Panama, the Comarca, and the Kuna

Panama has been globally recognized for its relatively enlightened treatment of its indigenous peoples since it became a State in 1903.[i] The economic dependency of Panama to its geographic resource, the Panama Canal, may have indirectly helped its indigenous populations during the nation-building process, by keeping the Nation’s attention focused on its metropolitan center.[ii] Panama has used a legal, political and territorial framework known as the "comarca" as the primary means of managing its relationship with indigenous communities. The use of the comarca has been criticized as a mechanism that makes it easier for the State to exploit human and natural resources.[iii] However, it has also been defended as a mechanism to help the indigenous community to establish internal conditions for economic and social development.[iv] Both narratives can be supported with selective evidence, although Professor Francisco Herrera,[v] one of the foremost experts on Panama’s indigenous peoples, argues that the former narrative has dominated in most cases, due to the absence of strong political organization with the comarca.[vi] The one possible exception has been with the Kuna of the Kuna Yala Comarca, who have benefited from the system due to, among other elements, their strong political sensibilities and a longer history of organized interaction with the State.[vii]

The comarca is Panama’s special political and legal structure to accommodate its indigenous populations. Between 1953 and 2000, the Government of Panama designated five different geographical zones as semi-autonomous indigenous territories, or comarcas. In order of their creation, they are 1. Comarca Kuna Yala, 2. Comarca Ngobe-Bugle, 3. Comarca Embera Wounaan, 4. Comarca Madungandí, and 5. Comarca Wargandi.[viii] Each of the comarcas is divided into at least one electoral circuit. Elected representatives from these circuits represent the Comarca before the National Assembly. [ix] In spite of the relative stability of the comarca regime, Panamanian policies toward its indigenous peoples have varied significantly over the decades, ranging from Liberal assimilation to corporatist indigenismo and finally to the neoliberal reforms in the 1990s, and most recently to open conflict over access and control of natural resources and development projects.[x] The way that the comarca system deals with indigenous populations reflects something of a hybrid in land tenure theory, showing both civil law influences inherited from the Spanish, and the common law influences from the United States.[xi] Whereas the Spanish tended to treat the indigenous populations in their colonies as wards of the Crown, in the U.S., indigenous people were treated as independent nations. This influenced the way that the colonial powers conceived of the rights of the indigenous peoples to the property under their control. Professor Herrera believes that Panama was influenced by the U.S. reserve system.[xii] However, they also clearly held on to the Roman, Spanish, and Colombian heritage of viewing indigenous communities as subjects of the Sovereign, with limited rights to the land.[xiii] In addition to the comarca, Panama has also used the term "reserva," (reserve) to designate special areas of administration. However the “reserva" and the “comarca” were not simply alternative names for the same concept. Rather, they were two separate types of administration with the reserve generally existing as a legal designation within the comarca.[xiv]

The notion of the comarca within the Panamanian political and legal system has evolved significantly over time, and continues to lack a precise definition. The first time the term "comarca" was used was in 1938 with the creation of the two separate administrative unites of Baru and San Blas.[xv] However, there were few similarities between the two areas.  While San Blas was the home of the Kuna Nation which had managed to achieve relative autonomy from the Panamanian State, Baru was not even an area under the control of indigenous people.[xvi] Thus, the current notion of the comarca as an area of semi-autonomous indigenous control is something that has evolved into what is today. Generally speaking it has referred to an area that was claimed as part of the State of Panama, but was not under its active administrative control.[xvii]

The term "comarca" has been used and understood differently at the same time by different groups, as reflected in the current differences in understanding between the Ngobe and the Panamanian State. The Ngobe have had a comarca since 1952, but have been fighting for a "real" comarca, with more autonomy akin to what the Kuna enjoy in Kuna Yala.^[xviii] Law 72 of 2008 made some advance in clarifying the concept. Before then, there was much ambiguity, and even now the lines are not clear.^[xix] This lack of clarity is partly due to the fact that in Panama there is no "ley marco" or fundamental legislation that normalizes the status of its indigenous nations.^[xx] Dr. Jordan argues that the idea that Panama is somehow advanced in its relationship towards its indigenous people is the "great myth."^[xxi] He notes that unlike so many other Latin American countries, Panama has yet to have significant constitutional reform incorporating indigenous rights protections and provisions.^[xxii] The last constitutional text from 1972 is not very favorable.^[xxiii] It talks about "reserving the lands necessary," but nothing about autonomy or political or indigenous rights. In regard to the overall discussion of indigenous rights in Panama, questions regarding the ambiguity of the comarca regime get pushed aside in light of ongoing conflicts with indigenous populations that continue to live outside of the existing comarca designations. These areas are known either as "tierras colectivas" or in areas adjacent to the comarcas known as "areas anexas."[xxiv]

There are presently estimated to be between 60 and 70 thousand Kuna in Panama, making it the second largest indigenous nation in Panama behind the Ngobe. In addition to the four Kuna Comarcas noted above, as many as 10 thousand Kuna live in Panama City. There are also the communities of Pucuro and Paya located in the border region with Colombia. Although the bulk of the Kuna population now live on a string of islands along the eastern half of Panama's Caribbean coastline, at the time of the arrival of the Spanish in Panama in the early 16th century, they lived in the inland area near the modern day border with Colombia.[xxv] The reasons for the mass migration, first to the inland coast, and then to the coastal islands, is the subject of some speculation, with reasons ranging from pressure by the Spanish, to the allure of trade goods available on the coast, to the desire to escape from plague and disease inland.[xxvi]

The community-based forest management project studied in this work involves the Kuna community of Mortí, which is one of three villages making up the Wargandi Comarca in the interior of the Darien Province. Unlike their well-known cousins along the coast, these communities have had relatively little interaction with outsiders and have received little academic attention. The Wargandi communities notwithstanding, the Kuna are one of the most studied and well known native societies in Latin America.[xxvii] The Kuna have long had the ear of a variety of interested westerners, as well as non-western listeners, with extensive accounts recorded as far back as 1680 by the French pirate Lionel Wafer.[xxviii] The message delivered from the Kuna was often garbled, due in part to the limitations of the Kuna, but also through the constant misinterpretation and misrepresentation of the Kuna by a host of interested parties.

The Kuna of the Kuna Yala Comarca (formerly known as San Blas) present a relatively rare example of indigenous community/State interactions, where over time something resembling mutually acceptable outcomes have been achieved.[xxix] Professor James Howe tells the story of how the Kuna have, albeit not without setbacks, been able to selectively interact with and adapt the tools of the State in order to largely define their own identity and achieve their own ends.[xxx] Howe weaves the narrative thread of the story of a collaborative ethnographic effort in which Kuna have actively participated as both subjects as well as agents in the creation of their own identity and reality. As an anthropologist and ethnographer himself, Howe chooses to focus on the Kuna’s relationship to writing in the shaping of their identity. The story progresses from the Kuna’s general resistance to literacy, to their limited acceptance of western education, to their extensive use of writing to convey their grievances and requests to the national government, to the drafting of laws, and most importantly for Howe, to the use of writing by the Kuna to record their own history, habits and customs as ethnographers. Howe sheds light on the role of a small but growing class of young, educated men known as “letrados,” or "sikkwis" in Kuna, as scribes and intermediaries, who were often recruited by chiefs in order to facilitate communication with outside officials and dignitaries. By focusing on the integral role that the Kuna have played in facilitating and shaping the delivery of their own history and identity, Howe shows the importance, even inevitability, of a collaborative approach to ethnography. As indigenous communities become more accessible and integrated into modern societies, and they continue to cultivate their own scholars, it is essential that western scholars begin their interaction with indigenous societies firmly entrenched in the tenets of the collaborative approach, as they being their interaction with indigenous societies. Howe's enthusiastic championing of the growth of an educated, scholarly class among the Kuna raises broader questions regarding modernization and development among indigenous people. How far are the non-indigenous advocates of indigenous empowerment and agency willing to go? What happens when indigenous development, whether through greater autonomy, environmentally unstable economic growth, or legal and academic prowess grows to levels that threaten the traditional face of these cultures? Will the special conditions of the “indigenous rights” discourse stand up under this transformation?