Datestamp: 08/04/2005
Panama's colorful crafts preserve culture
Native people make cash but stay unique
By MARÍA L. OLIN MUÑOZ
and JENNA BERMAN
For the Tucson Citizen
Migdalia Preciado sits on a wooden bench across from her home with a palm-thatched roof. It is among 200
houses crammed onto an island the size of two football fields off Panama's Caribbean coast.
Her blouse is two finely embroidered panels sewn front and back. These multilayered appliqués,
known as molas, are Panama's most famous native craft.
Traditional mola designs depict geometric adaptations of ancient body paintings, creation tales of how the
Kuna native people came to these islands or stories about the triumphs of their ancestral heroes.
The pink flowers and green birds that Preciado is sewing, however, typify designs the Kuna sew for tourists,
inspired by picture books and cartoons.
"The men work in the field; they provide the sustenance. The molas provide the money," she explains.
Modern or traditional, molas take weeks to complete. Although prices average about $15, they enable Kuna
women to be the primary cash earners in this matriarchal society.
The Kuna are one of seven recognized native groups comprising the ethnic culture of a country that most
Americans probably don't realize is anything other than home to a canal.
The Kuna were the first to enter the cash economy, when builders of the canal started buying their molas
during the early 1900s. Today, every indigenous community in Panama is trying to do the same, yet retain its
identity.
Ten hours a day, Preciado cooks for doctors who run a health center on her island, Cartí-Sugdup.
During breaks, she cooks, washes and sweeps the packed dirt floors of her home. She also sells cheese
empanadas, and in remaining moments, adds a few stitches to her molas.
"My children want to go to school," she says.
She speaks Spanish to them, not only her native Kuna tongue, to prepare them for the university.
Although indigenous groups comprise about 6 percent of Panama's 3 million inhabitants, their reservations
cover 22 percent of the country. Similarly, Arizona's American Indian tribes control 27 percent of the land
while making up 5 percent of the population.
Panama's colorful crafts preserve culture
1
Preciado's reservation, Kuna Yala, extends along Panama's eastern Caribbean seacoast toward the border with
Colombia. It includes the San Blas Archipelago 365 islands, 49 inhabited and part of the mainland.
Kuna men fish, snorkel for lobster and hunt iguana, tapir, and collared peccary, known in Arizona as javelina.
They grow sugar cane, corn, bananas, rice, and tropical fruits. Because Kuna Yala is autonomous, its
members can trade with a foreign nation without Panamanian intervention. In exchange for coconuts,
Colombian ships leave goods such as coffee and machetes.
Their autonomy dates to 1925, when the Kuna rose up against occupying Panamanian police, killing 22 of
them but losing many of their own as well.
"The president wanted to impose Western culture upon the Kuna," says José Davies, director of the
Kuna Cultural Museum on the island of Cartí-Sugdup.
A truce negotiated by the U.S. military led to Kuna self-rule, and February marked the 80th anniversary of
the victory.
"Kuna elders fought for our autonomy, culture, and identity," Davies says. "This is something that we
continue to protect."
But protecting themselves from outsiders hasn't stopped the outside from affecting the Kuna. Within the last
15 years, up to 5 percent of the 32,000 Kuna inhabitants of the island have left for the city.
Many Kuna believe that cities provide greater educational and employment opportunities for future
generations.
The Rev. Benicio Morales, a Kuna Roman Catholic priest, worries that "young Kunas return from the city
with a capitalistic mentality. They are becoming role models to the young people living in Kuna Yala."
Ngöbe
On a remote stretch of Caribbean coast near the Costa Rican border on the opposite end of Panama,
Ngöbe (NO-bay) Indians also hope to tap into the national economy while protecting their uniqueness
and territory.
In the many coastal Ngöbe villages inaccessible by land, boats are like cars. Ngöbe fishermen
who dive for lobster using nothing but masks and well-acclimated lungs travel in dugout canoes, cayucos.
Despite white-sand beaches, mangroves, and palms that reveal the area's natural wealth, the remote,
impoverished Ngöbe subsist entirely on fishing, hunting and agriculture.
In March, representatives of the Tourism Institute of Panama toured four Ngöbe coastal communities
to identify possibilities for tourism development.
In Kusapín, 10 feet from the seashore, the Ngöbe sat on benches around a concrete slab the size
of a basketball court, leaning forward to hear the speakers over the roar of the waves.
"You have to think about what tourists like, not just what the Ngöbe like," institute representative Juan
Portugal said.
Native people make cash but stay unique
2
A Ngöbe man in a white baseball cap, Heriberto Hwkr, rose and walked to the center of the gathering.
"We don't want big hotels and private property signs," he said.
In another Ngöbe community, women are learning to sell crafts for cash. Magdalina Jimenez, a
Ngöbe working for Panama's Vocational Institute, models a dress similar to those worn by Arizona
Apaches. In turn, 25 women from coastal communities will teach other Ngóbe women how to make the
dresses.
Emberá
Yet other indigenous groups have embraced tourism as a survival strategy. Forced to relocate when the
Panamanian government constructed the Bayano Dam, which flooded their lands in the mid-1970s, the
Ipetí Emberá live two hours east of Panama City, near the entrance to the Darién jungle,
virtually the only gap in the Pan-American Highway. They are led by the only female Indian leader in
Panama, Omayra Casamá. Sitting on the wooden floor of her open-air home as she beads a necklace,
she says tourism does not mean exploitation. "We are trying to benefit from what we are," she says.
Efforts to attract tourism are reflected in a small arts and crafts store established with the help of the U.S.
Peace Corps. The store sells baskets, beaded jewelry and carvings. One dollar of each sale goes to a
maintenance fund; the artist keeps the rest. Few tourists, however, dare venture past the military highway
checkpoints installed by Panama to help safeguard an area plagued by drug trafficking and incursions by
Colombian guerrillas to reach the Ipetí Emberá community.
Wounaán
Some Indians from another Darién tribe, the Wounaán, chose not to wait for tourists to come to
them. Instead, they moved their community, population 35, to the Panama Canal's Gatún Lake, an easy
drive from Panama City.
Tourists can arrange visits by calling the group's cell phone, donated by Coca-Cola. When it rings,
32-year-old community leader Felipe Cabezón changes from jeans and a T-shirt to just a red loincloth
to greet visitors.
After a short boat ride to his village, he leads tourists into the forest, pointing out plants variously used to
sterilize women, to "calm them down" or to remove unwanted body hair.
Bare-breasted Wounaán women, wearing traditional colorful wraparound skirts and beaded jewelry
and sometimes lipstick or eye shadow gather at the center of the village where six open-air stilt homes with
palm-thatched roofs house the transplanted community.
They speak Wounaán to the children, but switch to Spanish and smatterings of English when selling
their intricately woven baskets and men's tagua palm nut carvings to visitors.
As he returns tourists and their purchases back across Gatún Lake, Cabezón and his boat are
dwarfed by the luxurious Gamboa Rainforest Resort in the background. Before the Panama Canal turnover,
the United States allowed the Wounaán to hunt and harvest trees for dugout canoes. When the
Panamanian government gained control of the Canal Zone in 2000, the hotel tried to kick out the
Wounaán. They eventually negotiated an oral agreement with the hotel. "But," Felipe adds, "nothing in
writing guarantees our right to live here."
Native people make cash but stay unique
3
PANAMA'S INDIGENOUS GROUPS
Of Panama's 3 million people, about 215,000 are members of indigenous groups. Major groups are:
Ngöbe, 125,000, live in the west, including mountainous Chiriqui province and the Bocas del Toro
archipelago.
The Kuna, 53,000, inhabit eastern Panama, including the infamous Darien Gap bordering Colombia and in
San Blas, part of an autonomous region, Kuna Yala, that includes 365 inhabited islands.
Emberá, 30,000
Wounaán, 3,000
Buglé, Bocas del Toro, 4,000
Source: Viva Panama Organization
Caption:
Publication:
Section:
Source:
Edition:
Page:
Book:
Byline:
From:
PHOTO CAPTIONS
Tucson Citizen
Business
1D
D
María L. Olin Muñoz
Native people make cash but stay unique
4