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Negotiating the Future

of Worlds in Transition

Clash of Worlds. Image retrieved from: https://getbg.net/image/305871/

An investigation into how

traditional ways of life can exist within a context of capitalism

in two different contact zones in panama

Email: Tommyevens1@gmail.com

Applied Anthropology track

Master thesis Cultural and Social Anthropology Dr. Laurens Bakker and Dr.Yatun Sastramidja

Date of submission:15th of August, 2018

Tommy Evensen, 11763191

Supervisor: Dr Oskar Verkaaik University of Amsterdam, GSSS department

Second and third reader: Word count: 25 577

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Table of contents

1. Introduction 5

2. Theoretical Framework 6

2.1 The imagined indigeneity 7

2.2 Mobilizing local and global convergence in new forms of governance 9

2.3 The double-edged sword of indigenous symbolism in media-politics 10

2.4 The transition from one stage to another 11

2.5 Conclusion 13

3. Research question and methodology 14

3.1 Reflecting on the research process 18

3.2 Research question 19

4. Chapter 1 20

4.1 Social roles suspended in asymmetrical power dichotomies 24

4.2 Social relationships suspended in market relations 27

4.3 The impenetrable social structure of tourism in Bocas town 29

4.4 Commodifying traditions of chocolate production for financial survival 30

4.5 Tourism – the lifeline of the indigenous capitalist 32

4.6 Conclusion: Preserving traditions in market relations 34

5. Chapter 2 37

5.1 Opening Tribal Gathering 40

5.2 The sovereign flame and the birthplace of culture 44

5.3 Ashes of the flame - the daily dirtying of integrity 46

5.4 Governed by outsiders 47

5.5 Awe and discomfort in the spectacle of tribal culture 50

5.6 Performing indigeneity on request 51

5.7 The dilemma of putting a price on the sacred 55

5.8 Losing the sacred in capitalist dynamics 58

5.9 Conclusion: Smothering the flame of interwordly convergence 60

6. Conclusion 62

7. Final text for the organisation 70

8. Bibliography 71

9. Appendices 73

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all the people that have shared their perspectives with me during my ethnographic research in Panama. Special thanks to Fernando and his family for hosting me

during my stay in La Soledad village, Valle del Risco in Bocas del Toro. Gratitude is conveyed to Eduardo who housed me and lent me his sofa all for free during my stay in Bocas Town. For granting me an internship in their organisation and allowing me to immerse

myself as an insider in their organisation, to be able to contribute with the tribal coordination of Tribal Gathering, I express thanks to Geoparadise and its’ staff and volunteers that I had

the pleasure of working together with during the festival. I express eternal gratitude to my tribal brothers and sisters that shared their stories with me around the sacred fire at Tribal Gathering, and the attendees that I had the pleasure of sharing many wonderful experiences

with at the gathering. Considerable gratitude is advanced to my editor for applying supplementary wisdom and knowledge beneficial to the completion of this paper. Finally I

would like to thank my tutors at the University of Amsterdam who have made this paper possible. Without their support, the research would not be possible. Thank you Dr. Oskar Verkaaik for great supervision during my project. Thanks to Dr Milena Veenis, Dr Yatun Sastramidjaja, Dr Laurens Bakker and Dr Marieke Brand for their excellent teaching and

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Abstract

Nothing in this world is permanent and change is the only constant. In a continuous state of transformation and adaptation lies our humanity's greatest legacy, the ethnosphere. It is the web of life that we have created - the makeup of the web of life - of our social world that has

been shaped by the choices generations past. The cultures within are continuously in a state of survival - via language, vital information is carried through generations in the form of tradition. Language is an expression of a culture and perhaps the full expression of who we

are. Within two generations, half the world’s languages will be gone. The ethnosphere is being eroded by capitalism. In the wake of capitalism and the secularised world of modernity,

the traditional world is losing its’ struggle for survival. In the view of capitalism, tribal cultures have already been exterminated - their voice is silenced. For the civilized man, the

tribal savage is a failed attempt at being modern. In the view of tribal man, the survival of their traditions is what keeps them from being consumed by greed and is the only way for nature to survive alongside the evolution of man. Ancient traditions hold the key to the wisdom of the old ways. For their traditional lifestyle to survive in a world dominated by capitalism, transformation must occur. Giving up parts of a culture is not what threatens its’

survival. Culture is constantly advancing and adapting to its’ environment. What threatens culture is power. It is the outsider’s domination and exploitation of the insider’s culture that will be its’ doom. In the confluence of the traditional and commercial world in the process of

globalization, for a culture to survive it must adapt by its’ own agency. In a process of convergence, these two worlds undergo a transition - a rite of passage. The success of the rite will be determined by the survival of their cultural symbols, traditions and knowledge in their adaptation into the new environment. The result will tell us whether the ancient wisdom and sacred elements of natural reverence can merge with the secularised world of modernity, and if a monetary currency can coexist with sacred traditions. Change is not the threat - culture is

a constant change. The threat is the capitalist grasp of power and control of its’ transformation. What will survive in the transition is the future of our legacy.

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1. Introduction

The ancient and modern are two tectonic plates slowly being pushed together through the physical destruction of viable ecosystems as well as spiritual and humanitarian

movements. Where they arrive at their confluence, the form of industrial society native to the west known as capitalism flashes its’ gnashing grin. In a societal structure whose entry requirement is to assign monetary value to products and services, bartering tribes who extract only what they need to survive are deprived of agency and power once within its’ confines. Capitalism insists on the survival not of the fittest, nor the most aware or empathetic, but of the richest. As its’ dominion extends and ideologies begin to cross-pollinate, three options exist; adapt, resist, or compromise.

In light of modernity, the industrialization and secularization of the western world, I suggest the generalized categorization of our sociocultural worlds into two; the traditional (sacred) and the commercial (profane).

The traditional world houses the archaic indigenous societies that embody archetypes of ancestral wisdom passed down through traditions practiced for millennia. This is the connection to the old world, where the wisdom of the ancient and lost civilizations survives; the one predating all elements of contemporary western society (Davis 2009). It can be associated with the fourth world which has been defined as housing the ‘aboriginal peoples who have special, non-technical, non-modern exploitative relations to the land in which they live and are disenfranchised by the states within which they live’ (Seton 1999; see also Griggs 1992, as cited in Renée 2005: 357). The fourth world is ruled, first and foremost, by a deep reverence for nature and an awareness of the interconnectedness of all things living. As such, the material takes the backseat to the spiritual, and the word economy still exists in its’ etymological form; in kinship relations and the management of a household1 - a household

that knows no delineations of ownership. When existing in the mainstream society dominated by a global capitalist economy, the traditional lifeworld is challenged with resisting being consumed into commercialisation; lost in translation, the sacred risks emerging as profane through a process of secularisation.

The foil to the fourth world is the first: the commercial. Here, we bow to materialism in every sense and value individual prowess. We exist as the process of modernity, a model of social development and change that, while implying urbanization, modernisation and

1 Economy | Origin and meaning of economy by Online Etymology Dictionary. 2018. Retrieved from: https://www.etymonline.com/word/economy

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capitalism, replaces traditional values with values of individualism, greater privatization, secularisation and economic growth. The term ‘modern’ is also used in relation to modernity - it implies ‘the pattern of industrial society found in western Europe and the United States’

(Van Gennep 2013: 1). Civilized is the descriptor of the human at home in this ideology. Gathered at various settings in Panama, the link of continents and connection of sociocultural worlds, my research exists at the intersection of the traditional and commercial world and investigates what happens when they meet in order to identify how indigenous ways of life can coexist with those of modernity. I do this by investigating social dynamics between groups in various problematic situations in which, as a means for survival,

indigenous traditional ways of life must adapt to the capitalist consumer market imposed by increasing globalization. From the emic perspective of the indigenous, I examine how they negotiate their differences with the outsiders and how they respond to the threats and demands of the outside world that is breaching their ecological and sociocultural barriers.

2. Theoretical Framework

In the following sections of my framework, I discuss from the perspective of Tania Li

(2010), Arjun Appadurai (2001), Beth Conklin and Laura Graham (1995), and Van Gennep

(2013) concepts and contemporary anthropological debates relating to the construction of ‘indigeneity’ and the convergence of the indigenous and commercial in local-global interactions. The theory at hand is intended to assist with the understanding of my

investigation of how the traditional world can coexist with the commercial world of global capitalism.

From Li’s work I outline her concept of the ‘communal fix’ to show how the

categorization of rural and native populations in accordance with their ability to engage in the agrarian world market has shaped the notion of indigeneity and laid the foundations for understanding the intricacies of the indigenous identity. Li holds that policies fixing people of indigenous identity to a specific piece of land by government and colonial officials were enacted to control the population in a way that would benefit economic exploitation of territory. This has resulted in the paradoxical situation of simultaneous protection and incarceration of the people placed under the indigenous identity category. As applied sociocultural identities set the conditions for a group’s freedom to engage in the capitalist world, holding an indigenous identity makes it difficult to perform in the commercial market.

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Furthermore, I discuss Appadurai’s (2001) concept of ‘deep democracy’, which holds that new forms of urban governmentality build international political networks from deep local networks in an attempt to converge local and global processes. This is, however, often in a context in which the local is lured in by the global, making him vulnerable to the effects of exposure to globalization. This discussion is further developed by adding Cohen and Graham’s (1995) work in Brazil with an emphasis on their concept ‘the middle ground’. This addition brings ‘deep democracy’ and ‘the middle ground’ together as almost synonymous concepts revolving around the phenomenon of new networks created between local and global actors. These theories of converging the local with the global become particularly interesting when studied in relation to how indigenous symbolism is used as a marketing tool; for example when local agendas are made global by applying them in media-politics.

Finally, I bring in Van Gennep's (2013) concept of rites of passage and apply its’ stages of transition to the process of adaptation of one society or group to another. This theoretical application is relevant to conceptualise how the convergence of the traditional and the commercial can be successful as a rite that moves cultural evolution along and shapes the future of our ethnosphere.

In the end, I summarize how these theoretical issues, concepts and debates relate to my own project studying the convergence of the commercial and the traditional world in two zones of contact in Panama.

2.1 The imagined indigeneity

In her concept the ‘communal fix’, Li (2010) outlines the colonial origin credited with constructing the notion of ‘indigenousness’. It addresses the capitalist divide drawn between communal tribal and individual peasant identities which served to categorize people based on the judgement of their ability to contribute to the economy. Tribal people were often deemed as ‘primitive’, which in other words meant that they were unfit for capitalism. The divide stipulated that those fit for capitalism were characterized as the ‘peasants’ and were taxed for holding their land, while the culturally distinct tribes unfit for capitalism were protected by the colonial agenda of territorial control under the guise of the respect for their collective ownership and historical ties to the land. Thus the indigenous identification was born. Individuals were easier to control and could be dominated by the capitalist legislations of land ownership under this classification.

Initially, the communal fix would only be granted to culturally distinct tribal groups that held collective ties to the land. As a result, small-scale farmers were not so successful in

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preserving their claim on land. They could only apply for special protection from the colonial officials if they conformed to an inalienable and collective landholding model and therefore, when farmers experienced threats to their land from authorities, they tended to claim cultural difference and feign traditional lifestyles that would be threatened in the case of

dispossession. Indigeneity thus ‘worked as a vehicle to counter dispossession’ (Li 2010: 399), and was and still is used by farmers as a strategy to obtain protective rights on their lands. This process of imagined indigenousness enacted by farmers for land-protection thus assisted in the political formation of the term and caused uncertainties when defining the separating factors of indigenous tribes from the ‘peasants’. Naturally, it was almost impossible to determine how people had acquired their status of indigenousness as an inability to compete in capitalist models could be masked as historical and cultural

attachment to the land. Though much has changed since then, colonial notions that allow for the exploitation of resources still linger in the contemporary political discussions of

indigenous rights.

Anthropologists have played a prominent role in the debates of indigeneity, especially when it concerns ‘the character and capacities of rural populations’ that according to Li

(2010) are ‘the subject of anthropology’s special expertise’ (399). Concepts of community, indigeneity, race or cultural differences have been either loosened or empowered by

anthropologists, depending on the agenda they seek to support. Li suggests that one of the most constructive interventions that anthropologists can make today is the ‘continuous exposure of the diverse and changing forms of dispossession’ (Li 2010: 399).

Li’s arguments showcase the lingering colonial notions of indigeneity in which the communal fix still works to divide people based on their ability to engage in the capitalist market.

This generalizes a greatly culturally diverse population under one reductive umbrella term, which can work to both protect and incarcerate people to a piece of land. Its’ dual nature has paradoxical effects for the people defined by it, and their perspective has gone virtually unrecognized because it is a term given to them by the colonizers. There is a lack of the emic perspective of the indigenous person in the debates of the indigenous rights and threats of dispossession. Furthermore, to inform the theoretical discussion of indigenous rights in local-global interactions, I present the work by Appadurai on new forms of governance in local settings.

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2.2 Mobilizing local and global convergence in new forms of governance

Appadurai (2001) argues that in the era of globalization, democracy is rigged with paradoxes and contradictions as it is made to function within the boundaries of the nation-state. He argues that democratic values are only valuable when expanded universally and globally applicable; thus the alleged institutions of democracy are caught up in and blinded by the tensions between national and global governance. This becomes visible in the era of globalization as ‘universal democratic principles’ are not recognized by nation-states. Appadurai argues that the issues that arise from this form the basis for new types of governmentality, from which he outlines his concept ‘deep democracy’. In terms of its’ semantics, deep democracy suggests ‘roots, anchors, intimacy, proximity and locality’

(Appadurai 2001: 42). It is a strategy attempted to institute what Appadurai calls ‘democracy without borders’. NGO, activist and grass root movements are central to its’ formation as they make efforts to build international networks and coalitions in deep local contexts. They attempt to penetrate where nation-state governmentality has not reached and are

fundamentally concerned with poverty reduction, increasing social inclusion and citizenship for those that are othered in society. Consequently, their aim is to increase the capability of deprived communities to ‘perform more powerfully as instruments of deep democracy in the local context’ (2001: 43); to empower them as active agents.

The defining element of this strategy is that it incorporates the expert knowledge of the members of the community themselves in the governing and developing process; they, and not the nation state, are entrusted with the identification of their personal and communal needs. This ‘bottom-up strategy is supposed to enable the locals to connect, network and carry themselves into the inclusion of a wider public sphere where citizenship can occur through cooperative mobilizing practices. Thus the local processes extend beyond their endemic limit and into a global setting. As a result, a new system of transnational networks is created in locally focused urban governance which Appadurai refers to as ‘globalization from below’ (2001: 38).

These networks are linked by a flow of communication he calls ‘horizontal

exchanges’; exchanges of knowledge, wisdom and ideas relating to specific problems shared from one community to another in the attempt to collectively resolve local community issues from a deeper pool of experience. There are, however, significant difficulties in this process as well. Appadurai goes on to suggest that by organizing their local projects transnationally, they must inevitably relinquish control of projects and risk their integrity as they enter the global process of internationalization and become available to re-interpretation. This

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difficulty has tendencies to show its’ face in relation to the rights and representations of indigenous cultures. As the indigenous are mobilized to engage their cultural identity

internationally, symbolism and traditions can be subjected to change. This is mainly because wiggle room emerges in the process of globalizing the local. Outsider agents can pick and choose which elements of a culture should be included in a new context, but also which should be ignored, cast away or transformed; causing a new chimera to emerge. To build on Appadurai’s theory and inform the difficulty of local-global convergence emerging in processes of ‘deep democracy’, I move over to a discussion of studies by Conklin and Graham (1995) in Brazil.

2.3 The double-edged sword of indigenous symbolism in media-politics

Conklin and Graham (1995) use Richard White’s concept of ‘the middle ground’

(695) to describe the new system of meaning, communication and exchange established in alliances between indigenous and non-indigenous actors converging on behalf of mutual goals. In this section I argue that these alliances work as a double edged sword for the local groups as there are instabilities in this system originating from incongruence between ‘the realities of Amazonian Indian societies and the ideas about Indians’ (1995: 696). I outline this argument through a discussion of Conklin and Graham’s work in Brazil that shows how these alliances employed indigenous symbolism as a marketing tool for their eco-politics; a process that had bilateral effects for the natives as it reinforced neo-colonial imaginary notions of the native (indigenous) populations such as ‘the noble savage’.

The theme of the noble savage has come to be identified as natives embodying the pinnacle of idealistic western environmentalist principles. During the struggles against the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest in the 1980s in Brazil, indigenous knowledge (IK) became revered in western science and media where the native became a symbol for the preservation of the rainforest. The interests of the natives gained greater international attention and support, but were simultaneously used as a tool for the environmentalist’s eco-political agendas. During these struggles, some indigenous leaders became masters at ‘translating their cultural values into terms that outsiders could comprehend’ to bring

international attention to their cause (Conklin and Graham 1995: 700). They utilized specific cultural elements such as body decorations and dances in ritual performance to represent themselves in the media politics. Then they capitalized on the international media attention they received as a result of this and their cultural distinction became a tool for their political goals. In using indigenous symbols to gain media attention, I argue that they themselves

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further enforced misinterpretations and imaginations of their cultural identity such as the notion of the noble savage.

This noble savage is often presented in the media as the ‘natural partner’ and teacher in the process of creating a global eco-community. The image of the indigenous person becomes imaginary, distorted of its’ emic reality and idealized to serve a non-indigenous environmentalist activist agenda of global ecological healing; though they may oftentimes be in line, the motivation is fundamentally different. On other occasions these agendas have tended to collide with the natives’ rights to self-determination. Firstly, the symbolic

representations of the native Indians contradict ‘the realities of many native people´s’ lives

(Conklin and Graham 1995: 703). Secondly, as the ideal of the ‘ecologically noble savage’ becomes the public face of an “authentic” native, those that do not fit this image can be interpreted by outsiders as corrupt and “inauthentic” indigenous people. Outsiders’ expectations of indigeneity are thus constructed around a neo-colonial imagined symbolic representation of it.

Consequently, the double-edged sword unsheathes for indigenous groups engaging on the global political stage and managing international alliances as part of ‘the middle ground’ and ‘deep democracy’. For my own research, understanding how indigenous symbolism and knowledge is internationalized and used as a marketing tool for political and economic agendas is important for informing how ‘indigeneity’ is conveniently constructed and has influenced the extent to which identity itself must adapt in a capitalist context. In the forging of intergroup alliances, there is a transition from one state or role to another for each group. This is a process of transformation in which parts are sacrificed to make room for the new. In the following paragraph I argue that the culture creation that results from alliance building is a rite of passage

2.4 The transition from one stage to another

Van Gennep conceptualises ‘rites of passages’ as the transition of an individual from one stage to another. Examples of this are when man graduates into a new social group; when he transitions from boy to man or when a student becomes a teacher. Van Gennep classifies rites of passage into three stages; separation (alienation from ordinary society/community), liminality (being betwixt and between one status and another), and incorporation

(integration). The final phase in which in the individual is reincorporated into the (new) community with a new status is reminiscent of a phoenix reborn from his ashes. An integral

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aspect of the rite of passage that defines its’ function is the movement between the sacred and the profane.

Van Gennep (2013) describes sacredness as an attribute that ‘is not absolute; it is brought into play by the nature of particular situations. A man at home, in his tribe, lives in the secular realm; he moves into the realm of the sacred when he goes on a journey and finds himself a foreigner near a camp of strangers’ (12). As such, the sacred and profane are located in transitional domains; the sacred is mobile and defined by the ritual rules related to a particular situation in space and time – ‘such as territorial domains and moments or phases’

(Streib 2007: 138). Van Gennep holds that ‘whoever passes through the various positions of a lifetime one day sees the sacred where before he has seen the profane, or vice versa‘ (Van Gennep 2013: 13). Thus, the man who once deemed his mundane world at home as secular may one day come to recognize it as sacred. As such, sacredness is variable and can switch from profane to sacred and vice versa depending on its’ context and the individual’s perspective.

Sacredness is activated during the transition from one role, state or social position to another. In other words, a ceremonial rite of passage is a consent to evolve, and to allow this transition is inherently sacred. The sacred is specifically evident in the culture of what Van Gennep refers to as ‘semi civilized people’ (2013: 2) otherwise known as indigenous and non-indigenous people of tribal societies. He argues that no act of the semi-civilized man is ‘entirely free of the sacred’ (2013: 2) and that all of their progressions from one group to the next are enveloped in sacred ceremonies. ‘In such societies every change in a person's life involves actions and reactions between the sacred and profane- to be regulated and guarded so that society as a whole will suffer no discomfort or injury’ (2013: 2). For tribal societies, nature is revered as sacred, wherefore all rites of passages acknowledging a union with nature hold sacred significance. As such, the sacred enters every part of a man’s life because the evolution of man in all his forms is intrinsically bound to nature.

Émile Durkheim first proposed the sacred and profane dichotomy as a central characteristic of religion. In his theory, the sacred represented the interests of the group and was embodied in sacred group symbols also referred to as totems. The profane, on the other hand, was associated with the mundane and what concerns the individual. According to Bodley, this individuality was first identified through ‘social Darwinism’, a form of

‘biological determinism’. Herein ‘competitive natural selection’ and ‘survival of the fittest theories of biological evolution’ were applied ‘to entire cultures’ (2017: 113). Social Darwinism considered the entire cultures existing outside of Europe being destroyed by

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colonialism as ‘unfit’ and viewed ‘small-scale cultures’ as living fossils representing the earlier stages of evolutionary development’ (113). They were faced with two choices:

conform to civilized society or vanish. This dichotomy is applicable to conceptually separate the traditional tribal world from the secular individual and commercial world based on their opposing relationships to the sacred and profane.

In relation to my own research into the convergence of the traditional and the

commercial world, I theorize the confluence itself as a rite of passage. As postulated from the discussion above, the tribal (indigenous) societies identify as those that hold their relationship to nature as sacred. The commercial world is a representative of individuality and the profane in which man has been secularised and removed from his sacred relationship to nature. Their attempt at convergence functions as a rite of passage between the two worlds during which both must move between the sacred and profane in order to transition completely.

2.5 Conclusion

I have discussed in relation to Li’s, Appadurai’s, Conklin and Graham’s, and Van Gennep’s arguments that there are a series of traps for the indigenous in the process of local-global interactions. Indigenous identity can mean the protection of land rights from scheming international agrarian capitalists. On the other hand, generalising populations under the term indigenous can have incarcerating effects for the indigenous that wish to engage in capitalist processes; the polar opposite to protecting and emancipating. If the projects are organised internationally, the platform for awareness is accompanied by threats to the locality and cultural integrity of the communities themselves. Seen for example through Conklin and Graham’s example in which indigenous symbolism was used in media-politics by locals to push their agenda globally, even agency did not prevent the indigenous from being forced to abide by demands from the international media market in order to be heard. Their media activism contributed to the noble savage fanfic, embellishing instead of exposing the delusions. Finally, Van Gennep argues that rites of passages encompass the process of convergence between the local-global and the indigenous with the commercial world. I postulate that the transition between the sacred and the profane as well as the convergence and attempt at coexistence between the commercial and the traditional world are rites of passage in themselves. There is a process of cultural transformation activated at their meeting point, and the cross-cultural transition between the local-global and the traditional to the commercial world (and vice versa) involves the sacrifice and alienation of one state or group so that it can engage in a liminal state and re-incorporate itself into the new. For the

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convergence to be successful and the two worlds to coexist in harmonious ways, all stages of the rites of passage must be successful.

In my own research, discovering the emic perspective of the local indigenous groups will be pivotal to reveal their position in relation to their interactions with the global actors as well as their effect. The anthropological issues and debates I have presented in this

framework serve as a structural guide throughout the paper to inform how the indigenous can exist within contexts of various commercial settings of capitalist modernity.

3. Research question and methodology

The research employed a qualitative ethnographic investigation method conducted in two different settings in Panama with a specific focus on the indigenous perspective in their confluence with international forces. Ethnography is a research and reporting strategy used in a range of subjects in sociology and anthropology. It is a methodological strategy practiced to learn about human cultures and societies that are considered outside ourselves by engaging directly with their social setting to capture its’ endemic meaning first-hand. The nature of the immersiveness of the study means the researcher cannot avoid being part of what they are examining, and as such, introspective reflexivity is required to ensure objectivity where possible.

Panama is chosen as a research setting as it houses a high amount of indigenous people of which many are in continuous contact with outsiders. Information retrieved from a UN rapport on the status of indigenous people in Panama displays that Panama inhabits 3,504,483 people, of which indigenous peoples make up 12.3%. Furthermore, 196,059 of those indigenous persons live in comarcas, while 221,500 inhabit other areas (Anaya 2010). My research settings involve participants of cultural, ethnic and social diversity and

distinctiveness. Actors represent complex relations arising from cross-dichotomic lifeworlds of local and global differences. These oppositions act as a foil to each other unless they can be negotiated in the interactions between the various groups. Built on a theory by Askins and Pain (2011) and applied to my own study, I incorporated ‘contact zones’ theoretically and methodologically in my research.

Askins and Pain (2011) argue that, as implied, contact zones are settings of contact between usually separate groups often studied in relation to the wider political and social context. They are essential when attempting to understand experiences and outcomes of

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cross-cultural encounters. Because contact zones involve participants from various social and cultural backgrounds, they carry the potential for complex relations of power-inequities and inter-ethnic tensions and can be described as a set of ‘messy’ interactions. Finding focus in such ‘mess’ can be challenging for the researcher.

According to Askins and Pain (2011), important tools to bring order to the messiness are material objects and specifically delineated physical spaces. By focusing on areas and objects that draw attention to cultural convergences, order is brought to the chaos that occurs in these cultural encounters.

The first contact zone of my research was situated in various locations in the Bocas del Toro province of Panama. In the seven weeks spent in Bocas del Toro (see Fig. 1) I conducted four open interviews, five semi-structured interviews and multiple conversation and small-talks with local and visiting people of the province. On the mainland I often travelled between communities to understand the perspective of the locals. Otherwise the research was based mainly in Isla Colón and its’ neighbouring islands (see Fig. 2). During my fieldwork in Valle Del Risco, home to many of the Ngäbe communities in the province, I lived in the village ‘La Soledad’ where I was hosted by a local man by the name Fernando. He lived with his wife Dory and their three sons in a small wooden house by the road. I was provided with a room of my own for the two weeks I stayed with them. By visiting multiple communities and speaking with numerous individuals in the area, I gained direct insight into the forms of dispossession and displacement enforced upon the locals.

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Fig 1: Panama. Retrieved from: Google Earth (modified by the author) - Aug 2018

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The second phase of my research was situated on the Caribbean beach Playa Chiquita in the Colón province, Panama, at the Tribal Gathering festival (See Fig. 3 and 4). As part of a research internship I was hired by the NGO Geoparadise to help them understand how their annual gathering impacts and is experienced by the tribal peoples. As such, I was tasked with the illumination of the tribal perspective and experience of the gathering. Data was gathered through a participant-as-observer research position in the liminal space of the festival environment. It implied listening, watching individual’s behaviour, observing and analysing the workspace and work-related events. I spent four weeks in the field to gain data during which approximately three-hundred hours were logged in the research environment. In addition to observations and reflections of personal experiences in the field, I based most of my ethnographic data on interviews and conversations with various members of different tribal groups at the festival site. Twelve interviews were conducted and around six recorded conversations. As a method to bring order to the messiness of the setting, I focused on specific physical spaces popular as cross-cultural meeting points. One of these was the Geohaven, the dome that served as a site for presentations, discussions and ceremonies. To gain a less filtered insight on the tribal emic perspective outside the context of official presentation, I spent most of my time in the Tribal Village where many evenings were situated around the sacred fire; a space of storytelling and genuine intergroup connections.

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Fig 4: Playa Chiquita, Colon, Panama. Retrieved from: Google Maps (modified by the author) - Dec 2017

3.1 Reflecting on the research process

During my research, I generally felt that my work contributed to something greater than myself; that it was of benefit to the various communities represented and their

development as well as that of the highly influential festival. I made many connections with colleagues in the organisation that have the potential to create a lasting impact beyond the words of these pages.

Once in the research environment I often felt role duality as I had two responsibilities as an anthropologist; one in the role of insider, and another as the outsider. The two roles would sometimes blend into each other and shift in accordance to the situation. As I was working closely with the other volunteers, potential implicit insider bias could have occurred and compromised researcher objectivity (Marcus 1995). That being said, being empathetic and even momentarily swept away by the intensity of others’ experiences only informed my research with a deeper understanding once I was able to step back and synthesize. I remained conscious of my role as outsider at all times and merged into the participant role only when dealing with insider responsibilities in order to sustain my objective integrity as a researcher.

Epistemology, the theoretical framework of this attempted balance, is always of concern in qualitative research as one must account for one's own version of reality as a subjective perspective of it and not an absolute objective reality. In my own reflections of the experiences in the placement, I can only articulate a reasoned account (discursive

consciousness) of events and not the actual knowledge in action (practical consciousness)

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give a completely accurate recreation of the past as my memory is impaired by the lack of complete conscious awareness to all intents and impulses present. I believe, as Goffman’s stage analogy suggests (Newman and O’Brien 2008), that our social identity is fluid; we play a role that fits into the social context. As such I can only attempt to elucidate the various roles I assumed in diverse group dynamics through a mental reconstruction aided by the extensive notes I had taken to capture the experience.

Done sensitively and with constant reflexivity, I can capture the essence of the situations with enough accuracy to summarize their main features and develop arguments with concepts that relate to the experience. As a qualitative researcher, my ability is to offer a reflexive interpretation that is contextualized by specific knowledge of the social world and phenomenon under investigation.

3.2 Research question:

Through the lens of the indigenous agent within two different context zones of local-global convergence in Panama, this research project is an investigation aimed at informing the following question: How can the traditional (ancient) world coexist with the commercial world of global capitalism (modernity)?

Phase 1 - Bocas del Toro province, Panama

1) In the confluence of local indigenous people and international tourism: How can indigenous traditional ways of life exist within the commercial context of the international ecotourism industry?

Setting 2 - Tribal Gathering, Santa Isabel District, Colón Province, Panama

2) In the confluence of the traditional sacred and the commercial profane in a global interwordly celebratory gathering: How do the western festival attendees, the international NGO Geoparadise and tribal people from around the world either converge in harmony or collide in conflict?

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Chapter 1:

The impenetrable structure of staged authenticity and the double edged

sword of community based tourism

Fig 5: Confluence of the commercial and tradition - commodification of kakao culture in Bocas town - Photo captured by the researcher - Jan 2018.

In the Bocas Del Toro (commonly referred to as Bocas) province of Panama, mining projects and the construction of hydroelectric dams are the primary reason for the

dispossession of land and displacement of the indigenous Ngäbe population. In 2002, the construction of a hydroelectric dam on the lake that runs down from the Changuinola river in Valle Del Risco began. The dam was part of a project by The AES Corporation - an

American energy company who hired the Swedish construction company SKANSKA to construct it. The project demanded much transport activity in and out of Valle Del Risco,the home of the Ngäbe, and consequently roads were built to facilitate for the heavy traffic. This

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connected the Ngäbe communities to the nearby cities Almirante and Changuinola and resulted in an increased influence from the outside cultures.

The locals simply refer to the construction of the hydroelectric dam on the lake as ‘the project’, and it marked the beginning of a great transformation of their lifestyle and

livelihood. The added mass of the dam to the lake caused a rise in the sea-level and as a result, the changes in biodiversity transformed the ecological environment and caused imbalance. Mosquitos swarmed the area and as a result of the change in their habitat, the animals migrated uphill away from the lake. Most of those animals were then hunted down and killed by foreign hunters. The fish have gone extinct and the locals no longer have access to their food resources from the lake; subsistence farming is now essentially impossible. The project has also affected the social and cultural environment significantly. The risen seawater also caused diaspora in the community. In the time before the project, the locals lived in larger cohesive communities encircling the lake, but are now spread out into smaller villages long distances apart. What before was reachable by foot is today only accessible by boat. Those that live on the far side of the lake away from the roads have limited transport

opportunities, leaving many of them confined to their immediate environment as commuting to the city is a complicated task. Additionally, access to plants for natural medicine has now become difficult for many of the locals and they have instead adjusted to procuring western medicine from the doctor. This move signifies a significant threat to the survival of their traditional knowledge of natural medicines.

The project resulted in many inhabitants being dispossessed from their land, but the Ngäbe did not leave completely empty handed. Fernando, my host and gatekeeper to the Ngäbe community, tells me that the locals have become more aware of their indigenous rights over the years, and that it is not so easy for the government to exploit them without recognizing their rights. At the point of being expelled from their territory the people were given two choices of compensation. They would be either be recompensed financially for the value of their homes or with the construction of a new home at their new allocated area; some even got specially tailored agreements to receive both options. Other locals relocated

themselves to an urban environment where some found ways to make ends meet through engagement in the same tourism industry that threatens the Ngäbe population living in the Bocas del Toro archipelago.

Due to the increased touristic activity in Bocas since the 1990s (Bourque 2016), the Ngäbe of the Bocas Archipelago have suffered in multiple ways. Increased fishing from tourists has depleted the fish population. Activities from natural marine parks take

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precedence over the Ngäbe livelihood and threaten indigenous sociocultural traditions. To stimulate tourism development, land has been turned into commodity and many Ngäbe communities have been dispossessed from their land because of this. Displaced Ngäbe communities must find new homes but are unable to cultivate the land of their new tenure. A lack of natural resources places them in a deprived position of low socioeconomic status and market possibilities. Though the development of tourism has been the greatest cause of their sociocultural and socioeconomic suffering, paradoxically, tourism may also be their only immediate salvation.

Bourque asked the question of how Bocas can achieve socio-environmental justice and suggests that ‘a sustainable, community-based ecotourism alternative should be

considered.’ (2016: 1). She argues that community based tourism (CBT) is required to lessen the burden on the Ngäbe residents of Bocas and suggests that if CBT grows on a large scale, it can have a ‘significant positive impact on the local environment and community’ (ibid 2016: 24). CBT is essentially an alternative ecologically sustainable tourism strategy that allows the locals to engage more actively with the industry themselves. Many Ngäbe now find solvency in the tourism industry by taking CBT into their own hands. This engagement brings monetary income directly to the community and thus tourism becomes a

developmental tool. Some inspired individuals of the Ngäbe communities have found creative ways to utilize traditional knowledge and practices as entrepreneurial instruments towards financial and cultural survival.

In their studies of economic development through tourism in Vanuatu, Gnecchi-Ruscone and Paini (2017) used the term ‘kastom’ (custom in Pidgin) to describe an idealised indigenous communal way as a force of development. Applying it to my own discussion of the commercial relations between the tourist and the indigenous, tensions can arise when customs are adapted to commercial agendas. The reason for this is that when the locals incorporate traditional ways for financial purposes, they are at risk of abandoning their customs for money. What happens is that the culture becomes a tool to bring foreign interest, not because it is wanted, but because it is necessary to survive. The process of

commodification of culture fostered by market forces responding to the tourist’s desire to experience indigenous traditions might conflict with ‘customary prescriptions about taking care of, and sharing with, foreign visitors’ (idis 2017: 235). As identified through the mass tourism in Vanuatu (idis 2017), tradition is intentionally marketed to attract the tourist seeking cultural experiences. With agency to shape their cultural performances, the inhabitants themselves can choose how and whether to shape the tangible aspects of their

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culture according to the tourist demands and expectations. This allows them to incorporate exotic aspects of their culture into their tour performances while keeping others veiled and protected in the backstage. The issue of commercialising tradition is that in the process, commercialisation itself risks becoming customary. This issue also arises in my studies in Bocas and is discussed in order to inform how the commercial influences the traditional lifestyle and cultural development of the Ngäbe.

Furthermore, as cultural traditions become a performance for the wealthy tourist, the locals engage in an act of staged authenticity; a concept introduced by MacCannell (1973)

which outlines a theory of false consciousness and its’ relationship to the social structure of tourist establishments. Outlined in Erving Goffman’s front versus back distinction, it has been proposed that tourist settings are arranged to produce the impression that the back region has been entered even when this is not the case. Goffman holds that the front and back regions of social establishment form the bridge between structure and consciousness; he describes staged authenticity as an act of structuring beliefs within a social space. The front is the meeting place of hosts, guests, customers and service persons, and the back is the place where members of the home team retire between performances to relax and prepare. In Sylvain Renée’s (2005) studies of the internationalized essentialization of the identity of the San in the Kalahari, he argues that indigenous people are increasingly exposed to liberalizing trade markets and a booming tourism industry. These forces lead many indigenous to present generalized ideas of their cultural identity in order to be heard, or, in tourist relations, to attract tourists with specific ideas of indigeneity to their communities. As such, how do we know what is authentic? And who are the ones that can promote the authentic image of the native when even they themselves are forced to transform their identity to fit the demand of global culture? In tourist settings when the tourist seeks to reach the backstage of a culture in search of authentic social experiences, authenticity becomes mystified by the space

intentionally arranged by the tour entrepreneurs ‘to produce the impression that a back region has been entered even when this is not the case’ (MacCannell 1973: 589). This performance of bringing the idea of the back stage into the front stage is what MacCannell terms ‘staged authenticity’.

In this chapter, the ethnographic data from my research in Bocas del Toro is used to argue how the act of performing cultural traditions in tourist settings can have a dual effect on the development of the sociocultural environment of the Ngäbe population. The reader is taken through my ethnographic journey around Bocas del Toro, where in Bocas town on Isla Colón, a tourism economy dominates social relations. The Ngäbe tour operator’s everyday

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lives, filled with interactions with visitors, are argued to be an act of performance as social interactions are only beneficial if lucrative; and so villagers commodify their own cultural traditions and indigenous identity for a price. In the meantime, the Ngäbe are so immersed in the work of selling ecological tours around the islands in the Bocas Archipelago and

promoting tourism to the Ngabe communities that reaching beyond their front stage performance is near impossible.

On the mainland I take you to my visits to two chocolate factories in the Valle del Risco area; Örebä in the Rio Oeste community, and Kwäribo in the Quebrada community. Bringing ecological tourism to their doorstep on their own terms, these communities

represent how the Ngäbe are engaged in self-organised CBT to deal with the challenges they face from tourism and construction projects. In addition to the ecological tourism, the

chocolate factories work as an ethno-touristic draw as the distinctive traditional chocolate making method is attractive to visitors seeking genuine experiences with indigenous culture. As a process of deep democracy (Appadurai 2001), there is the tendency to lose their local significance when the global influences takes charge. In the indigenous integration of their local projects within the global schemes, they risk losing control of their enterprises as they become open to reinterpretation in the convergence with global actors. As they must also potentially abide by the demands of the tourism industry in their marketing agenda in order to attract customers, this often manifests in transforming their local symbolism as an inevitable part of their strategy. In their adaptation to the commercial environment, they must juggle between the financial and traditional values and the real and manufactured versions of their culture. As a process of culture creation, their ability to do so without exploitation will determine how their traditions can survive in a commercial context and thus, whether the rite of passage (Van Gennep 2013) is successful.

4.1 Social roles suspended in asymmetrical power dichotomies

As I look at hats in a shop one day in Bocas town, Isla Colòn, I am approached by a young man. He bears a physical resemblance to the Ngäbe, reminding me of the locals I had been living with in La Soledad for the past two weeks, but his behaviour is somewhat

eccentric. He asks me if I would like to buy the hat. I tell him I am not interested but that I would rather like to find a place to stay for the night. He says he can take me to a good hostel and asks me whether I would be interested in signing up for his tour. I say “Perhaps, but I am not here to tour, I am here for research”. As we walk towards the hostel he spoke of, I tell him of my work. He informs me that he is also Ngäbe and that my research sounds

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interesting. As we come to the hostel, I book in for the night and ask him whether we could have a recorded conversation as I am interested to know more about him. He hastily agrees. His eagerness gives me the feeling that he is not only interested in my research, but also my money.

The young Ngäbe gentleman I encountered as outlined in the ethnographic description above is named Marco. He used to live in Valle Del Risco, but because of the displacement caused by the hydroelectric dam on their lake, life had become difficult there for him and his family. They moved to Bocas shortly after the project began and Marco now makes his living by working with different tourist related tasks. It became clear through the interview that Marco didn’t have a stable job himself, ‘todo un poco’ (a little bit of everything), he said when I asked him what he does for a living. It was evident that he was active in the tourism industry as he was promoting the fetishized idea of the island as paradise2 and the notion of the authenticity of the Ngäbe cultures in the area. Eventually I took the bait when he offered me a spot on a small eco-tour around the waters of the archipelago. Even though my

conversation with him was concerned with learning about his personal history, my role in relation to him as a wealthy tourist was inescapable. My own experience was a reflection of Renée’s argument as stated in the study of globalization and the idea of culture in the

Kalahari ‘As the case of the Omaheke San demonstrates, identity is formed and negotiated in contexts of power asymmetries’ (2005: 360). I was a white European male, and judging by

his consecutive attempts to offer transport and tour services, I was perceived as a source of income and the interaction highlighted our asymmetrical socioeconomic power relationship. In the following quote, Marco exemplifies how he is performing as a cultural merchant and selling the idea of a community’s cultural authenticity to me.

[It is] More interesting [here than on the mainland]...this is the paradise. We have land we have nature, the animals, turtles… We have many things. It is a good spirit [...] spectacular indigenous. We have a place that is called ‘Salt Creek’, which is a place of the indigenous. You go to this Island, it is an island that has many indigenous! You come into my boat, pay me a hundred and twenty dollars, I want to take you to see like different, different culture! Like medicine plantation, this people are indigenous, it is good people eh… It is protecting the plantation medicinal, artesania (craftsmanship), different [activities] to do,

2 Paradise is a familiar romanticized word in the international tourist industry. Especially used to romanticize tropical environment with sandy beaches. It is highly related to the tourism marketing rhetoric of Hawaii, but also seen in Bocas.

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they do many things. The beach, you eat how they eat, you eat together, you speak to these people, and you speak the language. They speak Ngobe [common reference to their native

language Ngäbare]. It is a beautiful place. Maybe in a few days, you want to go to see that, I

give you my number. “Hey Marco I want to go there”- Boom! I am going to take you on the boat, only to check it out and to see […] Okay let’s go to see my boat, check it out in the town, why can’t you do it now? What are you doing now?

Marco claimed that there was no tourism activity at the Ngäbe community in Salt Creek; a statement which exposed an attempt to exoticize its authenticity. ‘No tourists, only

indigenous. You can eat mountain rabbit there!’ Because I had already been offered tours to

Salt Creek by other tour operators, tourism to Salt Creek was clearly widely promoted and I suspected that this was his deceptive claim to exclusivity. Marco was attempting to sell me the idea of Salt Creek’s backstage as if it was untouched by tourists and that I would be the special visitor to discover it; discovery being a typical romantic idea held by explorers.

This encounter with Marco highlighted the impenetrable business orientation of Ngäbe entrepreneurs in Bocas town that I attribute to the relationship between the structure and consciousness in social spaces. Institutionalized in the structure of the social

arrangements of Bocas town was the tourist economy as a foundation, the tourist as the pillar and the walls, and the local population as the carried structure. Other encounters on the island further strengthened my suspicions and theorizations on the matter of how social

relationships between local and global actor were fixed on a binary opposition of tourism’s market relations.

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4.2 Social relationships suspended in market relations

Fig 6: Marketing ecotourism in Bocas - Photo captured by the researcher - Jan 2018

As I was ambling about Bocas town considering the use of identity as commodity, I encountered a stall with a physical sign capturing my thoughts. There were many tour entrepreneurs on the Island, but this one in particular stood out and gleamed to me

conspiratorially: Ngäbe Tours - their identity as a marketing symbol branded with cultural and ethnic flair. In front of the stall stood a photo display of all the various tours one could book with the Ngäbe entrepreneurs. Conversations with them revealed that they had come from the nearby villages in Bocas and from the comarca to work with tourism here in Bocas town. There was usually a group of them standing around in front of their stall trying to sell their services to passers-by. These were standard ecological tours selling dolphins and sloth encounters, diving and snorkelling or bat cave explorations. They were in no way distinct from other companies on the island, but their cultural branding and peacock display of ethnic identity distinguished them from others. Here, and here only could you experience Bocas with one if its’ peoples; this, and not the sights, was the marketed draw.

In my conversations with them, I asked whether they could offer me transport to the nearby Ngäbe community at the close-by island of San Cristobal. I tried to be clear in my articulation that I was not a simple tourist, but a researcher,and that I was interested in

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visiting Ngäbe communities exclusive of any tour-package. Clearly fixed on their business goals, the Ngäbe tour operators hastily insisted on taking me on a privileged eco/ethno tour during which we would drive around the blue lagoon looking for dolphins and sloths on our way to the community at San Cristobal. It was proposed that a tour guide would follow me into the village in San Cristobal where the locals would show me their traditional dance, share their food with me and teach me some of their language. As with Marco, I felt myself as a walking wallet whose only chance at contact with the Ngabe community was reduced, ready-made and packaged. Extracting information from the obvious tourist-tour operator (outsider - insider) relationship we had seemed an impossible feat; the emic perspective was locked in a box that seemed uninterested in being opened.

Unwilling to accept the limiting relationship that had been pre-constructed by a tourism industry disinterested in my intentions as a human, I eventually spoke to their manager and found him a bit more willing to provide information. He pointed out nearby communities I could visit on the map, but not before accentuating that transport would not be possible without paying for a tour. After the conversation he asked me for money for the information. I believed him to be making a joke, but a few days later when I came for an interview that I had arranged with them, I realized that the manager was quite serious. This time, when I asked him for the interview, he demanded I buy him dinner first. Again, the urban Ngäbe showed himself to me as a tourist operator and a tourist operator only. Interactions had a price tag, and visits to their communities were neither free nor available outside of the tourism industry. The performance of their culture was expressed as a

necessary part of a visit. It seemed to me that their traditions and cultures were commodities they needed to push on to the customers and that a visit to the communities without the tour was like giving a product away for free. In this context it is also relevant to consider that in light of centuries of oppression and exploitation, the Ngäbe now feel entitled to get payment in return for any exchange that might be desired by the outsider. Used to being a tool for someone else’s agenda, it makes sense to want something in return to avoid being exploited for their identity.

I experienced a clear shift of character with the Ngäbe tour workers according to my level of interest in their tours. Once I told them I was not interested in what they had to sell me, their faces shifted and what was before an enthusiastic engagement turned to disinterest; I was no longer worth charming. In my experience, when I did not show interest in their tours, their negotiation show had been disrupted and their character could break.

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relationships’ (as cited in Hann & Hart 2009: 18), the encounter showed me how our social relations were strictly fixed on a tourist customer and merchant/tour operator relationship. Furthermore, their shift in behaviour showed that they were performing a type of staged authenticity and as any attempt at reaching beyond our relation of tourist and tour operator was futile, gaining access to information on non-touristic matters was near impossible.

4.3 The impenetrable social structure of tourism in Bocas town

Reflecting on my own positionality as a researcher within my scientific quest for reaching beyond the tourist-tour operator relations in my interactions with the Ngäbe in Bocas Town, it is evident that there is a parallel between my own ethnographic quest and the tourist’s quest for experiences of the authentic social space. The real social relation and the authentic culture are simply notions of an imagined reality that is supposedly lying beneath the surface of the front stage interaction between the outsider and insider. The tourist

economy dominates intercultural and interpersonal relations in Bocas, and though I am aware of the staged performance, as a researcher and an outsider, this does not grant me an

exemption.

What appears to have emerged from the domination of sociocultural life by the tourism industry is a borderline institutionalized identity game. As the Ngäbe tour operators are economically dependent on tourists, they have designed a sample relationship that suits their wants best and reproduce it regardless of circumstance. In their reality informed exclusively by economy, we function as the paying customer, the audience seeking thrills, and, therefore require a performer; a cultural tour entrepreneur who can sate our desires. As such, both parties are suspended in these relations designated for the front stage. Straying too far from the script in an attempt to move backstage in ethnographic encounters with Marco and the employees of Ngäbe tours ended the charade. One must consider that the local consciousness and sociocultural life has conformed to the socioeconomic reality so deeply that the backstage no longer exists because it is does not contribute to capitalism. Is the insistence on the romanticized backstage an unrealistic desire in a world that has clearly communicated the necessity for economic worth to warrant existence?

Next the reader is taken to my visits to the tourist attractions of the rural Ngäbe communities that sell chocolate tours. I attended two tours on the mainland at two different communities and their chocolate factories. Here I show examples of Ngäbe villages that have implemented CBT to their communities, integrating both eco and ethno tourism. Örebä is an organisation that has been running for some years and was heavily advertised amongst the

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tour operators in Bocas Town. The second, Kwäribo, is an organisation still under construction. It has received aid from various NGOs and institutions as part of a CBT development scheme characterized by improving the socioeconomic situation of the communities without having such a negative impact on the sociocultural life of the locals.

In the next exposition of events from my ethnographic fieldwork, I discuss how bringing tourism into the local environment can have a dual effect. As the social space becomes a stage for performance, the locals engage in ‘staged authenticity’. Dependent on a monetary income to survive in the commercial world, they merge custom with commercial intentions. Commodifying their traditional knowledge, the effect can be both developmental and detrimental to the survival of their identity and sociocultural lifestyle as they must struggle with adapting to a commercial world while at the same time sustaining traditions and customs in the tourist market.

4.4 Commodifying traditions of chocolate production for financial survival

Bodley (2017) holds that culture is connected to the survival of human beings. It involves collectively agreed upon behavioural adaptation arguably derived from a survival-instinct applied to the collective. In Valle del Risco this has been the case for many Ngäbe as they have engaged in the manipulation of cultural traditions and practices to have them serve as commodity and a tool for financial survival. A traditional practice that has cultural and historical significance for the Ngäbe is their cacao cultivation and chocolate production. Throughout history, cacao has been a valuable resource for the Ngäbe in many ways.

Kwäribo is a newly founded cacao production organisation started by Sili Nirion, a local Ngäbe man. Sili has worked hard for the last year, but it is developing slowly, ’little by little’ he says; it is a process that requires patience. As part of a community development project, his business gets economic support from four different sources: Peace Corps, Latina University, the Federation of Germany in Panama and the NGO Geoparadise who organise Tribal Gathering. Sili’s ambition is to make Kwäribo a popular tourist attraction. In doing so, they must however compete with other organisations already established as attractions in the area.

Örebä is the Ngäbe word for chocolate, but also the name of the chocolate production company in Rio Oeste competing with Kwäribo. Ethno tourism is a form of travel focused on the exploration of indigenous populations and their respective culture and traditions. Bringing ethno touristic interest to Örebä is one of their main goals. This goal became evident to me during my visit to Bocas, where I found it heavily marketed in the tourism stalls. It was

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advertised with flyers drawing attention to its’ cultural and traditional authenticity and appealed to tourists by marketing the opportunity to learn how to make organic chocolate as well as the chance to see exotic local animals.

In order to obtain a direct experience with the tourist attraction, I went for a tour. A boat took me from Bocas to Almirante where I climbed into a yellow taxi that took me to Rio Oeste. The drive took ten minutes, and on arrival I was greeted by a middle-aged gentlemen by the name Mao. Evidently Mao was to serve as my guide. He held a wooden staff in each hand and next thing I knew one was clasped between my fingers. It was to serve as physical support for our journey up the steep hill on which the cacao plantation was located. We started off in the small village where there were only a few houses around me; indicating a sparse population. We started traversing towards the hill and during the three hour tour, Mao explained how they harvest the cacao pods and process the individual beans for the market.

Fig 7: Making chocolate at Õrebã - Photo captured by the researcher - Feb 2018.

As evidence of its’ ecological focus, he pointed out various trees and plants along the trail that the locals grew in the community such as bananas, star fruits, oranges, avocados, guava trees, pineapples and coconuts. Each plant was a checkpoint along the tour during which Mao gave me detailed information about its’ methods of growth, lifespan and uses for the community. We also spoke of different animals living in the region such as bats, parrots and frogs; however none showed themselves. Eventually, after thirty minutes or so, we

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arrived at a small hut where a woman stood roasting cacao beans over a fireplace with her two children. They had been preparing the cacao beans for my arrival so that they could show me the chocolate-making process. Because there was no electricity in the community, the entire process had to be done manually using a traditional way of crushing and grinding the beans with stone. After a quick demonstration and some pointers I was made responsible for this task. Sooner than later, chocolate had been made, and after the successful

making-process, I enjoyed the little organic bitter delight over an interview with Mao. I was interested in understanding the motivations behind their business and how he experienced its’ effect on their community culturally and financially. Mao spoke of how their culture is changing today from what it used to be. Before, they could survive as subsistence farmers, but today they must earn money to survive. The following statement is indication of how their custom is recast for economic purposes.

‘Everybody needs money. Yes it is different [talking about their culture], because like

one hundred, two hundred years ago the culture [was] different. No money, only we plant for eating. Now it is different. So I don’t know [...] how we can change all that. … ‘Right now they [the locals in the Comarca] say they need it so that is why they make a contract with the government. In the comarca they grow everything, they grow rice, they have this same thing, banana [...] but, for sell that is problem. Only, they have to make the road [he is saying that

the people in the comarca now demand roads so that they can sell their products]’

Mao’s statement articulates how their customs change through adaptation to the environment. There is the necessity for the Ngäbe to commodify their resources in response to the consumerist world rising around them; as such their customs and traditions are repurposed for survival in the commercial environment. According to Mao, the construction of roads has been necessary ever since internationalization hit the periphery of their social space and money was introduced to the communities. Örebä is evidence that the Ngäbe have engaged in their own CBT. With the introduction of roads into the communities the goal of making Örebä into a popular spot has become a possibility as access has been enabled for tourists. Mao believes that increased tourism to their community does not only benefit them financially, but is also an opportunity for their communities to preserve their culture.

4.5 Tourism - the lifeline of the indigenous capitalist

According to Bodley (2017) ‘for culture to exist it must be stored and transmitted, or reproduce in the next generation’ (13). If the key to culture is reproduction, the exposure enabled by tourism can easily be argued as an invaluable platform for cultural transmission and

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