Mary Triny Zea writes for LatinoRebels on who climate change is affecting the Guna and their islands in the San Blas.
The natives of Cartí Sugdup island, in the archipelago of Guna Yala —known worldwide as San Blas— on the northeast end of the province of Panama, are ready, between fears and hope, to move to the mainland and become the first Latin American indigenous settlement displaced by climate change, according to non-governmental organization Displacement Solutions. In 2017, the Panamanian state resumed its relocation project, which began in 2010.
Some 1,450 Gunas will leave their traditional huts with white sugarcane walls and straw roofs, located on one of the largest islands of the archipelago, to inaugurate, in 2019, some 300, 41-square-meter, two-bedroom homes, with areas for the tribe’s cultural meetings, whose total cost reaches $10 million, according to the government project.
This would unleash the exodus of one of the 36 inhabited islands, of a total of 365 of this indigenous region whose population totals 33,109 inhabitants, distributed among coastal lands and islets.