Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
PANAMA'S INDIGENOUS POPULATION
While Panama's national economy enjoys one of the highest growth rates in Latin America,
the distribution of wealth remains highly skewed, the poorest twenty percent living below
the poverty line, receiving less than 1.5 percent of the earnings. This includes most of
Panama's 415,000
indigenous citizens
, who comprise around thirteen percent of the total
population according to the 2010 census. Some have been assimilated to varying degrees
into urban life; most, though, inhabit the rural regions, with around half living in the vari-
ous
comarcas
- semi-autonomous areas demarcated by the state over the last sixty years -
many without access to clean water, health care, electricity, decent schooling or paid em-
ployment.
Panama has eight indigenous groups, the most numerous by far being the
Ngäbe
(180,000), who share a vast
comarca
in western Panama, spanning Bocas del Toro,
Chiriquí and Veraguas, with the less numerous
Buglé
(10,000). The groups are culturally
similar but speak mutually unintelligible languages. The first
comarca
established was
Guna Yala in 1953, the result of a revolution by the
Dule
(or
Guna
) people (62,000) in
1925, which stretches out along the coastal strip of eastern Panama to the Colombian bor-
der, incorporating over four hundred tiny islands. Much later, the smaller inland
comar-
cas
of Wargandi and Madugandi were added. The
Emberá
(23,000) and
Wounaan
(7000)
inhabit the forests of the Darién, though some have now migrated to the Chagres river
basin nearer Panama City. Around 35 percent remain in the two
comarcas
; many others are
scattered among around forty riverside communities across the province. At the other end
of the isthmus in Bocas del Toro Province, the
Naso
, also known as the Teribe, number
just over three thousand and live around Changuinola and along the rivers heading up into
the mountains. A few kilometres north, on the banks of the Río Sixaola, live the
Bri-Bri
(2500). The oft-forgotten
Bokota
number less than a thousand and are often mistakenly
considered Buglé since they speak Buglere; they live around the Bocas-Veraguas provin-
cial boundary in the Comarca Ngäbe-Buglé.
Suffering the highest levels of poverty, some Ngäbe and Buglé migrate for seasonal jobs
on banana, coffee and sugar plantations to earn cash to sustain them the rest of the year.
Guna, Emberá and Wounaan women, in particular, earn an income from their fine craft-
work - though villages in remote areas more or less compete with each other for the small
percentage of visitors that venture past Panama City and the canal.
Although the
comarcas
cover a fifth of Panama's land, these territories as well as those
of indigenous communities residing outside their boundaries are under constant
threat
.
Some lands lie within national parks and reserves, which has enabled government, gener-
ally through ANAM, to apply restrictions on traditional lifestyles in the name of conser-
vation, while simultaneously allowing mining or hydroelectric projects to go ahead often
