted the lives of thousands
Reviewed in the United States on September 30, 2019
Verified Purchase
This book has been a great eye opener. I commend the author Marixa Lasso for her painstaking attention to research. I know based on the facts that it wan not an easy subject to research. This is a point of view that has never been discussed; much less published. This book offers a different perspective from a Path Between the Seas by author David McCullough. These were the forgotten peoples and towns and institutions they created. I can’t imagine how these people must have felt to see their lives totally uprooted to create what would be a so called “dreamland” carved out of the jungle. This book is a must read.
8 people found this helpful
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Ilean I. Isaza
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating history of the erased towns in the former Canal Zone
Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2021
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Fascinating. In the first few pages, the author brought memories of my childhood. I felt exactly the same when entering the canal zone, except that my parents could enter because of their line of work, but was not aware of the historical background of the erased towns in the canal zone.
Great read. Thanks so much for such meticulous research work!
I Highly recommend its reading!
2 people found this helpful
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Arlene B. Punnett
4.0 out of 5 stars Untold story
Reviewed in the United States on November 8, 2020
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More of the 'black diggers' should be part of this book.
4 people found this helpful
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Rolo
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book! Very interesting perspective of the origins of the Panama Canal
Reviewed in the United States on July 29, 2022
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Great book! Very interesting perspective that tries correct the historical context of the origins of the Panama Canal
One person found this helpful
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Vasko Arosemena
5.0 out of 5 stars Excelente material
Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2021
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Me encantó. Excelente cobertura de datos que no habia leído en ninguna otra parte! Lectura requerida para todos los panameños y extranjeros que deseen conocer de nuestra historia.
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Leo Bassan
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Work
Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2020
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Great book. Well detailed and full of historic facts. As a Panamá born citizen during my youth I explored the zone extensively and it brought back many memories. Nice job Marixa.
2 people found this helpful
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Ricardo Cazorla
4.0 out of 5 stars Clarification of a historical cover up-Panama Canal
Reviewed in the United States on October 7, 2019
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Born in the Canal Zone, never thought that there was such a dark story behind the Canal's construction. Am a Panamanian.
6 people found this helpful
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Shari
5.0 out of 5 stars Panamanian account of the Canal Zone
Reviewed in the United States on August 13, 2019
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This is a well-written and researched book about the Panamanian communities dismantled in the process of building the canal and the Canal Zone. It is a project to reinsert Panamanians into the master narrative about the Panama Canal.
4 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Tom Long
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating history
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 12, 2021
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I had studied the 1970s negotiations of the Panama Canal Treaties and the subsequent transfer and expansion of the canal, but I did not know the story behind the population that lived in the Canal Zone. Lasso shows how this was not at all unoccupied land, and how the depopulation went beyond what was necessary for construction and flooding. Well written and enlightening.
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