Panama is home to a number of indigenous tribes which have preserved their traditions and customs by passing them down through the generations. Through their traditional handicrafts we see signs of ancestral beauty which take shape in materials such as cloth, basket weaving, tagua and pottery among others and which provide a real thrill for those who are privileged to see them.

Tribes such as the Emberá, Wounaan, Kuna and Ngobe-Bugle make up more than eight percent of Panama’s population. The Emberá, with a population of around twenty thousand, live in part of Darien province and together with the Wounaan, are known as the Chocó because both peoples migrated from the part of Colombia of the same name in the eighteenth century. The Panamanian Government recognized the Emberá-Drúa Comarca (district), which is a semi-autonomous territory set aside for both tribes. The Kuna or Dule people, with a population of some forty seven thousand, migrated from Darien to the San Blas Islands during the nineteenth century, and in 1938 the Government also recognized the Comarca of San Blas or Kuna Yala as a semi-autonomous territory. The Ngobe-Bugle or Guaymí is the largest indigenous group, with some one hundred and seventy four thousand members. They live in the mountains of Chiriquí, Veraguas and Bocas del Toro. Two other tribes, the Teribe with two thousand members and the four thousand members of the Bokotá, live close to the border with Costa Rica.

The Kuna people are now famous for their molas, pieces of colored cloth that are part of the traditional costume of the women. According to legend, the women learned how to make them from the goddess Kabayaí and this is why skill in making the molas is a mark of status among the women of the tribe. Each mola’s quality is assessed according to a number of different factors such as the number of layers, the fineness of the stitches, the care and attention to detail given to the way the cloth is cut and the beauty and artistic merit of each piece. The women use molas in their everyday life and they are therefore not simply decorative items or tourist souvenirs. The mola is part of the Kuna tradition and history, symbolic of their place in the world into which they are born, and in which they grow, live and die. In ancient times the Kuna people painted or tattooed their bodies, but this practice ceased with the passage of time and was replaced by the practice of working these same designs, drawing on geometric shapes and images from nature, into the material of the molas. Today the Kuna women skillfully decorate the molas with historic and mythical figures, flora and fauna and more recently, with symbols from the modern culture that has overtaken them. The theme of the maze or labyrinth often occurs in geometric molas, because the Kuna believe that man, nature and animals live in constant contact throughout the eternal pathways of life’s maze.

Another miracle of the jungle is tagua, known as the ivory of the plant kingdom. This thorny palm that only grows in the rain forests of Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Panama generously provides its fruit for the Emberá Wounann people to carve exquisite forms of delicate beauty and animals that are so lifelike that they would only need the breath of life for them to start moving. The qualities of tagua mean that carvings will last unchanged for more than fifty years, without any fading of color, just like ivory itself. The Emberá Wounann people journey into the depths of the mountains in search of the tagua palm, and these expeditions can last up to three days. Carvings of animals and gods, using very basic tools, reflect very ancient traditions.

The overwhelming need in today’s world to find methods of sustainable development have resulted in tagua replacing plastic and animal ivory, leading to tagua farms being established in the forests of Darien, producing for export. The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute has carried out research into methods of cultivating tagua outside its natural forest environment.
The Emberá Wounann people also engage in basket weaving, making practical articles of extraordinary beauty out of plant fibers. Each article is unique and takes several hours to complete and each basket has its own unique pattern, thanks to the imagination of the women who weave them, inspired by the whispers of other realities which speak to them from a world of magic and religion, or by the things they see and experience in their everyday life.

However the indigenous peoples are not the only ones to produce beautiful handicrafts. The people of the countryside also have their own wonderful expressions of cultural art, such as the sombrero pintao a traditional straw hat typical of La Pintada, in the province of Coclé. Made from plant fibers from the oak and palm trees, each hat has its own character which is defined by the number of woven rows that go into making it and the value of a pintao can range from ten dollars to as much as eighty.

Another important branch of Panamanian handicraft is pottery, and particularly as practiced in the district of la Arena. You only have to look at the jars, pitchers and cooking pots as well as the bottles, serving dishes, parrots, toucans and other souvenirs with their multitude of painted and glazed designs to see how the skill of the hands is expressed in clay.

These expressions of cultural art, amazing miracles of creation remind us that in the midst of the world’s activity and change, we still need the permanence of the memories that come to us from our history.