If you come to Panama, you will hear the word chombo said in a lot of scenarios. People use it in affectionate ways, they use it in condescending ways, and they even use it to describe hot sauce. But to help out the foreigner trying to assimilate to Panamanian culture, can someone help us understand exactly what the chombo means?
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Chombo is kinda like how some people say “nigga” in the States…instead of “nigger”. It’s sort of a word that people use to to make a bond with each other. Except that for some people using the word “nigga” in the States carries a lot more weight than saying chombo in Panama. Please no racist finger pointing, I’m just describing how people use this term in PMA… can’t we all get along? lol. Anyhow, I would advise foreigners (caucasians specially) not to use the word chombo around people of Afro-Panamanian descent; they might take offense and it’ll be extremely awkward trying to explain your intentions.
Chombo.. is not a word any foreigner should just toss around – “dark skinned” comes to mind. It may be accepted with locals but has a history that is not so “cariño”. However, there is a group, “El Chombo” who plays some pretty good music!
Interesting…the only term I’ve heard chombo associated with is aji! That is good to know in case I hear it in a different context.
I have found that there are several innocent words used in Panama that are bad, but in Mexico they’re normal and vice versa. Using pipa instead of coco comes to mind…as well as a few others :-p
Chombo like Afroexiliados is a strong statement that not only calls on blacks to remember their history but also cautions whites
not to over-look the black contribution in the history, origin, and culture of the Panamanian nation. Decades ago from the Antilles
to Panama to work on the canal, “The Big Ditch,” Chombo is an attempt to reclaim black dignity and recognition, and the author
does this by recounting his own experiences and those of other descendants and their African ancestors. In neither of the two novels
does Cubena overlook any of the hardships the chombo en-countered in Panama, from the system of segregation and discrimination
called Gold Roll and Silver Roll (which paid whites double in gold and blacks at a lower rate in silver for the same work) to the many
hazards that caused deaths among blacks, such as malaria. yellow fever, pneu-monia, derailments, explosions, and landslides. In addition, blacks had to suffer racist insults and the dehumanizing effect of the white aesthetic.
The hatred, prejudice, and disrespect shown toward chombos in Panama are inspired not only by their color but by their Protestant
religion,their foreign origin, and their use of English as a first language. Cubena is devasting also in his criticism of Hispanic blacks who
for some of these same reasons show resentment of the Panamanian black of West Indian origin. Included in his criticism is Cubena’s
rejection of mestizaje or blan-queamiento, as he believes this desire for whiteness characterizes the His-panic or the “Colonial Black”
who, like Karafula Barrescoba, proudlydeclared
that she was a colonial Black like those who founded Old Panama, and not an
inferior West Indian Black like Menen . Karafula Barrescoba felt superior to
the West Indians because her mother tongue was Spanish, her religion Catho-
lic and especially because race mixture has bleached out some of her black-
ness, She emphasized every chance she got that she was not black, mulatto,
yes, but not black. Cubena also reminds us that Panama had
its share of heroic freedom fighters as well. In addition to the Marcus
Garveys and the Cudjoes and the countless numbers who gave their
lives in the construction of the Canal there are other memorable figures
in the history of the chombo in Panama, such as William Preston Stoute,
“a black teacher born in Barbados,” who “led protests against injustice”
and was stripped of his Panamanian citizenship and deported to
Cuba. Cubena, whose novels are gold mines of important but littfe-
known facts of the black experience in Latin America, the Caribbean,
and especially Panama, also credits blacks among the early anti-imperi-
alists by recounting the many attempts by black revolutionary leaders
who, “allergic to injustice,” tried, for example, to liberate the city of
Colon ‘.from the Yankee yoke,”
damn, you did an anthropological thesis on the sucker lol!
These comments are rubbish. The same “Chombo” that would invite a volley of punches from a young adolescent, would become an almost welcome term of endearment once the hordes of Westindian Panamanians started their migrations up north to New York City a decade and half later. The same term that in their youth had caused so much hurt and feelings of fury then became a more identifying term between the newly arrived Panamanian Westindians to the Big Apple. What’s more, in its cultural evolution, the Spanish people of Panama have also turned Chombo into a term of endearment, even naming some of their children Chombo.
Panamanians aren’t offended by any slurs. That’s what makes them great. Get over it you politically correct losers.
chum’ is the 19th century equivalent of ‘homeboy ‘ or ‘homey’ where it originally meant someone who shared a room with another. west indians used it as an expression to refer to someone from their island who was also working in panama i.e. ‘chumb boy’ subsequently modified by spanish speakers to chombo which could be quite derogatory, but also used as a term of affection by afro panamenians