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Martinelli and Kuna Yala Governor Angelmira Correa
Photo by the Presidencia

Martinelli fills the last two governor posts
by Eric Jackson and José F. Ponce

Maybe not.

Both new governors say that they want to make their offices relevant in the political structures of their semi-autonomous indigenous communities, in ways that imply constitutional changes in the Kuna and Embera local structures or at the national level or both. In these aspirations, both the Kuna General Congress and the Embera General Congress support their new governors.

Historically, the Kuna and Embera peoples were enemies, but in recent years they have more often found unity than division when addressing problems that they have in common. But they do have different cultures and do face different political situations.

The Embera share a comarca, and many of their villages, with a Wounaan minority that speaks a different language and has different traditions and aspires for its own Wounaan congress to be taken as its authoritative voice. Many of the Embera and Wounaan communities were left out of the comarca when it was created in two separate parts of the Darien during the time of General Omar Torrijos. Many Embera have complained that the structure of their self-rule institutions were inappropriately based upon a Kuna model, and the congress of Embera and Wounaan communities outside of the comarca has sometimes bickered with the comarca authorities, who have sometimes claimed to speak for all Embera and not just those in the comarca.

Especially significant is the president's appointment of Alci Bacorizo as lieutenant governor. He's not from the comarca, but from the community of Arimae / Embera Puru on the Pan-American Highway. Like his father Arcenio Bacorizo before him, Alci is a leader of his community's long struggle to get its collective land ownership rights recognized and respected. This is an issue with communities of many indigenous ethnic groups that are not situated within comarcas, and especially because the outgoing Torrijos administration specifically refused to recognize any collective land ownership outside of the designated comarcas. So is Alci Bacorizo's appointment a sign that the Martinelli administration will have a different policy on this issue?

Dumasá and Bacorizo would like to not only make the governorship of the Embera-Wounaan comarca more relevant, they want to see it turned into an elected office. This could probably be done by legislation, but even so any such move would likely prompt a nationwide demand for more provincial autonomy and the devolution of both powers and resources by the national government in ways that would require changes to the national constitution.

There are three Kuna comarcas --- in addition to Kuna Yala, there are Madugandi and Wargandi --- plus Kuna villages with collectively owned lands outside of the comarcas in Panama and Darien provinces, and a number of urban Kuna communities. The Kuna General Congress claims to speak for all of these, and doesn't give the presidentially appointed governor any significant role in Kuna governance. There is a border dispute between Kuna Yala and the province of Colon, there are conflicts with outsiders intruding onto Kuna lands in Madugandi and there is the potentially huge bone of contention about Kuna claims to sovereignty over territorial waters under which the Torrijos administration granted oil and gas exploration rights to the Texas-based Harken Energy Corporation.

A formal recognition by the national government that all of the Kuna comarcas and communities are one political unit could also probably be made by legislation, but that would alter the electoral math to create at least one more Kuna seat in the National Assembly and detract a bit from the jurisdictions of mayors whose cities have identifiable Kuna communities.

Martinelli lost in most of the indigenous areas, but the margins were mostly close and Balbina's victories in the comarcas must be offset by relatively high rates of abstention and the casting of spoiled or blank ballots in those places, and by the bitter anti-PRD feelings in those communities outside of the comarcas that are threatened by strip mining, hydroelectric dam or tourist resort concessions. If the president chose to do certain things, he could erode PRD support among indigenous voters.

The big question, however, is the extent to which concepts like indigenous sovereignty and collective land ownership are compatible with the president's conservative world view.

Martinelli with Embera-Wounaan Governor Lozano Dumasá Dequia
Photo by the Presidencia