Working for School For Field Studies at their Center for Tropical Island Biodiversity Studies (TIBS) in Bocas del Toro (Bocas), Panama, I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to moderate community engagement projects for students that align with my academic interests. This allows me to combine research and service in unique ways that have tangible benefits for the local stakeholders that I care about and consider friends.
For decades, transnational entities have promised Indigenous communities around the world that tourism can bring new environmentally friendly and culturally sensitive economic opportunities to improve their lives and enhance community development. While some communities have seen these benefits materialize, most have experienced a failure of this this promise.
The World Bank estimates that 10 to 12% of Panama’s population is composed of Indigenous peoples representing seven distinguishable ethno-linguistic groups. Roughly half of the Indigenous population live on comarcas, or areas governed by semi-autonomous political organizations under the jurisdiction of the national government. The World Bank also estimated that 90% of the Indigenous people residing within these comarcas live in extreme poverty (with 50% of the children malnourished) and those living outside of the comarcas were mostly squatting on untitled land (and sometimes in protected areas) and were even more vulnerable. Most Ngöbe (or Ngabe) living in Bocas fall into the latter. The valuable lands on the archipelago where left out of the comarca despite impassioned requests for the land to be included. And the process of creating annex areas for communities living in the archipelago, which would grant them comarca rights, has been a failure.
Despite inadequate governmental support for basic necessities, the Panamanian government has embraced tourism as a development strategy and promotes rhetoric suggesting that both the cultural and biological diversity in areas inhabited by Indigenous peoples ought to be magnets for tourist interest and visitation.
The Ngöbe, are the largest Indigenous group in Panama, second only to the Maya in all of Central America, but few outside of Panama are aware of this community. Through my presentations about Ngöbe tourism in Panama, I am also learning that few Panamanians know much of substance about the group, as the Ngöbe have historically been excluded from even the Panamanian curriculum.
Despite these tangible barriers, more than 10 Ngöbe communities have have begun small enterprises with the help of outside organizations. Many, however, struggle to attract visitors. A surveys my students conducted with tourists leaving Bocas, showed that only about a third were aware of Indigenous led tourism initiatives and only 12% reported participating.
My last directed research group showed great compassion for the Indigenous tourism operators we visited during my Environmental Policy class and sought to specifically examine the challenges they face. After discovering that most of the popular tour agencies do not offer indigenous tours, we decided to interview both Indigenous tourism guides and the hotel operators that have had a history of bringing guests to Indigenous communities to find out more about the disconnect. My students summarized their findings for a popular audience in the video attached here.
Other student research groups have examined tourists' knowledge of, interest in, and participation in Indigenous-led tourism experiences, as well as, locally defined success, and barriers to successful tourism delivery. All of which, I am excited to post once published!
While research has exposed many challenges, my service projects seek to provide some modest and direct solutions to some of the challenges isolated. My group recently had the unique experience of helping Justiliano Viagra boost visitation to his bat cave tours in Bahia Honda. As we learned in my class from Give and Surf, a volunteer tourism operator here in Bocas, we tried to under promise and over deliver. We also tried to be realistic about the time we had to dedicate to community engagement and sought out to help Justiliano the best ways that we could.
As requested, we placed signage at the hard to find entrance to the community, indicating where to exit the creek and begin the hike into the Bastimentos Island Marine Protected Area and into the bat cave. We also helped design and make business cards for Justiliano so he could visit hotels and have a professional card to pass on his number to organize bat cave tours. We also established a TripAdvisor page for his clients to leave reviews so others can find him. In our research, lack of effective communication was seen as a huge challenge to indigenous tourism and I am happy to learn that our efforts have helped with this.
This experience was incredibly rewarding because it was a direct opportunity to support a community member who does so much to teach me and my students about life in Bocas.
I am excited to embark this semester with a new group of students to help a young man named Luis Santos who is hoping to start a jungle trek to his family property on Isla Colon near Playa Bluff. He sees this small business as a way to both increase income for his family and also to demonstrate a respectful use of the forest as part of an effort towards protecting it from development interests. Luis has done the hard work to create the trail and learn the names of all the species of trees, birds, insects, and animals that can be found. He also is prepared to explain how the Ngöbe use different plants that one encounters on his trail for things like building materials, medicines, and for sustenance.
Our goal is to help him create a business plan, and to find ways to network with local hotels and connect with new clients. A challenge that will be difficult and ongoing, but we are excited to do our best with the time we have.
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