San Blas Islands- The One Dollar Island
Beautiful beaded bracelets.
San Blas Island, Panama Saturday January 10, 2015
The San Blas Islands just 18 miles from the mouth of Panama Canal is an archipelago comprising approximately 365 islands and cays, of which 49 are inhabited. It is is home to the Guna people.
These indigenous people live in a handful of places in Panama and Columbia, with the islands of San Blas being the most densely populated. It’s fair to say, this Guna Yala region is particularly special.
Colorful Molas forms part of the traditional women's clothing of the Kuna people from Panamá
The most developed of the islands, El Porvenir, is called the capital of the Kuna Yala, the Kuna Indigenous territory.
The Guna worship a god named Erragon, whom they believe came and died just for the Guna people. Driven off Panama during the Spanish invasion, the Guna fled to the surrounding 378 islands. Today their chief lives on an island called Acuadup, which means "rock island". Many Guna are hunters and fishermen.
On some of the islands, children can attend school. Most of the men now speak Spanish, although the women carry on older traditions.
Before the arrival of Europeans, the Guna wore few clothes and decorated their bodies with colorful designs. When encouraged to wear clothes by the missionaries, they copied these designs in their molas, which they wore as clothing. The mola is a form of reverse appliqué quilting by which layers of fabric are stitched together. The ability to make a beautiful mola is a point of pride for Kuna women, some so intricate they are displayed in textile museums around the world.
To make a mola, the artist stacks pieces of cloth together and stitches them, then make delicate cuts if the fabric to expose the layers below and restitches. The quality of a mola is determined by the number of layers, the quality of the stitching evenness and the width of the cutouts.
It was fascinating to see the women hard at work cooking and cleaning, wearing eye-catching traditional mola fabrics (brightly coloured and patterned textiles). Most of them were selling mola fabrics, and we were keen to buy some of the beautiful designs.
Houses on stilts where the Kuna tribes lives
When we asked if we could take a photo of the them, that also came at a price… “one dollar” one lady barked.
If you want to take a photo of the mola bags, it’s one dollar! A photo of the beaded bracelets, one dollar.! A photo of the children’s pets like parrots, one dollar! A photo of the babies in their mother’s arms, one dollar. Everything and anything was one dollar!
These people may choose to remain separate from Panama’s commercial dealings, but they’re still savvy!
Luckily for us, our friend, Sandy Oravec had brought two big bags of used t- shirts and we walked around like Santa Claus giving them away. So to the Kuna people who wanted a t-shirt, it was the reversed. I said, “You can have a t-shirt, but I need a photo,” and they agreed.
We saw a lot of children wandering around with their siblings, dressed in more of the beautiful textiles. Some ran around a basketball court while others sat at their school desks chanting Spanish numbers. Chickens strutted freely around the island. Houses were generally made from wood and thatch, and some had corrugated iron roofing.
