Reflections from the Ngäbe-Buglé region: Food security or food sovereignty?

Panama’s visible poverty is a stark counterpoint to its supposed motor of development: the Panama Canal. And the poverty of its indigenous peoples contrasts with that of the general population. Their malnutrition seems contradictory considering their nutritious traditional foods, many of which they’ve used for thousands of years. What is the traditional diet of the Ngäbe? How can this people’s identity, culture, health, education and diet be strengthened?

Jorge Sarsanedas

Years ago, a strong and healthy Ngäbe man told me he was raised on a diet of frogs’ legs. That surprised me because we associate frog’s legs with fine dining in Parisian restaurants, not the food of the impoverished Ngäbe-Buglé region, a nearly 7,000-square- kilometer area defined in 1997 that is home to nearly 55% of the Ngäbe people and some 35% of the Buglé.

According to official statistics, 96.3% of Panama’s indigenous population lives in poverty (84.8% in extreme poverty) with 62% of the children suffering chronic malnutrition. Their maternal mortality rate is the worst in Latin America: 623 per 100,000 live births. The United Nations Development Programme’s 2010 Human Development Index (HDI) ranked them at 0.447, well below the overall national index of 0.780 and even below the HDI of 0.456 for Haiti, which is the poorest of any country in the Americas. Worse still, there are some districts in the Ngäbe-Buglé region with even lower HDIs, such as Besigä, whose index is 0.348, equal to Mali and Burkina Faso, the African countries with the lowest HDI.

This is simply scandalous and cries out for an urgent solution. Despite many attempts to make the statistics look better, it’s impossible to hide this reality from anyone willing to see.

An inhuman situation

Panama is home to part of the population of seven Latin American indigenous peoples: the Ngäbe, Guna, Buglé, Enbera, Wounaan, Naso and Bribri. Guna (also known as Kuna), Enbera and Wounaan populations also live in Colombia, with some Enbera also in Ecuador; Costa Rica is home to some Ngäbe, Buglé, Naso and Bribri. These groups make up 12% of Panama’s total population of 3.5 million, according to the 2010 census.

Despite centuries of subjugation, rejection and discrimination, these peoples maintain many aspects of their identity to varying degrees, including their customs, ways of life, rites, beliefs, languages, art and clothing. They have lived in these inhuman conditions for centuries. As well as having to deal with an invasion that sought to conquer and, supposedly, evangelize them, the invaders imposed a culture on them that affected not only their language, writing and religion but also their eating habits.

Signs of this cultural domination in the Darien area date back to the beginning of the conquest, early in the 16th century. Now, in the midst of the 21st century, statistics show that the situation has changed very little, even though there are now access roads, buildings called schools and structures, many of them empty shells, called health posts.

Economic growth with inequity

Nutritionist Helena Saracho Domínquez recognizes the “enviable economic growth” Panama has experienced, reaching 10.7% of the gross domestic product in 2012, but points out that it has been accompanied by “highly inequitable wealth distribution, reflected in much higher levels of poverty among the indigenous population.” As evidence of the fact that “the overwhelming majority of Panama’s indigenous people live in poverty,” she says that the 62% chronic malnutrition rate of indigenous children under five is three times higher than the national average.

Anthropologist Kevin Sánchez Saavedra goes further, describing how “today’s short-term migration flows to agro-export areas or to Panama’s major cities erode and limit these peoples’ subsistence and food sovereignty.” It should be noted that 75% of Panama’s minimum wage is needed just to cover basic food needs, a very stressful situation, especially for indigenous people, who are least likely even to earn that much.

The legacy of their ancestors

Are the Ngäbe people condemned to extinction? What has enabled them to keep going over the years, struggling, resisting, surviving?Many years ago, I visited a ranch in the region where a family of about ten adults and children were sitting around a fire over which “something” was cooking in a big covered pot. We talked for a while then I took my leave. As I headed out they asked me if I ate “leaves.” I told them I did so they invited me to rejoin them. They served me a bowl made from a gourd filled with bean soup and lots of different types of “leaves.”

That soup was one of the many foods passed down from their ancestors that have allowed thousands of indigenous people to overcome malnutrition. “Leaves” are the real life-saver of indigenous food. The leaves of the root vegetable known as otoe in Panama and quequisque in Nicaragua are an excellent source of vitamins and minerals. Squash and pumpkin leaves provide beta-carotene and vitamins and are also medicinal. Bean leaves and the young beans themselves are rich in protein, vitamins and folic acid, which combats anemia. Watercress leaves and shoots are high in iodine, iron and vitamin A. The flowers and hearts of the chichica, a member of the Heliconia genus, are also nutritious, as are agave flowers.

Their foods are highly nutritious

Some of the Ngäbe’s highly nutritious foods are little known by non-indigenous people. One is the ñürün or bodá, the pacaya palm or mountain maize, which is highly valued by the Mayan people; its flowers and palm hearts are edible and contain more calcium and phosphorous than any vegetable. They also eat pigeon peas, which are an excellent source of minerals including phosphorous, magnesium, manganese, folic acid and flavonoids.

The Ngäbe also obtain an incredible source of nutriaents from the fruit and hearts of the peach palm, which provides them protein, oils, fat-soluble vitamins and minerals. This plant is like a little nutritional factory and is probably the most complete tropical food. One person who knows this plant well says this about it: “It’s a crop that has attracted a lot of interest at a global level as a resource to fight hunger; its nutritious value is excellent, better than maize and just about any other crop we consume as a source of energy”.

The Ngäbe also prepare dried foods such as gwa münün (fish powder) and kwi münün (chicken powder), which have huge amounts of nutrients and are unknown among non-indigenous people. They prepare mren kugwän (burnt salt), made from black salt collected in the forest cooked together with calcium-rich, ground egg shells. The Ngäbe also eat mushrooms, which they greatly enjoy; several types of tubers (yams, taro, cassava and otoe); and highly nutritious, vitamin-rich and medicinal fruits and nuts including cashews, avocado, guava and papaya, to mention just four that are native to the Americas. Hunting and fishing also provide part of their diet, particularly as a source of protein, although wild animals and fish are not abundant in the region.

While I’ve focused only on the Ngäbe, the Guna, Wounaan and Enbera also have very nutritious traditional foods.

So why such serious malnutrition?

Considering this wealth of nutritious food, why is there such serious malnutrition and food insecurity? What has caused such a scandalous situation?

It’s actually the result of centuries of incompetence, racism, discrimination, arrogance and the lack of political will to do anything for these communities. In Panama, and probably in many other countries of the Americas, the cause lies in a system that, as Pope Paul VI said many years ago, presents “profit as the chief spur to economic progress, free competition as the guiding norm of economics, and private ownership of the means of production as an absolute right.”

Misguided agricultural policies

This system reveals itself through misguided policies that undermine indigenous identities. Agricultural policies have increasingly focused on export crops (cereals, meat and nontraditional products) and agro-industry (sugar, coffee and ethanol). There has never been a single agricultural policy for the Ngäbe-Buglé region that deals with the traditional, local products adapted to the environment and understood by the people, despite their great nutritional value. The few agricultural projects implemented in the region have promoted the production of vegetables not cultivated by its people (onions, carrots, lettuce, cabbage, etc.) or the planting of exotic tree species (pines, teak and eucalyptus).

It’s true that most of the land in the region is appropriate for forestry but why haven’t local fruit trees been planted, particularly the peach palm? The planting of coffee—sometimes organic—has been strongly promoted to increase exports. All of these are misguided agricultural policies that do nothing to improve the population’s nutritional status.

Health policies alien to their culture

Government health policies have always prioritized curative medicine over prevention. Prevention campaigns are sometimes implemented in the cities (against dengue, children’s vaccination and other issues) but their coverage of indigenous areas is much more limited.

In the Ngäbe region, unlike the Embera-Wounaan region, traditional healers and midwives (krägä bianga and ngibiaga) aren’t integrated into the health system and at best are only called on as translators. There’s no room for their knowledge in an official system that seeks to control disease with chemical medicine despite the many prevention and healing possibilities using medicinal plants. More misguided policies that fail to make use of people’s valuable cultural heritage.

Educational policies
that attack their identity

Official education policies are also misguided. The courses children and adolescents follow at school aim to make it possible for them to be citizens and to enter higher education. By pursuing these two rather confusing and unrealistic general objectives, the schools in the Ngäbe-Buglé region continuously attack the identity of the indigenous population as a people.

Educational materials barely mention the history and development of indigenous cultures. Not only do they ignore the languages, customs, rituals and rich diet of these peoples but they also demonstrate genuine disdain for them. One researcher told me he has heard teachers and evangelical pastors talk about how “foul” Ngäbe food is. Such constant attacking of people’s ethnic identity undermines their self-esteem.

If the schools in the indigenous areas do not reclaim this cultural wealth, not only will the population’s food security continue to be put at risk but also, and even more importantly, its food sovereignty will be undermined.

Bilingual education has been talked about in Panama since 1975, more recently framed as intercultural and bilingual education, but the Ngäbe region got its first bilingual teachers only two years ago. Only a few bilingual materials have been produced and intercultural-bilingual education (IEB) hasn’t been has developed at all.

It should be mentioned that education in the Guna region is following the IEB route but it’s due more than anything to the insistence of this long-autonomous indigenous people and its authorities in the communities. The Martinelli government (2009 to July 2014) slashed the percentage of the budget assigned to IEB.

Centuries of marginalization, racism and contempt for indigenous people have led to absurd but understandable situations, such as the fact that Ngäbe parents don’t talk to their children in their native language, “so they don’t suffer like we have.” While there are laws that protect and promote indigenous languages, the indigenous regions’ inhabitants are barely even aware of them.

The causes of this human disaster

In sum, he region’s high level of food insecurity is the result of the combination of insufficient food production: the rejection of traditional production systems; the absence of a transfer of appropriate, new technologies that are sustainable in the rural reality of the region and for those who live in the forest; the deterioration of natural resources; a socio-cultural context that fails to increase the population’s purchasing power; the almost complete ignorance, willful or not, of the value of the Ngäbe people’s diet components; a formal education system that turns its back on the Ngäbe culture; health services that focus only on curative medicine and fail to draw on the wealth of resources available in the indigenous culture; and the permanent lack of consultation with the communities.

If we add to that already long list the lack of political will of the governments to deal with the indigenous issue, diversify production and protect agricultural prices, among other challenges, we can better understand the human disaster now affecting these peoples.

The concept of food security

There has been a lot of discussion about food security in recent years. The term has been appropriated and included in the agendas and discourse of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), diverse international agencies and many governments and politicians of all stripes.
According to the FAO, several conditions have to be fulfilled to achieve food security: national production or imports (including food aid) must provide a sufficient supply of food of adequate quality; people must have enough resources to be able to acquire appropriate food and have access to a nutritious diet; individuals must be able to biologically use the food to achieve nutritional wellbeing, which means not only an adequate diet, but also clean drinking water, sanitation and health care, which are non-food resources that, while directly related to the population’s nutritional health, are not obtained simply by ensuring food.

Saracho Domínguez observes that “assigning part of the State’s financial resources to the purchase of imported goods rather than investing it in [addressing] the causes of people’s poor nutritional status is neither a solution nor an improvement.… It would seem that the State’s objective is to transform the peasantry into a salaried labor force to meet the needs of industry or the services sector, or simply to allow the cultivation of huge areas of monoculture.… Food security ignores the peasantry’s concepts and their right to land and production. It’s too closely allied to the economic system and international trade and ignores the potential of small producers, local markets and the population’s food culture.”

Food sovereignty is something else

Organizations in at least 69 countries are promoting an alternative concept, food sovereignty, which Saracho Domínguez describes as seeking “to improve the food situation prioritizing the fundamental rights of peasants as they are the ones who cultivate and care for the land. This approach prioritizes peasants’ right of access to both land and its products and prioritizes people’s right to define their own agricultural and food production policies.

It includes the supply of food products to those who produce them. It sees the main objective of agricultural production as the satisfaction of the local communities’ needs, which is an important point given that a large proportion of the food produced by ‘developing countries’ is consumed in ‘developed’ ones. Food sovereignty proposes the establishment of the right to protect and control agricultural and livestock production as well as national markets. All this means that its actions are based on the following six pillars:

“- A focus on food for the people.
- Valuing the people who provide the food.
- Local level food systems.
- Local empowerment.
- Development of knowledge and skills.
- Working with nature”.

The difference between food security and food sovereignty resides in the intention to change not only the food situation but the food system that produces it.

“Good living” (Nüne kwin gwaire)

The term “economic development” is frequently used in Latin America to characterize the projects implemented or promoted in indigenous areas, and the Ngäbe-Buglé region is no different. Millions of dollars have been invested in this zone over the last forty years but, judging by the present levels of deprivation, there are no signs that things have really changed. The resources that have been invested can be seen in roads, buildings and houses and in the electricity poles that timidly scale the hills. Nevertheless, an answer must be given to statistics that don’t lie and to the people’s very real suffering.

Many Native American peoples are now using the term “good living” or “buen vivir,” as a way of life—or “a way of proceeding,” as the Guarani would say—that implies much more than economic development. The Guarani talk about “reciprocal relationships and sharing” while the Quechua and Aymara people define the concept in article 306 of the Bolivian Constitution as follows: “The plural economy articulates the different forms of economic organization based on the principles of reciprocity, complementariness, solidarity, redistribution, equality, legal security, sustainability, equilibrium, justice and transparency.

The social and communal economy will complement individual interest with collective good living.”

The central institutions of the Ngäbe culture called juritde and etdebali include some aspects of what is now referred to as “good living.” Juritde doesn’t have an exact translation but involves the ideas of sharing, requesting, solidarity, distributing and redistributing. It means giving help to those who, for whatever reason, haven’t had a good harvest or are in a vulnerable situation (widows, orphans, the sick). Etdebali comes from etdeba (brother) and designates the ritual brotherhood acquired through krün gitde, a ritual game that brings different communities together, and was originally probably a way to redistribute and even out surpluses. These concepts provide a cultural framework for proposing possible ways to make progress on the vital matter of food sovereignty.

Bottom-up strategies are needed

How do we go about reversing a process that has lasted for centuries? What concrete mechanisms are needed to turn around the current march to destruction? Which cultural elements should be recovered so that vital processes, such as indigenous diets, native ecology and traditional medicine can once more constitute integral aspects of indigenous society?

To begin with, it is essential that “bottom-up” strategies be developed beginning from local communities and native organizations, in line with the ideas of the food sovereignty movement. Any policy, be it regional, State, official or private, that does not fulfil this condition will not be successful.

The Ngäbe people reach decisions by consensus, not by supposedly democratic voting, much less by accepting the decisions imposed by “authorities” of whatever type. The other important condition, obviously, is that the government and development agencies be truly willing to accept such a bottom-up process.

different type of
agriculture is possible

One of the main agricultural policies that should be promoted is support for large-scale production of traditional foodstuffs with proven nutritional value. This would create a “larder,” giving people the freedom to devote themselves to planting traditional tree species that provide food, medicines and diverse materials, and to organizing community-based organic production projects.

Another policy could be to support and organize the export of organically cultivated products with a known export market (coffee) or with high nutritional potential (avocado, peach palm, guava, quince, cashews, pacaya palm and others). An additional way to strengthen the region would be to support and promote juritde and the bartering of products based on etdebali.

A different kind of health care

Traditional healers and midwives should be fully and formally integrated into the region’s health system. This would allow health services, including prevention, to be provided in a culturally-respectful manner with better understanding of the local context and closer relations with the population based on indigenous cultural practices complemented by western medicine.

This way, all the nutritional riches available in the local flora plus the traditional preventive health practices, including boin and kä, would form an integral part of health care provision. Boin or boine is a Ngäbe word that can be translated as fasting, prevention, limitation or prohibition depending on the specific circumstances (pregnancy, snake bites, various diseases) but requires abstinence from some foods or practices. Kä (cacao) is not only useful as food and medicine but it is also a crucial part of various Ngäbe rituals.

Another type of education

Given that formal education is another of the key factors in the cultural destruction we’re witnessing, educational policies need to be fundamentally reoriented. Because Panama is a country that has been formed by the interaction of multiple cultures, this reorientation should start with an intercultural agenda for the whole country, not just the indigenous zones.

We’ve accepted the cultures brought by the Spanish and by other groups that arrived here almost two hundred years ago (Chinese, Indians, North Americans) but have almost always rejected other cultures that have also been among us for centuries (indigenous, African, Afro-Caribbean). We have to start by accepting that our national identity includes all these cultures and that it’s essential that Panamanians be educated with an intercultural approach. Intercultural and bilingual education should be developed vigorously and creatively, prioritizing the schools in the indigenous zones and regions.

How to improve nutrition

How will nutrition be helped by people simply speaking their own language? Older people’s knowledge and appreciation of traditional foods gives them an important role to play in schools. They could teach the origins of these foodstuffs as well as the basics of traditional medicine and preventive health practices. As for higher education, an indigenous inter¬-cultural university should be created to teach, research and deepen our understanding of all these health and nutrition issues.

Other important measures to improve the indigenous population’s nutritional status include road construction, good quality health and education infrastructure, agricultural warehouses and electricity generation with solar, wind or small-scale hydroelectric power plants.

A fundamental issue is to ensure the integrity of indigenous people’s current territories and protect them against mining and large-scale hydroelectric projects. The hydroelectric dams in Valle Riscó and Barro Blanco have flooded indigenous territories, destroying crops, damaging the environment, obliterating ecosystems that produced nutritious food, provoking displacements, uprooting populations and causing other types of damage. The same could happen with the Río Teribe hydroelectric scheme, located in the Naso indigenous zone, and others that are currently being studied.

They have the strength to resist

The Ngäbe people have suffered in the past and their continued suffering is offensive. But they are not bowed by the pressure; they continue to stand tall and show others how to fight. They continue to demonstrate the capacity for resistance and survival strategies they’ve used since they first opposed domination by the colonial powers. This ancestral power will help them make real the alternative proposals that can lead them to good living.

Jorge Sarsanedas works with the Panamanian National Coordinator of Indigenous Pastors. This article was first published in the University of Costa Rica’s Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos.

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