From enslavement and segregation to a government agency for Black people: how the Afro-Panamanian movement achieved institutional representation

From enslavement in the 1500s to an apartheid system in the 1900s, Afro-Panamanians have endured structural and institutional discrimination for centuries. The twenty-first century, however, presented new political opportunities for this historically marginalized group with the creation of the National Secretary for the Development of Afro-Panamanians (SENADAP) in 2016. Emerging from the advocacy of the Black social movement, SENADAP aimed to address institutional gaps in policy development for Afro-Panamanians. This analysis identifies the strategies the Black movement employed to establish SENADAP. Drawing on social movement theory and institutional change literature, we argue that the Black movement utilized the interaction of mechanisms such as public preference, political access, and international politics, and additionally promoted the strategy of displacement to achieve institutional change from the more politically embedded National Council of the Black Ethnicity (CONEN) to the more autonomous SENADAP. These findings are corroborated through process-tracing, drawing on interviews and archival documents.