This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 PANAMA 002986 
 
SIPDIS 
 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR WHA/CEN; INR/IAA 
 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PHUM EAID PGOV PINR PM LABOR HUMAN RIGHTSPOLMIL
SUBJECT: PANAMA VIEWS FROM THE FIELD: INDIGENOUS 
DEVELOPMENT AND IAF PROGRAMS 
 
REF: PANAMA 00914 
 
 
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SUMMARY 
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¶1.  (SBU) PolOff recently traveled to several remote 
indigenous areas of Panama, which are among the least 
accessible, least developed, and poorest parts of the 
country.  With little economy to speak of aside from 
subsistence agriculture, indigenous groups focus on capturing 
development grants.  PolOff accompanied Inter-American 
Foundation (IAF) Representative John Reed and IAF Program 
Monitor Alexis Pino on their visit to four IAF grantees 
working with three indigenous groups: the Ngobe, the Kuna, 
and the Embera.  Whether because of dispersion, partisanship, 
or jealousy, each indigenous group presents a development 
challenge.  The IAF currently administers $2 million in grant 
projects in Panama through nine different projects (see annex 
A).  44 of Peace Corps' 132 volunteers serve in indigenous 
areas in Panama (see annex B).  End Summary. 
 
 
--------------------------------------------- - 
NGOBE-BUGLE COMARCA: DISPERSION AFFECTS ACCESS 
--------------------------------------------- - 
 
 
¶2.  (SBU)  About five hours west of Panama City, past 
numerous small towns with their Chinese-run local stores, 
PolOff arrived in San Felix, principal administrative seat of 
the indigenous Ngobe-Bugle comarca (reservation).  Located in 
Chiriqui province, San Felix is one of the few towns of any 
size with road access and electricity leading into the 
comarca.  Because San Felix has electricity, the coffee 
cooperative benefiting from the IAF project can use its 
coffee roaster and bag sealer.  To actually visit one coffee 
grower, PolOff struggled by Toyota Land Cruiser vehicle up a 
mountain on a steep, muddy, and rocky road for over an hour. 
One of the 29 Peace Corps volunteers in the comarca also 
worked with the coffee cooperative. 
 
 
¶3.  (SBU)  Working with in the Ngobe-Bugle comarca is a 
challenge because project specialists and the Ngobes 
themselves need to travel long distances for instruction. 
The approximately 126,000 Ngobe-Bugle comarca residents are 
dispersed throughout the 6,673 mountainous square kilometers 
of the comarca (8.8% of Panama's national territory) and 
neighbors are far from within shouting distance.  Although a 
Ngobe crafts group runs a $50,000 craft center off the 
highway about twenty minutes from San Felix, one Ngobe woman 
approached PolOff about creating a craft center in the 
comarca.  One accomplished Ngobe artisan said he travels a 
full day on foot through the comarca just to reach the 
current craft center.  The route from his house to the craft 
center is too rough for cars or bicycles, even if he had one. 
 
 
 
 
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KUNAS YALA COMARCA: PARTISANSHIP 
-------------------------------- 
 
 
¶4.  (SBU)  A week later, after about an hour flight northeast 
of Panama City in a puddle jumper, PolOff landed on a postage 
stamp with a landing strip that is the Kuna island of 
Porvenir.  The Kuna have 49 communities, 46 of them on tiny 
Caribbean islands surrounded by sparkling turquoise water 
that are sandbars with a palm tree.  But they're not 
deserted.  Imagine Gilligan's Island if a modern cruise liner 
had run aground.  Every bit of space on the islands is 
occupied by the comarca's 36,000 inhabitants and their 
thatched huts.  Despite having a strip of comarcal land 
approximately a hundred miles long along the malarial 
Caribbean coast (it's not called the Mosquito Coast for 
nothing), the Kuna live all together.  Like Gilligan's 
Island, about 15 minutes after the "castaways" presented a 
united front to PolOff, the "Howells" pulled PolOff aside to 
advocate their own political party and narrow interests.  A 
Kuna observer present in the comarca in the lead up to the 
May 2004 national elections confirmed this strong Kuna 
political partisanship. 
 
 
¶5.  (SBU)  The highly organized and communal Kuna maintain 
their culture through traditional governing structures, such 
as the General Congress and the Cultural Congress. 
Both of these traditional bodies have their own NGOs to 
facilitate donors.  The IAF museum project works with one of 
these NGOs which also receives technical assistance from the 
Smithsonian's Museum of the American Indian.  Peace Corps 
formalized its relationship with the Kuna in an agreement 
signed in 2003, and Peace Corps had 11 volunteers working 
with the Kuna Yala in FY 2004. 
 
 
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COMMENT 
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¶6.  (SBU)  Although the Cultural Congress and General 
Congress are meant to be nonpartisan, individual members 
often have their own party affiliations.  Cultural Congress 
members lean toward the governing PRD, a left-center party. 
In the Kuna's open and communal society, these affiliations 
are well known and can lead to allegations that the 
Congress's NGO is favoring party members in project 
implementation.  Some members of the Cultural Congress's NGO 
are also members of the Cultural Congress.  Members of the 
Cultural Congress also confirmed that the two traditional 
Congresses coordinate only minimally with the two (non-PRD) 
national legislators from the comarca.  The Cultural Congress 
members explained that Kuna communities view the legislators 
merely as patrons for sponsoring local projects, not as 
advocates for the community as a whole.  This partisanship 
and parochialism make a voting block among all indigenous 
legislators less likely because Kuna legislators and Ngobe 
legislators are from different political parties and serve 
different communities. 
 
 
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EMBERA IN CHAGRES: SUCCESS BREEDS JEALOUSY 
------------------------------------------ 
 
 
¶7.  (SBU)  A convenient hour-ride north of Panama City in 
birders' paradise Chagres National Park, 300 Embera have hit 
the development jackpot, leaving jealous non-Embera in their 
wake.  After a twenty-minute trip through the lush, tranquil 
park by motorized canoe guided by two young Embera men 
dressed in tourist-freindly body paint and brightly colored 
loincloths, the people of the village Embera Drua greeted 
PolOff - in costume and ready to put on a show.  The men 
played traditional Embera music on wooden flutes.  The women, 
clad in colorful skirts, torsos bare save for body paint and 
jewelry, waved.  Embera men spoke to PolOff in good Spanish 
and the women taught PolOff some Embera phrases.  When cruise 
ship excusions visit Embera Drua, the villagers told PolOff, 
the village's cut is $15 a head, half of it profit.  The 
Embera Drua also sell handicrafts to visitors at good prices, 
so much so that Embera relatives in the Darien now supply the 
group with many of the crafts for sale in the village. 
Because some visitors want to give money directly to Embera 
Drua children, the Embera Drua created a foundation to use 
the money for community projects.  And Embera Drua leaders 
said that seven of ten of their children going to secondary 
school are on scholarships with Youth Ministry in Panama 
City.  Six more children will be on scholarship next year.  A 
Peace Corps volunteer worked in Embera Drua recently and two 
Peace Corps volunteers worked with the Embera in Chagres in 
FY 2004. 
 
 
¶8.  (SBU)  The Embera Drua have disproportionate success 
because they are easily accessible to tourists and technical 
assistance (such as the IAF funded tourism project) and hold 
a near-monopoly on the "indigenous cultural experience" in 
idyllic surroundings. The IAF Embera project involves 300 
people in three villages who settled within Chagres National 
Park in the 1970s, before new settlement was banned to 
protect the Canal watershed. Most of the other 20,000 Emberas 
live in more remote areas east of Panama City.  One NGO 
worker in Chagres not associated with the IAF project told 
PolOff that non-indigenous Panamanian colonists are jealous 
of the amount of attention and help the Embera receive in 
Chagres, especially because the colonists far outnumber the 
Embera. 
 
 
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COMMENT 
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¶9. (SBU)  Jealousy remains a source of conflict between 
non-indigenous colonists (i.e., traditional Latin subsistence 
farmers) and the Embera given the Embera Drua's obvious 
economic success.  Colonist tensions with Embera-Wounan over 
land, not tourism, led to violence in August with 
Embera-Wounan subsistence farmers near Chiman, a remote town 
about 150 kilometers to the east of both Chagres and Panama 
City. 
 
 
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ANNEX A: CURRENT IAF PROGRAMS IN PANAMA 
--------------------------------------- 
 
 
¶10.  (SBU)  The IAF currently monitors $ 2 million in grants 
spread over 9 projects in Panama.  The IAF plan for Panama 
focuses on ethnic groups and environmental issues.  IAF 
grants for Panama average $230,000 per project and generally 
last two or three years. 
 
 
GRANTEES VISITED    IAF      TOTAL     DURATION 
----------------    FUNDS      PROJECT 
 
 
KOSKUN KUNA (Kuna)   $89,325   $127,225  1 Year 
FUNDAMUJER          $327,717   $835,222  4.5 Yrs 
APANAB (Ngobe)      $157,782   $276,848  3 Yrs 
AFOTUR  (Embera)    $217,500   $356,895  2 Yrs 
 
 
 
 
RECENT GRANTEES 
--------------- 
FUDIS               $294,200   $622,200  2 Yrs 
PROVERDES           $225,000   $409,380  3 Yrs 
ADEMIP              $189,800   $279,950  3 Yrs 
 
 
 
 
OTHER GRANTEES 
-------------- 
PRODES              $286,900  $1,048,207  3 Yrs 
IDAPEHM             $278,505   $610,226  2 Yrs 
                   ---------  --------- 
 
 
 
 
TOTAL             $2,066,729  $4,566,153 
 
 
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ANNEX B: PEACE CORPS AND THE INDIGENOUS 
--------------------------------------- 
 
 
¶11. (SBU)  In FY 2004, the Peace Corps had 44 of its 132 
volunteers (PCVs) working in indigenous areas in Panama, with 
resources totaling $676,700. 
 
 
 
 
INDIGENOUS          NO. OF  PRO RATA  OTHER 
AREA                PCVs    BUDGET    GRANTS 
----------                  SHARE 
 
 
NGOBE-BUGLE         29      $435,000  $13,100 
KUNA-YALA           11      $165,000  $   600 
EMBERA IN CHAGRES   2       $ 30,000  $     0 
EMBERA NON-CHAGRES  2     $ 30,000  $ 3,000 
                    --      --------  ------- 
                    44       $660,000 $16,700 
 
 
 
 
WATT