San Blas Islands

When the Spanish arrived, the Guna lived further east, near the Gulf of Urabá in what is now Colombia. Violence and conflict with the newcomers pushed them west into the forests of the Darién and along the rivers running down to the Caribbean. This stretch of coast saw some of the earliest European ventures on the isthmus: the Spanish stronghold of Acla, where Vasco Núñez de Balboa was tried and beheaded, stood here, and from 1679 to 1681 the buccaneer William Dampier used the islands, which he called the Samballoes, as a hiding place and meeting point for privateers. In 1698 Scottish colonists founded New Edinburgh a few kilometres from present-day Ustupu; the colony surrendered to a Spanish siege in 1700.

From the mid-19th century the Guna moved out onto islands near the river mouths, away from disease, snakes and mosquitoes and closer to the trading boats that bought coconuts and turtle shell, while keeping their farms on the mainland. A Colombian law of 1870 recognised them as owners of the territory, but after 1903 Panama ignored it. Gold, rubber and turtle hunters, banana concessions and police attempts to suppress Guna dress and customs led to the revolution of February 1925, in which 27 people died and the Guna briefly declared a Republic of Tule; a peace agreement signed in the presence of the American minister followed in March.

A Guna district was created in 1938 and its government set out in Law 16 of 1953. The territory took the name Guna Yala in 2011, and its capital, El Porvenir, became Gaigirgordub in 2016. In June 2024 about 300 families moved from crowded Gardi Sugdub to the new mainland village of Isber Yala, a move linked to overcrowding and rising seas.

Guna Yala governs itself. The Guna General Congress, the highest authority, brings together representatives of every community twice a year, with votes cast by each village's sahila, its elected leader. Each village also has its own congress house, where meetings decide the affairs of the community.

The mola is the best-known Guna art. Before Europeans arrived, the Guna painted their bodies with colourful designs; when missionaries pressed them to wear clothes, women copied those designs onto cloth, and molas, panels of layered fabric cut and stitched to reveal patterns, became part of their blouses. Molas are still worn every day by many women, along with printed wrap skirts, headscarves and bands of beads, and their sale is the main income for many families.

The cycle of life is marked by communal feasts. Iggo inna, the puberty feast for a girl after her first menstruation, involves the whole village, as does inna suid, at which children of four or five receive their first haircut in front of the whole community. Inna mutiki, the night festival for a wedding, can last several days, until the drink prepared by the families runs out. Guna is the language of daily life, and Spanish is widely used, especially in schools and written documents.

Guna Yala had 32,016 people in 2023, more than 95 per cent of them Indigenous. The comarca stretches along 373 km of Caribbean coast to the Colombian border and is divided into four corregimientos with 51 communities, most of them on the roughly 50 inhabited islands of the archipelago. Many families divide their time between mainland villages and the islands.

Farming is for the family table — bananas, maize and sugar cane on mainland plots — while coconuts bring in cash. Fishing is done by line and net, mostly for sale: lobster, crab, squid and octopus are sold to buyers whose planes call at the islands daily. Tourism, in small Guna-run lodges concentrated in the western Gardi area and around Ailigandi, is regulated by the Guna authorities, and money sent home by relatives working in Panama City and Colón is another mainstay.

Life on the village islands is crowded and close: houses of cane and thatch stand wall to wall, water is piped from mainland streams, and electricity is limited and often switched off at night. The great issues are space and the sea. The government has predicted that several islands could be submerged by 2050, although some Gardi Sugdub residents point out that their island has grown over time through land reclamation.

Guna cooking is built on the sea, coconuts and plantains. The everyday dish is fish stewed in coconut milk with green plantains, and rice cooked in coconut milk is a staple. Lobster, crab and fish are caught daily, and on the visitor islands meals are almost always included in the stay, cooked by the family that runs the lodge: grilled or fried fish, crab or lobster with rice and plantains, and a few basic vegetables such as tomatoes, carrots, yuca, onions and potatoes.

Variety is limited, and that is part of island life. The larger village islands have small shops selling basic groceries, drinks and beer, and a few small restaurants with short menus; ice is scarce. Bananas and root crops come over from the mainland plots, and coconuts are both food and the islands' main cash crop, collected by trading boats that call along the coast.

Chicha, a drink flavoured with fruit or vegetables, is made locally, and an alcoholic version, chicha fuerte, flows at the great feasts. Water on most islands is piped untreated from the mainland, so visitors drink bottled or treated water.