In her timely historical ethnography, Guerrón Montero offers a detailed and much needed account of the transformation of Afro-Antillean identities due to tourism development in Bocas del Toro, Panama. After the Panama Canal construction, Afro-Antillean collectives changed from being temporary labor migrants to become permanent attractions. This transformation happened through the production of cultural and ethnic narratives around their historically informed Caribbean cultural practices, which engaged global tourism trends and nation-building desires at the same time.

The results of this transformation are paradoxical. On one hand, forgotten Afro-Antillean cultural practices and traditions, such as live calypso music and dance as well as valued culinary practices and foods, have re-entered the public scene of Panamanian culture, thanks to tourism. This has enabled historically marginalized collectives to nurture and enjoy otherwise sanctioned customs and traditions, to do it openly and hence find a path towards state recognition. On the other hand, the revitalization of Afro-Antillean heritage has taken place through closely curated representations and material interventions that help advance Panama as a tropical and, above all, multicultural destination. In these representations, made for tourism, Afro-Antillean identities are reduced to ethnic commodities and their historical struggles silenced in museums, theme parks, exhibitions, and entertainment venues. In an extremely competitive tourist market, Afro-Antillean difference becomes the distinctive feature of travelling to Panama, as “the third root” of Panamanian identity in the Caribbean (11). The government, official tourism marketing, and Afro-Antillean collectives themselves promote such representations, and inhabitants of Bocas del Toro have learned to maneuver these for their benefit, with relative success.

Organized in six chapters, plus an introduction and a conclusion, Guerrón Montero's historical ethnography is attentive to economic and political structures, systems of cultural representation, and social practices. The book beautifully engages Stuart Hall's theory of cultural representation with classical work in the anthropology of tourism and a special emphasis on heritage tourism and tourist imaginaries. Chapters 2 to 4 offer a comprehensive look into the history of tourism development in Panama and its narratives, along with the history of the different labor migration flows that enabled the Canal's construction. Showing that “Panama is more than a canal” (59) and that labor migration to the region was vastly heterogeneous, Guerrón Montero examines the preservation of Afro-Antilleanness as a resource for national identity narratives amid tourism trends that have forced the country beyond the celebration of its biodiversity—to compete with Costa Rica—and into the realm of heritage and culture.

Chapters 5 and 6 offer a closer ethnographic look into contemporary Afro-Antilleans as a bicultural group with dual competencies in cultures, languages, and ethnic belonging. These chapters closely examine how Afro-Antilleans living and working in Bocas del Toro navigate governmental articulations of their Pan-Caribbean multicultural identity for tourist purposes while at the same time claiming their heritage on an everyday basis. Theme parks, museums, and resorts speak to the brutal change in the morphology of land use in the archipelago. Particularly interesting in this account of the change from plantation to tourism is the analysis of Afro-Antillean cultural practices alongside those of other diasporic ethnic groups for whom the negative effects of tourism development outweigh the benefits.

The book's conclusions engage the urgent question of tourism's dependence on gendered and racialized representations in and beyond Panama. Importantly, they reflect on the situated power that collectives on the ground have to change them. Guerrón Montero's historical ethnography serves, however, as a cautious reminder of the ways in which the tourism industry can reproduce historically informed socioeconomic, cultural, and political stratification through the work of representation. Her book will be of interest to scholars and students in anthropology, history, communication, and ethnic and tourism studies who are interested in questions of power, labor, culture, and representation. It will be essential reading for those working on tourism in Latin America and the Caribbean because it invites them to learn about the myriad ways in which cultural representation can be mobilized as a tool for more inclusive tourism in regions that, as this one, are utterly dependent on the activity for their survival.