Art Changes Lives

Panamá took a step toward preservation in 1980 and set aside 5,790 square kilometers of the Darién as a National Park. In 1981 UNESCO recognized the Park as a World Heritage Site. And it was designated as a Biosphere Reserve two years later.

But these efforts didn’t stop the assault on this ecosystem. Special government-issued permits enabled foreign industries to operate within park boundaries. Outside park boundaries mining, farming, ranching and logging persisted. And indigenous peoples of the Darién felt the effects of the squeeze.

Monitoring exploitative big business in Third World countries, global non-profit organizations spoke out. The World Rainforest Movement (WRM), in its April 2002 bulletin No. 57, states:

It had seemed as though the world took greater interest in the preservation of Panamá’s rainforests than did the country itself. In fact, much of the conservation efforts on behalf of the Darién have been made possible by the financial support of international organizations such as The Nature Conservancy, U.S. Agency for International Development, World Wildlife Fund—U.S., and World Wildlife Fund—U.K., among others.

Commerce requires transportation routes. About one-third of Panamá’s roads are paved. The major road is a section of the Pan American Highway, a 29,525-mile route from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego.

The concept of linking North and South American with a viable transportation corridor had sprung up in the late 1800s. By 1940, more than 60% of the highway between the U.S. and Panamá had been completed.

The highway penetrated Darién Province in 1973. Still an unpaved road, it reached and ended at the small, but busy commercial stopover of Yaviza in 1984, just 24 kilometers from the National Park. The Darién Gap, as it is now known, is the missing link in the transcontinental highway.

Deliberately left incomplete to help control drug trafficking and cross-border crime, the Gap stretches from Yaviza through 107 kilometers of dense jungle to the other side of the Colombian border. But despite the outcry of indigenous peoples, secondary roads have already opened some of the Darién’s interior. A rainforest means lumber.

According to a Smithsonian Institution study, Darién lumber has been an important export, and the wetland areas have been prime logging sites. But logging isn’t the only intrusion on the rainforest’s residents.

This same study also contends that an increasing number of colonists from western Panamá “disrupt cultural values of the indigenous peoples of the Darién.” The Wounaan and Emberá manage only small agricultural plots, mostly along rivers and streams and conduct limited hunting. Their impact on the rainforest remains relatively low.

A Smithsonian fact sheet summarizing results of its field study states: “The construction of the Pan American highway through part of [indigenous peoples’] homeland has resulted in deforestation and colonization by outsiders. With their traditional resource base eroded, indigenous villages near the highway are finding other ways to survive. Producing a sustainable income from the intact rainforest, tagua and other natural, non-timber forest products (NTFP) can provide both stability for rural people and an alternative to rainforest destruction.”

The Wounaan and Emberá peoples, who share the Darién with pockets of Kuna Indians, not only learned to live off this land in what is one of the most remote territories in the hemisphere, but they’ve also learned to rely on NPFP as a primary income source. They weave natural fiber baskets—the highest quality found anywhere in the world, according to some collectors and museum curators. Opening the Darién could change all that.

 “Paving to Yaviza is OK,” says master weaver Alina Itucama, thoughtfully, “But not all the way to Colombia.” Itucama, 35, is one of 75 master artists selected from around the globe to participate July 17-18 in the Santa Fe International Folk Art Market 2004 (SFIFAM). (To be continued. See Part II of II.)

The Wounaan and Emberá peoples, who share the Darién with pockets of Kuna Indians, not only learned to live off this land in what is one of the most remote territories in the hemisphere, but they’ve also learned to rely on non-timber forest products (NTFP) as a primary income source. They weave natural fiber baskets—the highest quality found anywhere in the world, according to some collectors and museum curators. Opening the Darién could change all that.

 “Paving to Yaviza is OK,” says master weaver Alina Itucama, thoughtfully, “But not all the way to Colombia.” Itucama, 35, is one of 75 master artists selected from around the globe to participate July 17-18 in the Santa Fe International Folk Art Market 2004 (SFIFAM).

She and her Emberá husband, Obdulio Isarama Aji, now live near Panamá City but make the arduous journey to Darién villages—many of which are accessible only by dugout canoe and river travel—about once a month. Tirelessly, they work with Wounaan and Emberá weavers (as well as with skilled male carvers) to help promote this art form and bring the artisans’ products to market.

The couple says that it’s their mission to help their people build a strong economic base. They believe that achieving financial security translates not only to more secure family units, but also to a greater potential for indigenous people to protect their valuable rainforest resources.

Paving the often-washed-out dirt road to Yaviza, Itucama explains, would make travel much easier from Panamá City and its outskirts to more remote villages splintered off the highway. “But beyond that, it’s . . . well . . . it’s rainforest.”

Santa Fe photographer Lorran Meares, invited presenter at the January 2004 Wounaan Congreso, spoke on the issues of conservation and preservation by indigenous peoples. Throughout the Congreso, tribal representatives emphatically voiced their concern that completion of the Pan American Highway literally would pave the way for “more Colombian guerilla activity, drug trafficking, logging and destruction of the rainforest.”

Meares and his wife, Charlotte, are sponsors for Itucama at the SFIFAM, where she’ll demonstrate weaving techniques that have defined this art form. From 5-7 p.m., July 16, the William Siegal Galleries, 135 West Palace Ave., will host a reception in her honor, concurrent with the gallery’s opening show of Hösig Di baskets.

Both Meares are teaming to chronicle the development of the basket-making art form for a book and educational video. For nearly two decades, the couple has been active in the preservation of Native American sacred sites. It was from that perspective that they became empathetic toward the indigenous peoples of the Darién.

There are many ways to stop the Pan American Highway, a handful of representatives told Meares during his January interview. Though they each felt that Darién peoples would “have a right” to sabotage giant earth-mover machinery to protect their cultures and traditional life-ways—actions reminiscent of the Monkey Wrench Gang—the small group concurred that non-violent intervention is preferable.

“I would rather get a bruho to stop them!” blurted one man. The rest nodded in agreement. “A bruho working with the spirits could be much more powerful than the machines,” he said, his voice brimming with confidence.

According to satellite photos, quotes a newsletter from the Rainforest Alliance, one of many global conservation non-profits, nearly 10,000 square miles of irreplaceable habitat—more than 6,000,000 acres—were destroyed throughout 2002 in Brazil’s famed Amazon alone. These figures startle Wounaan Congreso leaders.

The Smithsonian study validates their concerns. Among the threats to rainforest, the study shows, cattle-ranching ranks high. Ranching, it states, has contributed to the destruction of more than half of Central America’s jungle since the 19th century, with most of the conversion taking place in the last 50 years.

In a recent newsletter, the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO), an intergovernmental organization promoting the conservation and sustainable management, use and trade of tropical forest resources, states that the main threat to the Darién comes from deforestation, “as colonist fronts move into the province following logging roads and other access points. …In the dry season of 1998, assisted by the effects of El Nino, colonists’ fires escaped into 8,000 hectares of unexploited Darién forest.”

The encroachment of squatters and others on indigenous lands, “where communities lack land rights outside the legally recognized reservations and, therefore, are subject to the destructive activities of those who do not utilize nor value the non-timber forest products,” cannot be ignored, ITTO says.

Watchdog organizations are plentiful. Many lobby successfully for protection of earth’s fragile places and its indigenous peoples. Others speak loudly and carry a big stick.

In his opening address to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Roundtable on Intellectual Property and Indigenous Peoples, Geneva, July 23-24, 1998, Roberto Castelo spoke loudly:

It is my hope that this Roundtable may advance appreciation and understanding of the fact that human creativity springs from many different sources of inspiration, and achieves expression in many different forms. I also hope that we may begin to see a path forward towards ensuring that the benefits of all human creativity, wherever and however generated and maintained, may be protected, respected and shared according to commonly recognized and respected principals.

That is also the hope of the Darien’s Wounaan and Emberá peoples. To preserve their intellectual property and rainforest homeland is to prolong their traditional culture. There is a sense of urgency, their leaders believe. The world must wake up—before the brilliant butterflies and flowers of this once pristine rainforest exist only as intricately woven designs on baskets like Itucama’s.

Copyright © 2004 Charlotte Meares

Protecting the Rainforest in Panamá: Crossroads of the World

WOUNAAN AND EMBERÁ PEOPLES DISCOVERED HOW 
TO TRANSFORM A CRAFT INTO SUSTAINABLE INCOME AND INITIATE RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PROGRAMS

Copyright © 2005 Lorran Meares

Although the government of Panamá says, on the one hand, that it promotes the conservation and protection of the remaining forests, on the other hand, it wants to promote the mining activity within the national territory, and even inside protected areas. Almost all indigenous territories are included in the requests for mining exploration permits, even though mining activity is against the religious and spiritual principals of the indigenous peoples. It is thus necessary to adopt measures for the recognition of traditional rights of the indigenous peoples to their territories, as a crucial aspect of the sustainable use of forests and the equitable sharing of benefits. If these forests still exist (when so many others have been destroyed) it is precisely thanks to (and not in spite of) the presence of indigenous peoples.