A Day in a Kuna Village

Guna Yala (also referred to as San Blas archipelago) is a province of Panama stretching along its north-eastern coast down to the Colombian border. The region is under autonomous administration of the indigenous Kuna community. It is unknown when exactly the Southern American people first settled in Panama. By the 16th century they had already occupied the San Blas islands. The Kuna traditionally live in a matrimonial society where the women overlook the family property. Even though their fight for independence in the 1920s resulted in extensive self-government rights, the Kuna fear for their century old traditions with the modern world closing in.