Copyright (c) 2026 Cátedra
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This article studies three key aspects for understanding the history of colonial Panama. Objective: to analyze the founding of the city of Panama as part of the first great geopolitical vision of the Catholic Monarchs for the New World; to examine the Town Council (Cabildo) as the body of legal representation of the city and an instrument of power and economic control of the local elites; and to assess the role of Panama in the origins of globalization, the wealth of its residents and the moments of prosperity and paralysis of the local economy. Method: a historical analysis based on primary sources from the Archivo General de Indias and on a critical review of Spanish American historiography on colonial institutions. Results: the founding of Panama in 1519 is shown to have been part of a single imperial project linked to the discovery of the Pacific and to Magellan's voyage; the Town Council, despite Crown intervention and the sale of offices that turned it into a plutocratic body, retained effective power against the Real Audiencia until it led the independence movement of 1821; and the trans-isthmian function inserted Panama into the first world economy. Conclusion: the interaction between city, town council and global trade explains the wealth, power and trajectory of colonial Panama over three centuries, until independence from Spain.
Este obra está bajo una licencia de Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 4.0 Internacional.
