Panama Canal Review: Special edition Panama

Item Type monograph

Publisher Panama Canal Press

Download date 16/08/2021 03:30:46

Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/1834/19167

Mr. and Mrs. Dionisio Santos and their infant daughter with chaquiras which they brought from their home in VeraguasProvince to sell in Panama City. He is wearing a ceremonial hat and a chaquira which the Guaymi men wear on festive occasions.

32 SPECIAL EDmON

THE CHAQUIRAAN INDIAN warriors' ornament hasmade its way from the primitive envi­ronment of the mountains of westernPanama into the world of femininefashion, and it is winning women'sfancy.

The ornament is the chaquira, ashoulder-wide collar of brightly coloredbeads arranged in geometric designsnQw used by women for both daytimeand evening wear. It is also still worntoday by the Guaymi Indian men,whose ancesters were the, formidablefighters the conquistado"rs rated amongthe most skilled of all the warriors inthe Western Hemisphere.

No longer the fierce warriors of yore,the present-day Guaymies, some 35,000in all, live under the laws of Panama inthe provinces of Veraguas, Chiriqui, andBocas del Toro. Their children attendPanama schools, but they still keepaloof from people not of their own cul­ture and retain many of their aboriginalcustoms and practices.

The chaquira was first mentionedby European historians in documentsdating back from the early part of the17th Century. It was quite differentfrom today's ornament. The colors weredull and it was not so tightly beaded asmodem-day ones. It was fashioned ofpebbles, pieces of bone, seeds, and seashells which the Indians colored withhomemade dyes.

Sold In ShopsThe brightly colored beads and varied

designs of the chaquiras now being soldin the shops reflect the Indian's present­day ability to buy beads of whatevershape, size, or color needed.

Fray Adrian de Santo Tomas, who'ran a mission in 1622 in what is nowthe town of Remedios, Chiriqui Pro­vince, described the chaquira as theornament worn 'by Guaymi men duringtheir major festivals-a sort of emblemof Guaymi nationality.

The Spanish conquistadors foundthree distinct Guaymi tribes in westernPanama; each named after its chief;each spoke a different language. Thethree big chiefs were Urraca, who ruledin what is now Veraguas Province;Nata, in the territory of the Provinceof Cocle; and Parita, in the AzueroPeninsula.

Of the three, Urraca is the mostfamous. He not only defeated the Span­iards several times, but was the onlyone among the rebel Indian chiefs who

THE PANAMA CANAL REVIEW 33

Mrs. Ginny Arias,of Diablo, adjusts theblacJc: and whitechaquira which sheis wearing with ablack dress.

forced a captain of the Spanish Empire,Diego de Albitez, to sign a peace treaty.This was approximately 1522.

His FeatsA measure of Urraca's temper is

provided by the account of his featsafter Albitez's successor betrayed andimprisoned the Indian chief.

Sent in chains to Nombre de Dioson ·the Atlantic coast, probably fortransfer to Spain-according to historianBartolome de las Casas-Urraca escapedand made his way back to the moun­tains, vowing to fight the Spaniardsunto death. And he fulfilled his vow.

In his last years, Urraca's name wasso feared by the Spaniards that theyavoided combat with his men. WhenUrraca died in 1531, surrounded byfriends and relatives, he was still a freeman. He probably was laid in his gravewith a chaquira covering his shoulders.

Mter Urraca's death, the other Indianchiefs carried on the fight against thewhite invaders, taking refuge in thesteep mountains of Veraguas and theTabasani Range where the Spaniards'cavalry could not maneuver.

By the 18th Century, the Guaymieswere divided into two large groups:those of the tropical forest (in the high­lands of Veraguas and Chiriqui) andthose of the lowlands (along the Atlan­tic coast, from Rio Belen to Bocas delToro). They never surrendered, fight­ing until the collapse of the Spanishdomination in the Americas.

In OblivionWhen Panama broke away from Spain

and joined Colombia in the early 19thCentury, the Guaymies remained inoblivion in their mountain villages.

Slowly they are now being incorpo­rated into the national fold. Guaymiteachers and law-enforcement officershelp the effort. At the last graduationof the Felix Olivares High School inDavid, Chiriqui, an honor graduate wasa Guaymi student, Miss Matilde Salinas.

Her ambition: to study medicine andto return to the mountains to workamong her people.

Other young Guaymies are leavingtheir mountain homes in increasingnumbers to work in the banana plan~

tations in Chiriqui and Bocas del Toro.They bring back new things and newideas which they share with their elders-transistor radios among them.

While the chaquira remains a symbolof the Guaymi culture, it is no longera treasured warrior's ornament fash­ioned painstakingly by female handswithin the closeness of the family circle,but a vastly sophisticated commodityto which mass production techniquesare-being applied. Its production is anestablished source of income for theGuaymies.

Small ShopsIn olden times, it took perhaps as

much as 4 months to fashion a singlechaquira. Today, in much less time,dozens of the collars are produced insmall shops to fill orders from the cities.And men now work side by side withwomen turning out the ornaments.

Along the Inter-American Highwaynear Tole, the town closest to the Taba­sara Range, Guaymies and boys fromTole peddle chaquiras of. all sizes andcolors, starting from about $6. In fash­ionable Panama City shops, the collarssell for $15 and up.

Perhaps the very masculinity that thechaquira symbolized centuries ago is theintangible lure that has made it an orna­ment prized by women in modem times.The noted U.S. historian and arche­ologist Samuel K. Lothrop, in his "Ar­cheology of Southern Veraguas, Pan­ama," rated the Guaymi warriors thusly:

"In the opinion of many. the nativesof Veraguas should be ranked with thefamous Araucanians of Chile as the out­standing fighters of the New World, ajudgement shared by Spanish veteranswho had served in both regions."