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Treading Lightly
a visit with the San Blas Kuna
by Colleen Kaleda
Excerpts:
I squint into the impossibly bright sun and see, swaying ahead — blades of grass? No, they’re the tops of palm trees on islands so small and flat they fade in and out like mirages on the horizon. I close my eyes and press my sandy feet against the bottom of the dugout canoe. Slop-slap, slop-slap — the ocean pats the underside of the boat in a singsong rhythm.
More than 300 tiny islands make up the San Blas archipelago, which is just off the Caribbean coast of Panama. The islands are home to some 20,000 Kuna Indians, descendants of indigenous Central Americans who fled to the islands 150 years ago in a largely successful effort to preserve their independence and traditions.
I came to this remote place to see how the Kuna’s tourism experiment is working. Over the past few years, the Kuna have begun to encourage tourism on their islands, hoping to bring in some much-needed money. Tourists’ activities are tightly controlled in an effort to minimize their impact on the San Blas environment and culture — for example, visitors are not welcome inside Kuna homes. But tourism by nature changes a place. Will the Kuna survive this experiment intact?
I’m also interested in learning more about the Kuna’s matriarchal society. In Kuna culture, young women select their husbands. After a selection is made, the man lives with his wife in the house she shares with her mother. Property belongs to women and is passed from mother to child. The Kuna liken the Earth to a caring and generous Kuna mother and celebrate their own Earth Day, which they call Mother’s Day.
Women’s esteem in Kuna society has been solidified in modern times as molas have become the backbone of the Kuna economy. Molas are hand-stitched squares of cloth that women began sewing at the turn of the 20th century. The colorful textiles are hot items on the international crafts market. Kuna women create molas by stitching several layers of cloth together and then cutting patterns through the layers, exposing the cloth below. Designs include illustrations of local animals and plants, ritual objects and Christian symbols. Some molas also reflect the increasing contact between the Kuna and the outside world, with designs that include cartoon characters and even Coke bottles and other logos . . .
