Guna Yala

San Blas – The Mystical Paradise of the Guna

From Providencia, we’re cruising 270 nautical miles to San Blas, Panama. The archipelago consists of over 350 islands and islets and is governed by the indigenous Guna people, who call it Guna Yala. We clear into Panama on the main island, El Porvenir, and pay our contribution to the autonomous Guna authority. Porvenir is tiny, with little more than an airstrip and a few houses. While clearing in, one officer is mowing the grass while the other stamps our passports. Here, everyone does a bit of everything.

On our first dinghy excursion, we discover the Regina Maris, an impressive 48-meter three-masted schooner. We visit the boat and its crew and realize that this is a very special ship: 33 students from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland live on the boat. They are part of “Ocean College” (www.oceancollege.eu), a school project that relocates the classroom to the sea for half a year.

The students immediately welcome us aboard and give us a tour above and below deck. The current crew boarded in Holland on October 21, 2023, sailed towards Cape Verde, then braved the Atlantic crossing, reaching Panama via the ABC islands. From here, they will continue northwards, through Cuba, and back across the Atlantic to Europe.

Students Daya and Ono take us to the bridge, where nautical charts are spread out on the chart table. The classroom is on deck, more or less under the open sky—during storms, it can be moved to the mess. A student flaps by with flippers, hammocks with fruits sway over the tables. In the kitchen, some students are preparing lobsters they bought from the local Guna. Everyone speaks enthusiastically about life at sea and on the Regina Maris, an adventure of a lifetime that teaches them flexibility and sparks their curiosity about the world.

The island paradise of San Blas looks like a mystical fairy tale as we slowly explore the paradise island by island. Hundreds of small sand heaps lie scattered in the crystal-clear, turquoise waters. Some have a few coconut palms, one or two huts with palm-thatched roofs, while others are inhabited only by pelicans or sand fleas. San Blas is inhabited by the Guna, about 50,000 indigenous people, and managed as the autonomous territory of Guna Yala.

We anchor off the island of Salardup. It doesn’t take long before two Gunas paddle by, offering fish and lobsters for sale. Shortly after, another boat chugs over. A woman holds up a kitchen apron and a wine bottle holder made of colorful, layered fabrics—traditional molas, embroideries meant to ward off evil spirits. The woman is known throughout the archipelago as Mola Lisa.

When Mola Lisa was born 62 years ago, she was not a girl but a boy. “When I was six years old, my mother realized that I was different, unique. She taught me to make molas, explained the mystical meaning of the various embroideries, and dressed me in girls’ clothes. Girls and women are the keepers of tradition and knowledge among us, and if a boy wants to be a girl, it is welcomed.” Mola Lisa is an “Omeggid,” which in the Guna language means “like a woman.” Although Mola Lisa is not married, she has taken on the upbringing of her niece and nephew after their father left the family. She performs the same tasks as other women and holds the status of a woman on her island, which brings much respect in a community like that of the Guna.

Among the Guna, women still hold the power, even though most official positions are held by men. However, it is the women who manage the money and possessions and make important family decisions. “Women are more important because they pass on the traditions and culture, and because God sent a woman to Earth to keep these traditions alive,” says Mola Lisa. That’s why girls are showered with gifts, while boys have to be content with less. After marriage, the husbands move in with their brides’ families, not the other way around as in India, for example. The most important celebrations, such as the transition to puberty, are held for women. There are many rituals for girls, such as a ritual when they get their first period. Then the men go into the forest to gather special leaves. The girl is then bathed in a leaf decoction for four days and then painted black so that everyone knows she is no longer a girl but a young woman. “We still maintain our traditions today. They are what give us cohesion and protection,” says Mola Lisa.

Protect from what? From the changes. Tourists and modern means of communication have made their way to the archipelago in the past two decades. “When I arrived here with my sailboat 16 years ago, I had to fly in spare parts by ship or a tiny propeller plane because there was no road through the jungle. There were no phone connections, and no internet,” recalls 82-year-old American Susan Richter, who has made the archipelago her adopted home. Now there is a paved road through the jungle, leading directly from San Blas to Panama City.

Since the government erected a cell tower on one of the islands, the Gunas, too, have been connected to the world through their smartphones, which have also taken over the islands. Susan was one of the first sailors to settle here with her boat, but the archipelago has long been discovered as an insider tip by charter companies and other sailors. With the foreign guests came the dollars.

“Previously, coconuts were our currency; today, it’s all about money. Everyone wants it,” says 73-year-old Guna Victor Morris. He lives with his wife and four other families on an island next to a particularly popular anchorage. Stingrays and nurse sharks swim past the boats, but fish are hardly seen anymore. The lobsters the Gunas offer from their canoes are usually still small and young, and even during the closed season from March to May, they are hunted and offered for sale, says sailor Richter.

Mola Lisa also talks about overfishing: “When I was a child, we fished with lines from wooden canoes; today, most of our boats are motorized, and we have trawl nets. We used to catch 30 or 40 fish a day and distribute them among all the villagers. Today, there are far fewer fishermen, and what we catch, we sell to tourists.” While the traditionalists in the villages blame the tourists for the fish shortage and the growing waste problem, Mola Lisa says, “It’s not the tourists’ fault, it’s ours. We welcomed the tourists because we wanted their money. We catch too many lobsters and fish because we don’t understand that we’re destroying our livelihood.” There are actually rules, but the archipelago is so large that enforcing them where someone wants to break them is difficult. The only thing that would help is education, understanding of connections, responsibility, says Mola Lisa, who has sent her niece and nephew to Panama for higher education.

Mola Lisa takes us on a jungle hike. We travel ashore by a small boat. With machetes, two of Mola Lisa’s helpers clear the path through the jungle until we reach a cemetery where Mola Lisa’s parents are buried. Mola Lisa explains how her parents, like all the other dead here, rest forever in hammocks. For the hammocks, a large hole is dug, they are tied to stakes, the dead are placed inside, and then covered with earth. Here they rest, and Mola Lisa often comes to light ritual cocoa for her mother and father.

From the realm of the dead, we continue through the jungle, and after about two hours, we reach a river. From here, it’s jumping, swimming, and wading through the river. It’s a lot of fun, and by the evening, we are all quite exhausted….

We don’t see Mola Lisa again, and we are not allowed to visit her island. A major congress of the “Sailas,” the archipelago’s officials, is taking place there while we are nearby. For four days, these officials pass on their tribe’s ancient knowledge to the young. Tourists are not allowed on their island during this time. “If we learn to protect our old traditions while expanding our knowledge of modern connections, tourism, money, and openness will be a blessing. If not, they will be a curse,” says Mola Lisa.

The next day, the vegetable boat comes by, and we buy what it has: onions, potatoes, a few carrots. The Gunas have organized themselves and learned to profit from tourists. On one island, there is a restaurant with pizzas and focaccia bread made to order. But tourism without change does not exist.

In Guna Yala, they are also worried about something else, says Guna Victor: “The weather has changed. It’s getting hotter….” We see it with our own eyes when we snorkel over the reefs: many are white, dead, broken, without fish.

Later, when we are in Panama, I visit the Smithsonian Institute, one of the world’s leading tropical institutes, which has been conducting climate research for over a hundred years. Here, I meet Steven Paton, a Canadian scientist who has lived in Panama for three decades. He heads the institute’s monitoring program and is tasked with collecting and analyzing data on the environment, meteorology, and oceanography. He talks about the El Niño climate phenomenon. It was the third El Niño in 26 years. “The question now is: Is this related to climate change, or is it just a coincidence that we have had so many El Niño events in such a short time?” He doesn’t know yet.

But then Paton shows me the statistics and graphs on his screen. They all point in one direction: they are going up steeply.

It has never been as hot as last year and never as dry. The world’s oceans, which serve as the earth’s heat reservoirs, were also warmer than ever before. The water of the Caribbean Sea was over 30 degrees Celsius in many places last year, a temperature zone deadly for corals. “Since the summer of 2023, we have been witnessing the worst coral die-off in the Caribbean,” says Paton. The rising sea temperatures are a direct result of climate change. “Worldwide, corals are in danger. They are underwater what rainforests are on land: habitats for an incredible number of animals, and they prevent erosion.” If water temperatures continue to rise, most coral reefs will be dead by the end of the century, Paton predicts. This will trigger a catastrophic chain reaction: young fish will lose their shelter, and adult fish their food. Many islands will no longer be protected from the surf because dead corals break apart. Islands will disappear, and their inhabitants will have to find a new home.

In San Blas, climate change is already a reality; islands have already disappeared. Once again, we realize how endangered the paradises of our planet are, how strongly we live in an interconnected, interwoven network. If one domino falls, all the others fall too.

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