Photography as a mirror of history. News photos are used in this project as tesserae of a mosaic, to reconstruct the troubled history of Panama. For about thirty years, until 1989, the country became the scene of military coups, civil protests, fierce political repression, up to the American invasion. Democracy and the huge international interests for the control of the Canal were at stake.
In 2013, photographer Marcos Guerra, in charge of documenting Ricardo Arias Calderón’s political campaigns, donated about seven thousand negatives to Ricardo and Teresita Yaniz de Arias, documenting the first political campaigns in 1984 and 1989, after the military coup of 1968. Other photographs that are part of the project come from the personal archives of photographers of the time and from various public and private collections, which the owners have kept for several decades, thus preserving the historical memory of the country.
