When the Devil Knocks

<div>Despite its long history of encounters with colonialism slavery and neocolonialism Panama continues to be an under-researched site of African Diaspora identity culture and performance. To address this void Renée Alexander Craft examines an Afro-Latin Carnival performance tradition called Congo as it is enacted in the town of Portobelo Panama-the nexus of trade in the Spanish colonial world. In <i>When the Devil Knocks: The Congo Tradition and the Politics of Blackness in Twentieth-Century Panama</i> Alexander Craft draws on over a decade of critical ethnographic research to argue that Congo traditions tell the story of <i>cimarronaje</i> charting self-liberated Africans' triumph over enslavement their parody of the Spanish Crown and Catholic Church their central values of communalism and self-determination and their hard-won victories toward national inclusion and belonging<i>.</i><br> <i>When the Devil Knocks</i> analyzes the Congo tradition as a dynamic cultural ritual and identity performance that tells an important story about a Black cultural past while continuing to create itself in a Black cultural present. This book examines Congo within the history of twentieth century Panamanian <i>etnia negra</i> culture politics and representation including its circulation within the political economy of contemporary tourism.</div>