Accepted Panels

This paper examines the impact of cattle raising in the environmental and political transformations of eastern Panama from the 1960s to the 2000s. The expansion of the agro-pastoral frontier that accompanied the construction of the Pan American Highway in the region during this period led not only to deforestation and the displacement of local communities by colonists, but also to the expansion of state power through the transformation of forest into pasture. This paper situates these processes historically, tracing how peasants in western Panama were displaced and became a mobile population that, in turn, displaced indigenous and afrodescendant communities in eastern Panama. The paper also explores the historical dimensions of the cattle and pasture grass that accompanied— and in many ways, anticipated— the colonists. It argues that, while pastures indeed became a site of state control in the region, the cattle and grass that compose the pasture generate uncertainty for projects of state control. On one hand, pastures stabilise state projects of domination; on the other hand, they are indeterminate landscape forms, always potentially reforesting.