The population can be mainly broken into two categories: "Afro-Colonials", those descended from slaves brought to Panama during the colonial period; and "Afro-Antilleans", West Indian immigrant descendants with origins in Trinidad, Martinique, Saint Lucia, Guadeloupe, Dominica, Grenada, Haiti, Belize, Barbados, and Jamaica, whose ancestors were brought in to build the Panama Canal.

The transportation of goods was grueling not only due to the 60 kilometers of harsh tropical rainforest, but also to bad weather and attacks by indigenous people.

[2] It is difficult to pinpoint and identify the place of origin of the African slaves brought to Panama during the colonial era.

[citation needed] Other authors point out that the slaves came from the region between southern Senegal River and northern Angola.

[clarification needed] The presence of this factor determined the ethnic-cultural core musical features of the Panamanian people.

The form of communication used by Africans since 1607 (due to their songs, their instruments and their dances, their numerous uprisings - many of whom fled to settle in the forests, under the guidance of legendary figures like Bayano, Anton Mandinga or Domingo Congo-and the conclusion of a peace treaty in 1607, which granted some freedom, but with restrictions, to thousands of former slaves), and is still cultivated by the "Congo" (a culture, and genre of Afrocolonial dance from Republic of Panama,[3] characterized by a violent expression and erotic dancing, and is almost always associated with some sort of mime and theater, with themes of infamous historical episodes of African slave trade, slavery and the resulting slave rebellions during the time of the conquest and colonialism.

Students of this culture did find parallels as their cryptolect is similar to funeral practices of San Basilio de Palenque, Colombia, who are of Congolese and Ghanaian origin.

[clarification needed] Already by 1560, there were maroon communities in Bayano palanqueras, and Cerro de Cabra, Portobelo, Panama.

They came through several circuits and networks that joined the "Middle America" with the economy in the South Atlantic, in which Panama and Cartagena were central ports and points of passage required for the transfer of Africans during the colonial period.

On the African side, and according to Enriqueta Vila Vilar, major African ports' output of forced labor during the sixteenth century were the islands of Santiago in Cape Verde, São Tomé in the Gulf of Guinea and Luanda in Angola, confirming what Rodney Hilton called "almost exclusive relations between Upper Guinea and the middle region of America."

In this last stand Gomez Reinel and Juan Rodríguez Coutiño (governor of Angola), who lived in Panama working ranches in the early seventeenth century with his brother Manuel de Souza Coutinho, known as Louis de Sousa, the Dominican friar who in 1602 was responsible for the seats in Cartagena.

The California Gold Rush began in 1849, and the subsequent attraction of wealth highlighted the need to facilitate travel between the east and west coasts of the United States.

These two situations combined the need for workers in Panama and unemployment in the Antilles, which resulted the influx of Afro-Antillean people to the isthmus.

During the immigration of 1844, people came from Trinidad, Jamaica, Barbados, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Dominica, Leeward Antilles (Dutch and Venezuelan islands north of Venezuela), Grenada, St. Kitts, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, etc.

Due to the endurance shown by Afro-West Indians in the construction of railroads and projects in Bocas del Toro and Puerto Limon, the French company returned to the Caribbean to recruit workers.

According to Lobinot Marrero, many of the West Indians who arrived in Panama during these years were from the French Antilles of Martinique and Guadeloupe.

Although between 1904 and 1914, the vast majority of Afro-West Indians who arrived in Panama worked a one-year contract with the idea of returning to their home islands once the project concluded.

Many people of African descent escaped into the sparsely settled terrain and formed Cimarroneras, or marooned societies.

It was with the Cimarrones of Panama that Sir Francis Drake alliance in 1572 in order to carry out his first independent attack on the New World Spanish colonies.

Afro-Panamanians continued life at the bottom of the racial caste system, with white Panamanians at the top.

1926 Panamanian laws decreased immigration from the West Indies and later barred non-Spanish speaking blacks from entering the country.

{cn|october 2022} During the 1970s, they organized congresses dealing with issues surrounding Afro-Panamanians, like discrimination of the National Symphony Orchestra against blacks.