San Blas - History

Home to the Cuna Indians, the San Blas Islands stretch along the Atlantic coast of Panama from Colon to Colombia History of the Cuna is drawn from the English surgeon cum pirate, Lionel Wafer, whose shipmates left him in Panama in 1681 to recover from a gunpowder accident. Cared for by isthmian natives known as the Cuna, who preferred the English to the Spaniards, the latter whom they took great honour in killing, Wafer carefully chronicled the lives and customs of the tribe and accurately described animal and plant life.

In the late 17th century Lionel Wafer, an English surgeon living with the Tule described this painting as follows: "...the women are the painters, and take great delight in it. The colours they like and use most are red, yellow and blue very bright and lovely.... They make figures of birds, beasts, men, trees or the like up and down in every part of the body, more especially the faces; but the figures are , of Differing Dimensions as their Fancies lead them." The introduced concept of Christian modesty and an increasingly sedentary lifestyle both may have contributed to the transition from the more ephemeral body painting to the more permanent mola art form.

Nargana, one of the islands, in 1903 had elected as its chief Charlie Robinson, recently returned from many years on a West Indian ship, who began a "civilizing" program. His cause was taken up in subsequent years by a number of young men who had been educated in the cities on the mainland. These "Young Turks" advocated forcible removal of nose rings, substitution of dresses for "molas," and the establishment of dance halls like those in the cities. They were actively supported by the police, who arrested men who did not send their daughters to the dance hall; the police also allegedly raped some of the Indian women. By 1925 hatred for these modernizers and for the police was intense throughout the area. The situation culminated in the San Blas War of 1925. The rebellion, which resulted in the death of twenty police and garnered American diplomatic and naval support, established the San Blas region as a semi-autonomous Cuna territory of Panama. By the late 1970s, the Tule, with an estimated population of over 23,000, had firmly established their reputation as an organized political entity dedicated to preserving a traditional way of life and to accepting outside influences only on their own terms.

In 1938 the islands and adjacent coastline, the Comarca de San Blas, became an autonomous state within Panama with a Panamanian governor on the island of Porvenir as liaison between Cuna village chiefs and the national government. Isolated for much of their history, the Cuna have only grudgingly accommodated to some aspects of Western civilization. Contact with the Cuna has increased dramatically since the 1930s and during and after World War II; today, cruise ships anchor off the islands on a regular basis.
Cuna women the range of themes for body painting was diverse; the range of themes for their molas appears endless. While designs of the earliest molas tended to be geometric abstractions, by the 1940s Cuna women had kindled an interest in the recreation of traditional themes common to body painting, e.g., the animals, trees and men mentioned by Wafer.