The Kuna Indians say they have no need to celebrate women on Sunday - they do it 365 days a year, writes Sarah Marriott in Panama
On Sunday mothers all over the country will be opening cards, unwrapping gifts and enjoying breakfast in bed - but for the Kuna Indian women of Panama's Caribbean coast every day is mother's day.
The matriarchal culture of some 60,000 Kuna Indians turns our ideas of male- female relationships upside down. "We have God and then we have women," says Gilberto Alemancia, a 32-year-old Kuna man who is proud of his woman-dominated culture. "We have no special mother's day, because we celebrate women 365 days a year."
Inaccessible by road but only 30 minutes in a 24-seater plane from Panama City's skyscrapers and traffic jams, Kuna Yala, or land of the Kuna, is an unspoilt tropical paradise of rainforest, azure seas, coral reefs and the San Blas archipelago, some 365 palm-fringed islands that stretch from the mouth of the Panama Canal to the Colombian jungle.
The Kuna lifestyle has changed little since the Indians won their fight for a significant degree of autonomy from Panama, in 1925. For the handful of tourists who stay on any of the 49 inhabited San Blas islands, a visit to Kuna Yala feels like walking into a National Geographic documentary. Kuna villages are still made up of thatched bamboo huts crammed into family compounds; cooking is done on fires on the ground; food comes from hunting, fishing and some subsistence agriculture on the mainland; and the main export is coconuts to Colombia. Although the dollar has replaced the coconut as accepted currency for the likes of sugar, rice, cooking oil and petrol (for boats), three coconuts will still buy you a Coke on the smaller islands.
Kuna women continue to wear their distinctive clothes and jewellery: a gold nose ring; layers of patterned beads covering their lower arms and legs; a sarong-style skirt; a red and yellow cotton headscarf; and, most importantly, a blouse with a mola, a panel of layered fabric with designs of animals and plants to protect them from evil spirits. Men have no traditional clothes; like their Latino neighbours they wear T-shirts, shorts and baseball caps.
Girls here are more highly valued than boys. Girls' rites of passage - menstruation at about 12 and coming of age at about 15 - are celebrations for the whole community; boys are never the focus of a celebration or a ceremony. Food and drink for the one-day menstruation party can cost parents up to $1,000 (€800); the five-day puberty celebration for family and friends can cost $5,000 (€4,000). At this inna suit the girl's head is shaved to show that she is ready for marriage, her body is painted black to protect her from evil and she is bathed in sea water before being dressed in the mola and jewellery she will wear from now on. This is also when she receives her Kuna name. In contrast, boys have no naming ceremony and are usually given Spanish names at birth.
Macho males would probably describe Kuna men as henpecked, because they play no part in decision-making within the family. "Women are the boss," says Jose Davies, a Kuna museum archivist. "My wife makes all the decisions. If I say to her, tomorrow I'm going fishing, she could say to me, no, we need bananas, go to the mainland and bring back bananas. So I go to the mainland and bring back bananas."
Just as Irish men used to hand over their pay packets to their wives, who managed the family budgets, Kuna men give all their wages to their wives - but receive no beer money in return. Even modern men, such as Alemancia, who has travelled the world as a Kuna representative, would conform . . . "if I was living in Kuna Yala".
Being the eldest son of a landowner is no advantage, as men cannot inherit land or property on the San Blas islands. Three or four generations, of up to 20 adults and children, live together, and the oldest woman is the owner of the house or even the island. When she dies ownership passes to the oldest surviving woman.
Tourists exploring an uninhabited island or snorkelling around a coral reef are often surprised at the sudden appearance of a dugout canoe paddled by women in traditional dress. Each island, and every coconut on it, is owned by a woman - and they charge foreign visitors $1 each to use the beach.
Men are allowed to own land on the mainland as long as they clear virgin rainforest and use it for rotation farming to feed their families. This, according to Davies, is because "I have hands. I can use a machete. Women are not the same". Clearing jungle is one way for a young single man to demonstrate that he is a hard worker and will make a good husband. When a man marries he leaves his mother's home and moves to his mother-in-law's house. From then on he will work for his wife and her family.
Despite the matriarchal culture women are responsible for most of what is traditionally viewed as women's work: they take care of children, prepare food, collect fresh water from the mainland and also sew molas and other clothes. Men, on the other hand, bring home the bacon: they kill fish, lobster and turtle; hunt for iguana, squirrel and deer; grow crops such as rice, plantain, pineapple and banana; and may take paid employment outside Kuna Yala. Men also make baskets, canoes, cooking implements and chicha, a sugar-cane spirit drunk at celebrations. Women exercise less power outside the home and are shy about talking to strangers. Kuna culture does not discriminate against women, however, and both sexes become village chiefs, shamans and members of the congress.
Increased tourism is strengthening the position of women, because they can earn a lot of money for their molas (from $5 to $100, depending on quality) and for having their photographs taken (they charge $1). Despite the growth of tourism and other influences of the outside world, the Kuna will continue to preserve their cultural traditions, says Alemancia.
And what does being a Kuna woman in a matriarchal society feel like? "It's a good life," says one young woman, bashfully.
Only Kuna people can own or run businesses in Kuna Yala. The 13 hotels on the San Blas islands offer packages from $35 a day. Try www.visitpanama.comIn Western culture, the wedding, at which in patriarchal tradition the father of the bride gives his daughter away to another man, is a huge celebration. To Kunas, weddings are far less important than female rites of passage, although, like us, they see marriage as lifelong and monogamous.
Arranged marriages were common until about 20 years ago; they still occur on a few isolated islands. Traditionally, the girl's parents would select a suitable husband and visit his parents to ask for his hand in marriage. Then, on the wedding day, the groom would be "kidnapped" by men from his fiancée's family and dragged to his bride's home, from where he fled three times before accepting the marriage.
Nowadays, when a couple fall in love, the boy will ask the girl's parents for her hand in marriage. A date could be set for as soon as the following week. On the eve of the wedding the groom goes to his bride's house, where he is thrown into a hammock by three men. He escapes three times, but the fourth time that he's forced into the hammock he stays put - and his bride is lifted in on top of him. The men throw water over the couple so they can start their new life together cleansed.
The next morning the new husband goes off to work with his father-in-law. He cuts 100 one-metre pieces of firewood, then leaves half on the mainland, to symbolise leaving his old life behind, and takes the other 50 to his new family, to symbolise the labour he will provide for his wife's family. The formal part of the wedding occurs when the couple go to the congress, or community meeting house, where the chief and elders explain the duties and responsibilities of marriage.
Despite the assumption that the marriage will last for ever, the Kuna congress now allows divorce and remarriage. A woman may divorce her husband if he is a bad worker and fails to bring home enough food; all she need do is tell him she wants a divorce. It is more unusual for a man to ask for a divorce.
