Students in grades A and C of eighth grade wait in line to board small motorboats, their English notes in one hand. The 20 minutes it takes to get from the island of Cartí Sugdub to the mainland gives them time to study for their exam. Before getting on the boat, 13-year-old Blanca hits her forehead and starts running. “I forgot my backpack at home,” she screams as she runs through the alleys of the overpopulated Panamanian Caribbean island, which is in danger of disappearing due to climate change. “Come quickly, or the boat will leave without you,” warns her teacher.
On the ships, their classmates are waiting for them with their backpacks on their knees. Their faces betray nervousness, which is not only due to the upcoming exam. On this morning in early June, they are practicing the journey to their new school on the mainland, where they have been relocated due to the risk of flooding. They should make use of the new grounds quickly – none of them thought they would not set foot there for three months. Ironically, the facilities are closed due to a lack of water.
More than ten years ago, Panama was the first country in Latin America to relocate an entire community due to climate change. The education of the 600 children was secondary. The island’s classrooms are in poor condition and prone to flooding, humidity and strong winds. “It’s common for the chairs to get wet and there are leaks,” says special education teacher Bernadeth Navarro. “We can’t wait to move to a new school. It’s urgent, but a school this big can’t open if it doesn’t have water.”
The facility, whose construction was financed by the Inter-American Development Bank, would include 120 rooms for students from other islands in the archipelago who cannot commute home every day. “I come and go to pick up my daughter. The crossing is a challenge because of the tides. We are often wet when we arrive. Plus, we have to get up early… it’s not easy,” says Navarro.
Teachers fear that, given these difficulties, dropout rates will rise. In 2022, more than 100,000 Panamanian children and young people left school without completing their studies. These young people are concentrated in the capital and in areas where the population is mainly made up of indigenous peoples. Difficult travel distances are a major factor in these figures.
The students’ trial run coincides with a bittersweet day for the islanders. On June 3, the Cartí Sugdup community was relocated to a specially built neighborhood on the mainland, leaving their lives behind. Rising sea levels due to global warming are making many of the islands of the paradisiacal Guna Yala archipelago uninhabitable. And so the government of Laurentino Cortizo launched a project that had been discussed during the last two presidencies: the relocation of the inhabitants of at least 63 of Panama’s 365 islands. According to studies led by Ligia Castro de Doens, director of climate change at the Panamanian Ministry of the Environment, none of these islands will be habitable by 2050. The inhabitants of Blanca’s island were the first to be relocated.
In addition to relocating the population, the government also committed to building a multilingual and multi-ethnic school less than 800 meters from Isber Yala, the neighborhood where most of Cartí’s 300 families have moved. The majority, some locals say, come and go from the island but sleep on the mainland.
After the change of government last July, which elected José Raúl Mulino, the community was still waiting for its school. During their visit to the island, a dozen mothers implored former Education Minister Maruja Villalobos to pass that message on to her successor. “Don’t forget our children,” pleaded one mother, holding the former minister by the arm. “In this government we want to take this seriously,” says Gregorio Green, head of the National Directorate for Intercultural Bilingual Education. “We hope to open at the end of August. Possibly in September they will be able to attend classes at a model school with a multiethnic curriculum,” he says. Some islanders, like Atilio Martínez, a historian and community leader from Guna, are less optimistic and believe there will be no classes until next year.
Green has been in office for less than a month and says by phone that they are implementing a pilot plan to provide material in Guna, Bri Bri and Buglé, as well as other languages, in the rural areas where the country’s eight indigenous communities live. No such pluralistic program is planned in the city. “When we bring the texts and do the teacher training, I know that for many of them this is nothing new because they are already doing it. But now we want to support them. And support them well,” he says. The plan has a budget of $65,000 and its creators are determined that Law 88 will be more than just words on a page.
The regulation, approved in 2010, recognizes the historical value and heritage of cultural diversity and requires educational institutions to develop plans that take into account the native language and traditional spirituality of Panama’s indigenous peoples. “For us, it is better not to lose our traditions,” explains the teacher. “We cannot tell that to the children who come from elsewhere. We must love what our ancestors left us. We also have something that the capital does not have, and that is the way we love nature. We must also teach that in schools.”
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