Anti-racism fighter dies

PANAMA. A renowned Panamanian campaigner against racial discrimination Dr. George Priestly, of Afro Antillean ancestry has died in the US from complications from diabetes. He was 69.

Priestley was a veteran activist and towering intellectual according to colleagues and friends. His many academic and personal accomplishments were to educate and illuminate the world regarding the African Diaspora.

He grew up in Calidonia, a popular neighborhood of Panama city at a time where President Arnulfo Arias Madrid attempted to strip West Indians of their Panamanian citizenship and expel them from the isthmus.

George played a substantial role in mobilizing support in the United States to get the Panama Canal treaty approved. He saw the treaty campaign as a matter of Panama's need to set aside internal disagreements and put an end to the Canal Zone, a colonial outpost that cut the country in half.

He was the author and co-author of several books and monographs and dozens of articles. Some of his better known publications are Ethnicity and Class in Central America; Military Government and Popular Participation in Panama: The Torrijos Regime, 1968-1975, and Panama's Political Crisis: Is There a Democratic Alternative.

His book "Piel Oscura in Panama" written with attorney Alberto Barrow is perhaps the best description to date of the political and social involvement of afro-Panamanians both in Panama and the U.S.

His recent research project involved the Transnational Identities of Panamanians of West Indian descent, and a political biography of George Washington Westerman, journalist, diplomat and defender of minority rights in Panama.

At the time of his death Dr Priestley was a scholar at the City University of New York's Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies and Director of Latin American Area Studies at Queens College.

Professor Priestley was the recipient of numerous awards, including a Gulbenkian Fellowship, a Ford Diversity Initiative Grant, and a Mellon Foundation Award,

Carlos Russell, a friend and colleague said “His passing digs a deeper hole in the already thinning ranks of those Panamanians of Caribbean ancestry, who continuously fought systemic racism in Panama and the US”.