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NATIVE PEOPLES magazine, September/October 2003
Emberá Ecotourism: Keeping Civilization at Arm’s Length By Jon Kohl What do you do when the government comes knocking at your rainforest door and warns, “Sorry, we’ve just declared this area a national park and you can’t hunt or cultivate here anymore.” You could turn and fight like many indigenous tribes do when handed such an eviction notice, or simply cease life as a tribe. Or, you could do as one Emberá tribe in Panama did — have a Renaissance. Theirs was not a celebratory fair, though; it was a survival decision, one that would dramatically change everything in their village. While allowed to retain their village in the new national park, they had to dramatically alter previous hunting and foraging subsistence lifestyle. So, they re-routed their hunting trails into nature trails, donned bright clothes and took up melodious instruments instead of hiding a hunter’s wait, substituting their four-legged prey for the new two-legged ones. Ecotourism had arrived at the Emberá Drua village, but not without its challenges.
There they continued to hunt, gather, and cultivate, although partially homogenized through the handiwork of Hispanic teachers and missionaries. Over time, assimilation shaved off the rough edges of their native culture, leaving a more polished Western look. Several years after the government declared Chagres National Park in 1984 to protect the watershed, the Emberá tried their hand at “cultural ecotourism.” To do this, however, required significant change. The Emberá revived many traditional forms of artistic expression: garments, body paints, basket-weaving, dances, tagua-nut carving, and medicinal plant identification. Johnson Menguisama, the president of the community non-profit in charge of ecotourism, says, “Through ecotourism, we have recovered a great part of our tradition, but we want more. In terms of clothing, music, dance, we got some back, in terms of traditional house design, everyone now wants an indigenous house.” Their ecotourism committee has received help from the Panamanian Institute for Tourism (IPAT); a local non-profit that promotes tourism, AFOTUR; as well as a host of American agencies such as US Agency for International Development, USDA Forest Service, and Peace Corps. But perhaps their most artful achievement of all has been their keeping civilization at arm’s length, just far enough so that tourists felt a brief passage into another world, just close enough to assure their easy arrival and departure. AWAITING THE DUGOUT When I pulled the cloth aside, I saw that a canoe had landed and a handsome barefooted youth moved up the bank, dressed in a bright red loincloth with small red bead lassos orbiting his dark chest from left shoulder to right ribs and swooping patterns of black body paint on face and chest. Jorge Martinez’s brilliance parted the humid stillness. The Emberá had come. As my motorized dug-out kicked around the last river bend before the village, a forested wall towered up on my right side and on the left laid a sandy beach. Seven dark-skinned Emberá men played deerskin drums, bamboo flutes, and a rasping maraca from the top of a small dune. Women and children ran down to smile and wave. The sunny reds and oranges of their traditional garb profiled them against the cool background green of rainforest. Martinez pointed politely, “Bienvenidos a Emberá Drua.” At the center of their village there was a cleanly swept plaza surrounded by a thatch-roofed main building, wall-less houses on stilts, benches, palm trees, banana plants, and even two basketball posts, nets included. Martinez escorted me, along with other recent tourists to the main thatched house. Inside, young women, with layers of colorful necklaces covering their breasts, wove baskets and chatted up the moment. His wife, Crecencia Flaco, showed us how they make baskets and the natural black, brown, orange, and red dyes, how they carve figures in wood and in an ivory-like seed, tagua. Later the Emberá treated us to traditional dances, fried plantains and fish, and body painting. Tourists could hike nature trails, swim, canoe, fish, bird-watch, or just relax. After two or three hours, they packed up and headed down river. MODERN LIFE FILTERS IN Others are camouflaged: electric generators, coolers with coke bottles, electric lights, and Western clothes donned when visitors depart. The village even has a telephone booth lavished in thatch. In fact the Emberá have embraced modern communication to promote tourism. Aside from the phone allowing tourists to call directly, tourism committee officials use cell phones, beepers, email, a web site, to reach English. But true cultural change occurs less through objects than how social processes unweave and transform. In fact, the Emberá have been assimilating Christianity. The village is divided into Evangelicals and Catholics. The former has assimilated more and does not participate in the culture-based tourism. The Big City entices teenagers. Some even feel embarrassed to wear traditional clothing, preferring city stuff. Yet the Emberá push back. In only six years since tourism started here, the Emberá have created a remarkable number of institutions and rules to hold back the tide. They have all visited Panama City, thus the allure of the unknown does not apply here. If one had to choose a village theme, it might be, “We know the outside world and we prefer to stay in this jungle.” By using electronic communications they can stay in contact with urbanites without having to see them. They have forbidden alcohol here. Their children enjoy a Western education alongside a rainforest one. But the question still remains: Is it enough? They do not yet understand the impacts more residents and visitors bring. One victim is the visitor experience. When I was there, a tour-group of some 30 white-haired Americans arrived, enthralled with simple sights and sounds. My cultural immersion dissipated as people clapping, dancing, and listening to the city-slicker tour guide’s childish jokes surrounded me. As if lamenting this anecdote, Menguisama sighs, “The challenge that awaits us in the next five years is to conserve our tradition and not lose it completely as the Emberá in Darien have.” __________________________________ VISITING THE EMBERA DRUA TERRA TOURS - Tour Operador Web site of the Embera Drua Jon Kohl is a freelance writer specializing in ecotourism and conservation of natural and cultural resources. He has lived in Central America for more than five years. Jon has published in a variety of publications such as Caribbean Travel & Life, The Boston Globe, Transitions Abroad, GoNomad.com, and has a column called the "International Interpreter" in Legacy magazine.
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