The 18th century found colonial Panama almost 180 degrees away from were it started as the first and most principal point for Spanish exploration, expansion and great expectations on the world power stage. By 1532, efforts to use the isthmus as a gateway were well under way. To the south, Incan lands and mining drew more people away from Panama and the port cities. The former Aztec lands to the north saw another funneling away of new immigrants from Panama and the central regions. Original policies concerning indigenous peoples were rewritten to help secure vitality on several fronts, and, along with a demographic marginalization and fluctuation, the intended use of the isthmus as passage linking Old and New worlds was also relegated in function.
By the middle of the 18th century, the once thriving port of Portobelo was now a secondary place of international passage. The establishment of the La Plata port on the east coast of Argentina gave the Bourbon crown a less expensive and thus conservative way of transporting goods from Spanish colonies back to Spain. All was not totally lost in Portobelo, Philip V briefly suspended his Bourbon reform machine and reinstated some Hapsburg commercialism to allow more through back to Spain, silver especially. The need for more capital came from the seemingly endless chain of multinational conflicts escalating in the New World. Every country from Europe that found its way west across the Atlantic also found themselves in competition with everyone else. In Panama, a way to combat encroaching English and other foreign threats was the attempt to conscript displaced native Indians into aiding the Spanish.
Spain lost an authoritative and administrative foothold in eastern Panama starting in the middle of the 16th century due to growing popularity in other parts of the new Spanish “empire”. This was seen particularly in relations with the natives Indians. The Spanish sought to “re-conquer” and consolidate the remaining Indians in the east known as the Darien region. These Indians were to be called the Darien tribe. The idea was to have Indians intermediaries loyal to Spanish authority to help protect the east coast of Panama against the encroaching pirates of other European nations. This included both Francis Drake and Henry Morgan, bookending and marauding English privateers of the Panama coast. As time moved forward through the 18th century, further integration between displaced Indians and the Spanish immigrants. Efforts to repel foreign advances were met by internal conflicts as Spain’s grasp on the Panamanian isthmus was slowly slipping away.
