Panama

rif. FRE70 — Printed silk necktie 43 × 43 cm 16⅞ × 16⅞ in. decorated with the flags of the participating nations surrounding a runner carrying a flaming torch inscribed “IV Juegos Deportivos Centro Americanos y del Caribe / Panama 1938.” Good condition. A colorful souvenir from the IV Central American and Caribbean Games held in Panama City from February 5 to 24 1938. The Games represented an important stage in the consolidation of a distinctly Central American and Caribbean regional sporting identity. The 1938 competition was the first edition officially styled the “Central American and Caribbean Games” and the first in which Colombia and Venezuela participated. Ten countries and more than 1200 athletes took part—the largest international sporting gathering yet held in the region and Panama's first international sporting event on such a scale. The necktie's design is particularly expressive of this regional idea: the flags of the participating republics form a continuous border around the athlete and Olympic-style torch visually presenting the countries as members of a common Caribbean and Central American community. The Games had begun in Mexico City in 1926 with only three participating nations; their expansion through Havana and San Salvador and finally to Panama transformed what had begun as a small Central American competition into a broader regional institution. Held in a region whose political and economic life had long been shaped by European colonialism and increasingly United States power the Games also offered the participating countries a highly visible means of representing themselves to one another as sovereign nations rather than through imperial or metropolitan institutions. unknown