Dr. George A. Priestley

George Priestley faced seriously adverse odds, but with help from others rose above them. He not only didn't forget the place from whence he came, but lent a hand to aid those facing long odds like he had.

Born in the working class neighborhood of El Marañon --- which has since declined --- to parents of Barbadian extraction, before he was two years old George, his parents, and all other Panamanians of Afro-Antillean ancestry were stripped of their Panamanian citizenship by Arnulfo Arias. That formal deprivation of nationality didn't last long, but the ugly prejudices and economic manipulations behind it persisted, and in many ways persist to this day.

Priestley was bright and studious at Escuela Jose de Obaldia during his primary education and later at Colegio Artes y Oficios, and so won a scholarship to the Instituto Panamericano, one of the most prestigious private schools, from which he graduated with honors. When he was a young man seeking a higher education, the civil rights movement was gaining force in the United States but the color line still remained in force both in Panama and the US-ruled Canal Zone. He took a job keeping the books at a car dealership, a post prestigious enough for a man of his age among the people with whom he grew up, but still without great prospects for advancement in Panama's family business economy.

So in 1961 Priestley joined the migration to the north, settling among the Afro-Panamanian community of Brooklyn, New York. In the tumultuous year 1968, he received his bachelor's degree from Brooklyn College. The following year, under the auspices of the Queens College SEEK program, he began a long teaching career. Accepted to Columbia University, he earned his master's degree and PhD at that Ivy League school, and also spent time studying in Portugal.

Priestley began teaching political science at Queen's College and was soon appointed as director of the Latin American and Latino Studies program there. His advancement in the academic world went hand-in-hand with his social activism and his building of ties with fellow intellectuals and activists in Panama and throughout the Afro-Caribbean diaspora. Probably his most noteworthy work was the publication in 2003 of "Piel Oscura Panamá: Reflexiones y Ensayos al Filo del Centenario," a landmark study of the condition of black Panamanians that put him among the top experts on the subject. Earlier, he wrote a biography of George Westerman, the principal leader and chronicler of Panama's West Indian community in an earlier generation.

Not forgetting his roots meant that Priestly took his place in the multi-generational struggle to end the Canal Zone and make Panama the master of its own house. But as a political scientist and astute observer, he was a critic of the military regime that brought about the Panama Canal Treaties. In the end, Priestly thought that General Torrijos had given away too much, especially in the canal neutrality pact that established Panama's military dependence upon and vulnerability to intervention by the United States. When that intervention came in the form of the 1989 US invasion, Priestly was one of the few people in the United States who forthrightly condemned the attack.

An organizer and leader of several Panamanian and hemispheric anti-racism conferences, a key figure in efforts to fight the HIV epidemic in Latin America and the Caribbean, a member of several editorial boards and think tank teams, and the author of many articles and books, by many accounts Priestley still made the time to do what good professors do, guiding and assisting his students and ex-students in their intellectual advancement. Thus there is a generation of scholars and activists --- here in Panama, in the United States and in many other countries --- that has been influenced by the thinking of Dr. George A. Priestley. But because he documented what the people who control Panama persistently deny --- the largely color-coded caste system that prevails here --- his life's work and his passing went all but unmentioned in this country's corporate mainstream press.

Priestley, who was 68 on June 28 when he died of complications of diabetes, is survived by his wife of more than 40 years, Marva Wade Priestley, and his son Amilcar Maceo Priestley.