I’ve been doing a bad job at posting regularly on this blog. I frequently want to write about something, but then tell myself that whatever it is isn’t blog-worthy. I’m sure that readers in the States might find events of my daily life and work interesting, but living here has become so normal to me that I feel almost silly blogging about it! So today I’ll write about something a little different, a trip I took at the end of May.
The day after my birthday and Regional Meeting, I headed with Kaitlyn, Kiersten, and Shellee to Panama City. RM included a lot of planning and a bit of stress, so I was excited for a vacation. We ate Indian food, packed some snacks for the trip, and went to bed early. A driver picked us up at 5 AM the next day and drove us out of the city, through the lowlands of Panama Este, and over the forested cordillera to the checkpoint at the entrance of the Comarca Guna Yala. Anyone who is not ethnic Guna has to pay a $20 fee to enter the Comarca at the checkpoint. However, we only had to pay $5 per person because of the diplomatic status stamps in our passports.
Panama has five Comarcas, three belonging to the Guna people, one to the Emberá and Wounaan, and one to the Ngäbe and Buglé (the largest and most populated, where I lived). The Guna Yala is by far the most well-known Comarca amongst foreigners, because of its developed tourism businesses and relatively easy access to Panama City - at least the tourist islands, the further islands can only be reached by plane or by 5+ hour boat rides along the coast.
We took a boat from the mainland port to the small island of Asseryaladup, or Isla Aroma in Spanish, where we left our bags in the cabañas. The cabins have bamboo walls, palm thatch roofs, and sand floors. The whole island is sand and coconut trees, no other vegetation. I imagined it to be the natural state of the island, but we learned that mangroves are torn out and coconuts are planted in their place on tourist islands, curated specifically for visitors. We left our Chacos and didn’t wear shoes again for the next 48 hours, which was pretty cool. The island has a generator-powered water pump for showers. It’s brackish water, because the roots of the palm trees help filter some of the salt out. We had to bring all of our own drinking water with us.
The whole island isn’t bigger than probably two football fields.
The lancha motorboat that transports passengers between islands.
The next three days we spent cruising on a lancha and visiting a few islands each day. Some of the islands had beautiful coral reefs, and we all took turns using Shellee’s snorkel! We swam, read books, and kayaked around one of the islands. We ate breakfast and dinner on Isla Aroma with other tourists, and the guides blew on a conch shell to call us into the dining hut. Kind of like a Caribbean version of summer camp, I loved it. The second night Shellee’s boyfriend Blanco, who is a tour guide, and some other guides invited the four of us to drink some beer on the beach (imagine a campfire but without the fire) and they told us stories and bits of history of the Guna Yala.
The next three days we spent cruising on a lancha and visiting a few islands each day. Some of the islands had beautiful coral reefs, and we all took turns using Shellee’s snorkel! We swam, read books, and kayaked around one of the islands. We ate breakfast and dinner on Isla Aroma with other tourists, and the guides blew on a conch shell to call us into the dining hut. Kind of like a Caribbean version of summer camp, I loved it. The second night Shellee’s boyfriend Blanco, who is a tour guide, and some other guides invited the four of us to drink some beer on the beach (imagine a campfire but without the fire) and they told us stories and bits of history of the Guna Yala.
Some history…the Guna people migrated to Panama’s Caribbean coast from the mountains of Colombia. Modern-day Bogotá was Guna homeland. The Columbian government established the semi-autonomous Comarca Tulenega for the Guna in 1870, which included most of the current territory and also some Guna areas in present-day northern Columbia. In 1903, Panama declared independence from Colombia (subconscious Manifest Destiny check here: did you know that the US under the Teddy Roosevelt admin basically facilitated the succession of Panama for our own gain, aka control of the Canal Zone? I didn’t know this until I moved here.) The brand-new Panamanian government no longer recognized the Comarca Tulenega. Therefore, outsiders started coming to the islands, intent to claim natural resources like gold, sea turtles, bananas, and rubber trees since they were no longer legally owned. The Guna resisted the exploitation, and of course the government responded by sending in police to “tame” the Guna by violence. In 1925, the people had had enough, and carried out a planned attack on the colonial police occupying the islands. In the following days, a peace treaty was reached, creating the Comarca Guna Yala. In exchange, the government was allowed some limited influence on the islands, notably creation of public schools.
This is the Guna flag.
The Guna are still incredibly proud of the revolution (there are some cool commemorative street murals in Panama City, I will try to get a photo before I leave) and I have found average non-indigenous Panamanians to be very supportive of the Guna people’s right to their autonomous territory. The Comarca Ngäbe-Buglé is also partly autonomous, but not to the extent of the Guna Yala. I think this has to do with the traditional government. The Guna had a casique (chief) and general congress system in place before the revolution, where the Ngäbes were traditionally organized into nomadic family groups and didn’t have an overarching government structure when they achieved their Comarca. Now the CNB has a “traditional” leadership system that was modeled off the Guna system, although right now it’s not functioning very smoothly, haha. Think: dispute over who are the legitimate casiques…
The Comarcas also elect members to the national Parliament in Panama City. The first Guna woman was just elected to Parliament this year! The swear-in was on July 1st, and I got to watch a bit of it on TV. All diputados (like a Senator or Representative, member of the single-body legislative chamber, la Asamblea Nacional) had to wear all white on the first day, except for the one Guna woman, who had gotten permission to wear her traditional colorful dress of mola blouse and chakiras, which are beads worn on the arms and legs. I teared up a little, the image of her standing in the midst of mostly men in white during the national anthem was beautiful. I don’t have any personal photos of women Guna clothing out of respect for their privacy, but you should Google it if you haven’t seen it before!
On our way back to the port, we stopped a non-tourist island for a tour of a Guna town. As Blanco was explaining the function of a traditional meeting house, two American missionaries who live on the island too stopped in and interrupted him to give us their own spiel on the culture of the island. It was very rude. I am wary of missionaries – I want to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they have good intentions…but I have seen the damage they’ve inflicted on the cultural spirit of the Ngäbe, convincing many Ngäbe that their own traditions like balsería, jeki, and chichería are evil. :( And now it is more important than ever that the Guna maintain their cultural identity, because of climate change. The islands are at sea level, and the sea is rising by centimeters each year. Unlike many people in power, they do not deny the seriousness of the crisis and know that in the next couple of generations they'll have to move back to the mainland and abandon the soon-to-be-underwater islands. It sounds completely overwhelming to me, but I have no doubt that the Guna people will overcome this challenge with their strong collective will.
On our way back to the port, we stopped a non-tourist island for a tour of a Guna town. As Blanco was explaining the function of a traditional meeting house, two American missionaries who live on the island too stopped in and interrupted him to give us their own spiel on the culture of the island. It was very rude. I am wary of missionaries – I want to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they have good intentions…but I have seen the damage they’ve inflicted on the cultural spirit of the Ngäbe, convincing many Ngäbe that their own traditions like balsería, jeki, and chichería are evil. :( And now it is more important than ever that the Guna maintain their cultural identity, because of climate change. The islands are at sea level, and the sea is rising by centimeters each year. Unlike many people in power, they do not deny the seriousness of the crisis and know that in the next couple of generations they'll have to move back to the mainland and abandon the soon-to-be-underwater islands. It sounds completely overwhelming to me, but I have no doubt that the Guna people will overcome this challenge with their strong collective will.
It was a wonderful trip and I am grateful I got to go! And more photos:
Blanco surprised us with a lobster for Shellee’s birthday!
Viene la lluvia
The four of us
I always keep my eye out for sand dollars when snorkeling.
Amazing sunset.
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