Yearbook 2016
Panama. The current population of Panama is 4,314,778. Panama’s already disgraceful reputation as a tax haven deteriorated significantly when millions of documents were leaked to a German daily through a joint effort by burgeoning journalists around the world on April 3. The “Panama Papers” constituted the world’s largest leak of secret documents to date, revealing how powerhouses and criminals in more than 200 countries hid several billion dollars through mailbox companies organized by the law firm Mossack Fonseca in Panama City.
The documents also contained compromising information on a number of leading Latin American politicians, including Argentina’s President Maurício Macri. To Panama’s President Juan Carlos Varela, the deal was, to say the least, embarrassing as he promised increased transparency in the country’s financial sector. Internationally, however, Varela’s promises have been viewed with skepticism, including from the OECD and the EU, on whose black list of Panama’s tax havens existed since June 2015. In August, the renowned economist and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz resigned as a member of the commission appointed by Varela to review how the country’s legal and financial services are managed.
The controversial Barro Blanco project, a hydropower plant in an area of self-government for indigenous peoples, continued during the year. After major protests as early as 2012, the project was frozen, but in May a government authority declared that the dam would begin to be filled with water, which will lead to the land of the Bugle people, with several holy sites, being flooded. Authorities claimed that local village communities were informed, but it was denied by grassroots organizations that immediately organized protest actions.
According to thereligionfaqs, another major infrastructure project that came to an end during the year was the expansion of the Panama Canal. On June 26, the first vessel under a large ceremony passed the new stretch of canals. The redevelopment, which began in 2007, has cost a total of $ 5.3 billion.
Ethnography. – At the time of the Spanish discovery, tribes belonging to the Chibcha group lived in the territory of the current Republic of Panamá, which by language and civilization were linked on the one hand to the Guetar of Costa Rica (v.) And on the other to the Chibcha populations of Colombia. In the NO. the Changuina and Dorasque lived, settled around the Chiriquí Lagoon and later also behind the Chiriquí coast facing the Pacific; the last of the Dorasque died in 1882. This warlike tribe had achieved a remarkable degree of civilization as far as can be judged from the necropolises located in their regions (especially on the slopes of the Chiriquí volcano, in the adjacent llanos); in the stone sarcophagi, clay vases and rich gold harnesses were found as furnishings, including a pendant in the shape of an eagle. Gold objects represented a sought-after commercial item throughout the territory. To S. and to O. dei Dorasque followed the Guaymi (fromwaimi “man”), which extended towards the east as far as Natá, where they bordered with the CoibaCueia. Like all the tribes of the region they cultivated the corn, with which they made the chicha, they lived in circular huts with a conical roof (palenques) and wore a loincloth made of tree bark. Body painting was so important that only the souls of those whose corpses had been rightly painted could happily cross the three underground rivers which they had to ford to reach the beyond. To the sorcerers, who could transform themselves into jaguars, into lizards, into snakes, all misfortunes were attributed, even death from illness; if someone died, his millstones were broken, his slaves killed, in short, all his possessions were destroyed. The corpse itself was richly adorned, painted and placed on a stage of poles, under which a fire was held for 4 days, and then it was buried in its hut. In the afterlife they lived 10 times longer than on this earth, but then they had a “second death” which meant complete annihilation. The creator was Noncomala, who with a woman had generated on the Guaymi river a boy and a girl which he later placed as sun and moon in the sky; after he had destroyed the first men with a flood, he created a new humanity by means of a human seed saved and delivered to him by the god of the winds Nubu who was worshiped on a mountain; from a part of this rotten seed, monkeys were born. The “balserias” were loved and still today they are loved, dances during which young people with long and thin sticks of balsa wood dealt blows to the opponent on the ankles. Today the Guaymi live, superficially Christianized and strongly mixed with the Negroes, in the interior of the provinces of Chiriquí, Veraguas, Los Santos and Coclé.indios bravos), who live in the E. of the Canale area; because of their rigid social organization under the caciques, as well as the shapes of their gold ornaments, they belong more to the Colombian Zone of civilization than to Central America. Due to the difficulty of penetrating their territory, the Cuna have managed to preserve through the centuries and up to the most recent times, a great independence from the various governments of Panama. The feeling of their dignity and their love of independence are brought to light by the following fact. When a senior American personality in the Canal Zone once wanted to negotiate with them to buy the sand of the coast, which was required for the construction of the Gatun locks, the answer was: “Whoever created the sand, created it for the Cuna who were, who are and who will be. Today they have become more docile to the influences of foreign civilizations. The Cuna are about 30,000, while the number of still semi-pure Guaymi is about 5000. Since the time of the conquest, Chocó tribe, once greatly feared for their poisoned arrows. Foreigners among the Chibcha tribes were the Nahua, whom the conquistador Rodrigo de Contreras had brought in 1539 to the Río Tarire Valley, O. dei Chanquina; the Chuchure, in Nombre de Dios, Mosquito originating from Honduras and dedicated to piracy; and a colony of Choroteghi that had been pushed from Costa Rica to western Panama (Parita). All of these are extinct.