Panama’s Guna Yala is, in many ways, the antithesis of the glossy magazine version of a Caribbean destination: The archipelago (formerly known as San Blas) has no resort hotels, no cruise ships, no teens on jet skis. Almost all the 32,000 people who live on its 49 inhabited islands (of 365 total) are Guna, the first Indigenous community in Latin America to gain political autonomy exactly 100 years ago, in 1925. Beyond the polychromatic reefs and alabaster sands, the most Caribbean thing about Guna Yala may be the dilemma it faces in the fight against rising sea levels.
“There are times when my island is like Venice in Italy with water flooding through the streets,” Gilberto Alemancia, director of the Indigenous Tourism Network of Panama, told me on an October visit to Gardi Sugdub (Crab Island). “You can see little fishes swimming down the road.”
In June 2024, the Panamanian government evacuated 182 families from Gardi Sugdub, including Alemancia’s, and settled them in Isberyala, a modern, concrete community one mile away on the mainland that the state developed at a cost of about $12 million. Another 28 families—about 200 people—stayed behind in traditional cane and bamboo homes. The event sparked global headlines about some of the first climate-change refugees in the Americas.
Scientists from Panama’s Ministry of the Environment predict that the 365 islands of Guna Yala may be underwater by 2050, as annual sea rise has jumped from 2 millimeters in 2000 to 3.4 millimeters today. Sea level rise is a problem faced everywhere, from New Orleans and Bangkok to the Maldives and the Bahamas, threatening not only livelihoods but also deeply held cultural traditions.
For Gardi Sugdub, the evacuation conversation began in the late 1990s, in tandem with another concern: overpopulation. The island is about the size of five soccer fields but once housed as many as 1,307 residents. “Fifty percent of people are moving to the mainland because of overpopulation,” Alemancia said. “The other 50 percent are doing it for global warming.”
More Gunas will debate relocation plans over the coming years, though the majority still live on the islands and depend on tourism for their livelihoods. With 2025 marking both the centennial of the Guna’s autonomous territory and the beginning of what may be a protracted exodus, the archipelago finds itself at a crossroads.
This past October, I set off from Gardi Sugdub to learn how ecotourism could be a positive force for the community at the front lines of climate change. The island is the first stop on a new culture-based sailing tour launched in 2024 by Ancon Expeditions, whose profits help fund ANCON, Panama’s National Association for the Conservation of Nature.
Though noticeably abandoned, Gardi Sugdub was still home to the Guna Culture Museum, curated by Delfino Davies, who safeguards local treasures. These include several wood-carved statuettes, known as nuchus, which link the spiritual and physical worlds in the Guna cosmovision (worldview).
Davies also organizes the island’s lavish theatrical reenactment of the Guna Revolution, which takes place each February and involves dozens of costumed actors battling and dancing through sandy streets. At the museum, he explained how the Guna rebelled against Panamanian authorities, declaring total independence in February 1925. This sparked a retaliatory military campaign quelled by the United States (based in the nearby Canal Zone), which brokered a deal. Guna lands would officially be part of Panama, but only under the condition that the government respect their laws, traditions, and culture. To this day, visitors entering the Guna Yala Comarca, 55 miles northeast of Panama City, present a passport to border authorities and pay a $20 fee.
Sailing eastward the next day on La Liberté, a 56-foot, four-cabin catamaran, it was clear how 100 years of Indigenous governance had safeguarded the coastal forests, whose feral ridgeback hills extend to the Colombian border. The Guna have long thwarted real-estate developers and foreign investors eyeing both the shore and the uninhabited islands, which are a postcard vision of paradise.
Many of those islands are small and flat, appearing only at low tide; others you’d barely notice if there weren’t palm trees poking above the sea. Some don’t even appear on Google Maps, which seems to have preemptively anticipated their demise. Yet the Guna aren’t giving up on this place.
From left: Traversing the Masargandi River in Guna Yala; Ibin’s Beach Restaurant
Photos by Mark Johanson
Ibin Linares spent much of his adult life working as a chef on private yachts in the Caribbean and South Pacific. After his parents died and his siblings left for Panama City, Linares felt drawn to return. “I really want to help my people get ahead,” he said from the deck of Ibin’s Beach Restaurant, which opened in 2022 on Banedub (Frigatebird Island), at the northeastern end of the archipelago. The restaurant is on stilts above the sea and uses only local products.
Linares prepares multicourse menus based around Caribbean delicacies, including spiny lobster, king crab, and octopus. His preferred dish? Dulemassi, a sweet and salty soup made with seafood and coconuts. It speaks to the chef’s motto: “Local food with local products to support the local community.”
Fishermen stopped by in dugout monohull boats, called ulu, to sell their daily catch, sailing onward to supply the catamarans moored just offshore. The shallow waters off the beach at Banedub were the surreal hue of mint sorbet, and Linares dreamed of turning the beach into “a small Bora Bora.” It’d be lined with overwater bungalows like the ones he saw in French Polynesia, “but in my own Guna style,” he said.
The catamaran worked its way west over the next days, stopping at various islands with anchorage fees of about $15 apiece, plus $3 per visitor. The money supports the local economy, which is otherwise based around the extraction of coconuts. Each community documents and pools the funds for the common good (including schooling, social services, and cultural initiatives). Many islands were unpopulated and used for camping and snorkeling by domestic tourists. The crowded ones, like Digir Dubbu (Tiger Island), with about 800 residents, faced a similar fate to Gardi Sugdub due to overpopulation and climate change.
The Guna have one of the world’s highest rates of albinism, and many live on Digir Dubbu. Known as “the children of the moon,” they’re revered among society and given leadership roles, enabling them to avoid work in fields or at sea. The Guna also believe in a third gender, called omeggid (literally “like a woman”), which dates back to one of the original leaders, Wigudun, who was gender fluid and helped form the framework of Guna society.
“Here, in the Guna community, there is not discrimination,” said Mola Lisa, a transgender Guna guide who runs tours up the Masargandi River, just south of Digir Dubbu on the mainland. “You can be gay; you can be trans. This isn’t an issue.”
Lisa picked me up in a wooden boat on my last day in Guna Yala and took me to the mainland. There, she told me about her work to preserve Guna traditions, despite the region’s current challenges. We walked together past small community plots of rice, yucca, and plantains to a Guna cemetery holding her mother’s grave. She described funerary ceremonies, which often involve cacao beans, and identified medicinal plants, like Palicourea elata, whose flowers are like puffy red lips. Her greatest expertise was in molas, the vibrant handmade textiles worn by Guna women as a symbol of their identity and autonomy. “My mom taught me how to make molas when I was seven,” she said. “Now, some of the molas I sell are from my [adopted] daughter, who’s 14, because I taught her, too.”
Mola Lisa poses with the lip-like petals of Palicourea elata.
Photo by Mark Johanson
Modern molas sold in Panama City feature everything from Santa Claus to Mickey Mouse. Lisa preached the use of traditional techniques (namely reverse appliqué), colors (black, orange, and burgundy), and shapes (typically geometric abstractions of natural features, such as brain corals). “A real mola has a spirit, a force that will protect you when you’re sick and in poor health,” she said.
Like all Guna, Lisa’s ancestors were not native island dwellers. They came from the Serranía del Darién, a low mountain range on the southeastern horizon. Pushed by the Spanish colonists, with the support of neighboring Indigenous groups, most settled offshore by the 17th century. It’s this history of struggle and resilience that has made the Guna such fierce defenders of their culture. Of course, the irony of the climate crisis is that many, including Lisa, now live back in the foothills.
“Little by little, some communities are thinking to move to the mainland, where our ancestors are from,” Alemancia had told me when we met at Gardi Sugdub. What effect will this have? “We don’t know,” he said. “We don’t have a big social or cultural impact study; it’s too soon.” Like many of his friends, Alemancia is still adjusting to the changes, and splits his time between two homes: a new one in Isberyala and a traditional one in Gardi Sugdub. “It doesn’t matter if I sleep in a concrete house,” he said. “I’m still Guna.”
