 Welcome to this presentation sponsored by the Science Circle. We're going to be discussing the Mola art in aesthetics among the Kuna people, which is a unique Native American art form from Panama. And of course, thank you again, Science Circle, and thank you all for attending. We're in the middle of pandemic crisis and you've taken time out of your life to come hang out with us and hopefully I can help transport you into another world for a short period. Before we get into the Mola art, I just like to talk a little bit about the main ideas. Now, it was really difficult for me to decide what are the principal ideas behind these talks that I've been giving about Indigenous culture. So this is what I've chosen to share with you. So if you think about it, history and organized religion and writing, it's really only about 2,000 to 10,000 years old. 2,000 maybe in Europe and 6,000 years in some of the other continents. So before that, for hundreds of thousands of years, and we can debate how old our species actually is, but some say 200, some say 800,000. So 400,000 years is a nice round number when you're dealing with such large numbers. We universally believed in spirits as best that we can tell. That is, in this prehistoric period, plants, animals and natural phenomena was imbued with life and they had an intention and they could interact with humanity and humanity talk to these spirits and solicited their assistance in their human affairs. So if you think about it, for that long period of time, as best we can tell, this is what human beings consider the nature of their world, their universe and their cosmology. So the traditional people of the world, whether they're in Asia, Africa or South America, America, Oceania, they are caretakers of this sophisticated system of thought that is carefully encoded in a wide variety of cultural components such as art, music, dance, narratives, language, ritual, symbols, belief and assistance practices. And we're just going to look at one of those components today and that is art. And we often forget that this tradition powerfully impacted the evolution of culture and human consciousness. So those are my big ideas for what it's worth. So the folks that we're going to look at today are the Kuna and you'll see the spelling is variable in the literature. First it was Kuna with a C, then it was Kuna with a K and now it's Kuna with a G. But it's all pronounced the same. Quite frankly, I think the Kuna people just like messing with us. So they change the orthography of their tribal name or their cultural name. But these are folks that live in the tropical rainforest. They're subsistence-holed and culturalists who fish hunt and gather from the forest in the Caribbean Sea. But since the beginning of contact with Europeans and probably before, they had an enduring tradition of trade and commerce and they're well known for being excellent traders. And there's two main groups of Kuna. Those who live on the coral islands off the coast in the Caribbean Ocean of the Republic of Panama and those who live in inland villages in the Darien, which is the eastern Panama located on the border with Columbia. And the Kuna maintain a strong sense of cultural identity and they have a traditional political system of chiefs and they have relative cultural autonomy in their comarca lands. And comarcas are the names that we give to the indigenous lands that have been ceded to them by the government through treaty. And they were able to engender this particular autonomy over their tribal lands in a revolution called the Dule Revolution in 1925. And Jim Howe, he's an anthropologist who worked with the Kuna. He wrote a book about their political system and he titled it, The People Who Would Not Kneel. And quite frankly, the Kuna liked the name of that book. They appreciate Jim's title because that's the kind of people they think they are and that has been their political strategy since the beginning of contact. About 70,000 Dule Gallaga speakers, Kuna speakers. And they're well known for their mola textile art and it's an important source of funds, of economic influence. So Balboa arrives in the Darien in 1513. But in the late 1400s, the Spanish built the first European settlement on the continent of the New World in Kuna Yala land. It was a place called El Real de Santa Maria de la Antigua. And it was built along Caribbean coast in the area inhabited by the Kuna. So the Kuna then have been in constant contact with Europeans. Yet they have maintained a strong sense of cultural identity and integrity. And Balboa is seen here claiming the Pacific Ocean for all of Spain and the lands that touched the Pacific Ocean. So he arrived at this place. We know the approximate location of where this was. He crossed over the continental divide from the Caribbean Sea and he arrived here. It was a huge mud flat. So he didn't want to go out and symbolically claim all the land for Spain on a mud flat. So they waited for the 18 foot tide to come in. And then he went out and stood in the water. He says, this land belongs to the king and queen of Spain forever in a day. And anyone who doesn't believe this will taste the blade of my sword or something like that. And this included the entire Pacific Ocean, which I don't think he understood quite how large this place was. And there's been a number of contacts with the Kuna over the years. One of the most interesting was this guy Lionel Wafer in the late 1600s. He was associated with some Buccaneers who were raiding along the coast of Panama. And he got hit by a poison arrow and the Kuna took him in. And he spent a significant amount of time with them. And he was kind of a scientifically bet. And so he actually wrote about their natural history, their culture, their shamanism, and their language and all kinds of things like this. So this was one of the first opportunities that Europeans got to appreciate the more sophisticated aspects of indigenous life because he himself spent a significant amount of time. And he created these beautiful plates that are some of the earliest graphic representations of Kuna culture from then the late 600s. And moving on in time, we now arrive to the 1800s. And of course, there were a number of surveys in Panama about where to put the potential canal that would be coming in decades in the future. And this is a lithographic plate of a Kuna village in the Darien 1876 Armando Recluse expedition. He was an early explorer. And as you can see, the Kuna tradition lived in tax-free houses. They practiced this as a horticulture and hunted and gathered from the nearby tropical forests and fish from the streams, rivers and the Caribbean Sea. However, from early times, they learned to be shrewd traders, as we mentioned before. And you can see on the map, the approximate location of the different comarques in Panama and circled in red are the three comarques of the Kuna, Comarca de Kuna Yala, Comarca Kuna de Madugandí and Comarca Kuna de Madugandí. And so these are the three indigenous lands. So in Panama, indigenous cultures control about one-tenth of the geography of Panama, one-tenth of the population. And of course, they're caretakers of one of the largest tracts of old growth forest in Central America. As you can see, there are other indigenous groups in Panama, including the neighbors to the Kuna, which is the Embanahualanan culture. And those are the folks that I spent most of my research and my time working with as a cultural anthropologist. So these are some historic photographs that show the lifestyle. You can see these are coral islands with white beach sand and thatched roof buildings. Coconut palms are a very important source of income. They have been trading coconuts with Colombian traders, especially for cloth to make molas for many decades. And here is a historic scene of a Kuna village before the invention of outboards. And of course, in the 60s and 70s, outboard motors became popular, but there are still kayukas or boats with sails in Kuna Yala. See the mainland in the background to the right? That's where the Kuna have to go to hunt and to farm and to fish the freshwater streams. Another close-up of their mode of transportation. So each one of these coconuts was worth a half dollar or peso. And so they are an important source of income for Kuna families even to this day. And here is a picture of Kuna folks. As you can see, the women are dressed in traditional dress and the blouse that the woman to the left is wearing is a mola bow. So you can see the mola on the back. And they also have pierced noses, which are kind of going out of style in the modern era. But long noses are thought to be beautiful. And let's see. The Kuna word means the golden people. So you can see why they might consider themselves the people who would not kneel if you were the golden people. Here's a picture of an extended family group. Notice that the Kuna women wearing very traditional dress, which they wear to this day. And the men wearing western clothes, which is not surprising for decades Kuna men have been wearing western clothes. Here's a picture of a village scene. Notice the albino in the woman. Albinism is common among the Kuna. They have the highest rate of albinism in the world. So their rate of albinism has been a number of scientists have studied it. So a picture of a Kuna family. Notice that as the boys get older, they adopt western dress and as the girls get older, they adopt traditional dress. Notice the gentleman on the right. This gentleman is a chief or a casita. And he's wearing the hat of wisdom. When you put on your hat, you put on wisdom. And so to go to Congress, the males, they put on their hat, especially the leadership and casiquets. And notice he's carrying a staff. This is no ordinary staff. This is a shaman staff that he uses to communicate with the spirit world. And now we get to molas. So I think the first thing to say about molas is that they are reverse applique embroidery of multiple layers of cloth. And each layer is peeled back and sewn in patterns to reveal the design underneath. And each blouse has two matching panels. So the mola design can be influenced by almost anything that a Kuna woman might see. Myths, spirits, cultural heroes, forests or marine creatures, or perhaps a design from a comic book or a can of baking powder or Coke bottle. Because of the complexity of its creation, each design must be well established and clearly visualized by the woman artist before she starts to go to work. And each mola has a front and a back. And the pair has to be matched. So here you can see a matching pair of molas. And you can see tiny changes from the front to the back, a little different color variation, a little different design variation. But it is critical that the that the execution that the execution of the mola design have have themes in common. And you can see that in in this mola that represents most likely a sea creature. And every mola tells a story. So here is a wonderful story in the Neil and Parker book. I'll show you the reference where the moon child, which is what people who are albinos are called, has to go out and shoot this flying reptile in in the heart because he's eaten the moon. And so in order to restore natural order from an eclipse, a moon child has to go out and shoot the supernatural arrow in into the heart of the beast to cause it to release the moon. And that's documented in this particular and this particular mola. So what we would like to do is we'd like to take a look at one mola in particular that I've highlighted from my collection. So every mola tells a story. So let's take a look at this mola and see how many details you recognize. So I'm going to give you a moment to take a look at what's going on here. Are you looking? Are you looking? Okay, you are looking. Okay, great. Okay, here we go. Are you ready? So what we want to do is we want to execute our anthropological ethnographic powers of interpretation to take a look at what's going on in this mola. First, did you get the three feminine spirits? So in the sander is a shamanic spirit woman. Her arms are outstretched and below her she's riding on the back of an aquatic feminine spirit who is swimming forcefully through the water and above them protecting them overarching them is a celestial feminine spirit. Notice we know that she's feminine because she has the same sort of hair of the other two spirits and notice the hand of the central shamanic woman is touching the face of the celestial spirit woman and just below her face you can see her breasts. So these are three feminine spirits. Now here we go. And the author of this mola has chosen to place them within a supernatural landscape and she has surrounded that landscape with this outline. It's not round, it's not oval, it is this irregular shape but this is what I would consider the supernatural portal or the new portal into the supernatural landscape. And of course there is a collaborative and coordinated powerful movement towards the goal. Now we have no idea what the goal is but whatever it is they seem very very intent on getting there and they're working together. As you can see the stroke forward by the aquatic feminine spirit through the water very determined stroke. You can see the arching curve of the celestial feminine spirits protection encapsulating the two other the two other feminine spirits. Are these resting? Are these resting? No doubt Kuna and Egypt had contact with saving Canadians. Okay yes okay thanks Mike. Yeah okay well good by the way you see these cubes to the left of me any of you guys that are going to give presentations that have high resolution slides put your slides on those cubes put them in the venue the day before and your slides will res correctly how about that that was a that was a surprising that worked so well because otherwise these were taking like five six seven seconds to res. Okay look at the look at the mouths of these two spirit women something's coming out of it maybe that is supposed to represent shouting or maybe it represents sacred tobacco smoke we don't know we don't know but it was obviously put there to represent and notice the aquatic feminine spirit she has not just one necklace but two but the others don't have necklaces why is that well we don't know the answer to that either and notice that the aquatic spirit has four fingers so if you stretch your hands out in a forceful stroke you have only you have you have only four fingers showing and that was of course the the mola makers choice as well but yet the protected celestial feminine spirit has five so if you put your hands down as if you are are protecting something you show five fingers but if you're stroking through the water you show four fingers the mola maker she did this on purpose this was not by chance this was not by chance i just you know use those details to appreciate how sophisticated the the the vision of the mola maker was before she went to work and of course did you read did you see the the amulets around the the arms of the of the shaman feminine spirit and those perhaps are power amulets or something like that we we're not sure but is accompanied by two birds these are probably spirit helpers okay animal spirit helpers they look like parrots but we're not quite sure well it says if you're holding your hands out and you say go forth you don't put your thumbs up you tuck your thumbs in so that's why she has four digits i think that this was on purpose and then notice that it's all set within a celestial landscape stars in four corners and one below and that star below is not there by accident she put it there on purpose and so what this indicates to me is that this supernatural portal is taking place within a celestial domain surrounded by stars and notice that the the feminine spirit protecting them has stars and the only star that is outside of of the feminine spirits body or outside of the edges of the of the portal is that one star next to the bird on the left why is that why is that well i don't know i don't know now notice the fine embroidery inside the birds and the heads in the body of the feminine spirits and so that fills the space the kuna women's aesthetic are compelled to put stuff in the empty spaces and then notice in the left and right the triangles those triangles are there to occupy occupy the space and in the body of the aquatic feminine spirit is also rectangles or parallel pipeds that actually fill fill fill the space if you go to the exhibit at cvl and i invite you all to go there at the community virtual library that we've put up about the embonon and the kuna cultures there's a video of a kuna woman making a mola and she says that once she puts the these space fillers in the mola comes alive and so those space fillers are the kuna mola's aesthetic strategy for making the mola come alive okay so there you go the mola represents presents a powerful spirit woman protected and enabled by her aquatic terrestrial and feminine spirit helpers as she soars across the water for her unknown mission what does it all mean perhaps it is one of the many kuna myths or a representation of a kuna feminine culture hero but it could just as well be a fanciful representation of an image adapted from a comic book you would have to ask the masterful kuna artists to be sure well as you look at this mola now i hope you see a lot more stuff than you did initially and if you do i would like to suggest that that is the power of interpretation that is what anthropologists do as ethnographers they attempt to appreciate the complexity and detail of of culture and then interpret it in a way that we could potentially uh potentially understand and so we go to the pair so this mola is equivalently imbued with detail and it happens to be the mola pair of the one that you just saw previously and we can subject it to an equivalent analysis but we won't but i would like to say that the mola has always come in a matched pair so this is the front in the back so this is a winged spirit woman mola this masterfully executed mola may be an angel from christian iconography but it is more likely a feminine winged spirit being that is a spirit master of nature notice all the plant floral images including the stamen and flower position in front of her as if it was an altar it appears to be communicating with or praying to spirits in the botanical domain at least that's my interpretation now this mola represents a traditional design so mola artists exploit complex colored combinations in this case a bright orange and primary red and blue to get this powerful visual effect of movement and shimmery and if you take a look you can see the the detail of of of that effect and you can see the colors notice that this red and orange combination is quite common and in the last time i gave this talk someone asked me why are they all red and so as you can see in molas a red is very common color and it turns out that vixia or a lana or we a achiote in spanish we call it anato in english was a important body paint before the invention of mola culture and so it is a bright red orange so i think that that may be one of the reasons why red is such a popular color for mola designs now here's the 50 cent piece and you can see the stitching and how complex the stitching is in this very finely executed mola now here you have another mola with the same similar shimmering color effect this is also a traditional geometric design and as you can imagine there are many different kinds of molas but one of the most traditional are these geometric designs which i think also come from body paint another geometric design similar shimmering color effect but in this case orange red and blue color combinations to create this to create this mola now here's a similar color combination but a zoomorphic so this is a frog or a turtle and notice that it's double headed this double headed design is very common in molas and this is also a traditional mola design and the double headed theme is quite common as we'll see in a couple a couple other slides here are appears to be what might be a botanical mola but it's probably not these are probably spirit beings six spirit creatures notice again the double headed theme and if you look at the head you will see two eyes and a nose at least on the ones on the left and right so this leads me to believe this is not a floral mola it's not a botanical mola it's not a geometric mola but a mola of six spirit beings three creatures with double head now here we have a zoomorphic mola of a dog and and perhaps a predatory bird there are many predatory birds in kunayala the harpy eagle is the largest but this is probably not a harpy because it doesn't have a crest so this is probably some other kinds of eagle or or a hawk and in appears in in combat with a fluffy eared dog so there are geometric molas there are zoomorphic molas there are botanical molas and then there are molas that are adapted from any other kind of image that the mola maker might come into contact with and here's an interesting example this is a mola that comes from a polychrome pot polychrome plate from co clay culture a prehistoric culture that is now extinct and the co clay ceramics or co co clay polychromes are some of the most sophisticated polychromes in in in any indigenous pottery throughout the world and this particular a design was adopted for a mola so here we have prehistoric culture influencing mola design among a modern traditional modern traditional culture and it also turns out to be be a design that was used for one of the tv stations in Panama as well okay now we haven't talked too much about modern culture because this is really about mola art and aesthetics but of course molas are important source of of income for the cuna and as you look at the screen you can see this young girl uh six seven or eight years old and she's tending the store if you look at the molas you can see many of the molas have their pair so i always tried to buy molas and the molas that you see represented here are mostly molas that i bought when i was a young man and so they're uh many of them are are antique molas but uh sometimes tourists come and they just buy one of the pair so the pair gets separated forever but you can see on the thatched wall that many of the molas come in pairs notice the shovel on the right that shovel is not a shovel that is a symbol of one of the political parties one of the many political parties in so of course anything is a subject of of a mola of of a mola design notice the crosses those are most likely christian crosses in the right hand side oh and by the way if you think that this young lady is not going to drive a hard bargain you've never dealt with a kuna trader this young girl will make sure she gets fair value or anything that you tell you guaranteed and of course the uh in kunayala sometimes tourists come to the islands and so could a women sit out their molas on clothes lines and and stand around and bargain with the tourists but the kuna have very strict rules about engagement with outsiders uh normally except for a few isolated cases you cannot spend the night in kuna yala unless specifically invited by the congress and of course you can see that they maintain many of their traditions including wearing traditional dress which is very distinctive when you walk on downtown panama city and of course i would like to make a couple recommendations for any of you folks that might want to look into the mola textile art or kuna culture the single best book on kuna culture is the art of being kuna layers of mean among the kuna uh of of panama uh and uh if you wish look specifically at traditional kuna textile art i'd like you to record i'd like to recommend this book the mola by edith uh crouch a good friend of our family and she's written an excellent book one of the older books on uh on on on mola design and and mola art is the neil and parker book and it is this book that i took the picture of the moon child shooting the supernatural arrow into the heart of the of the winged reptile now in order to exhibit all of this stuff the community virtual library has been uh very generous in providing uh space to build an exhibit and we have multiple portions of the exhibit uh we have a gallery of molas the hall of the big molas and ethnography of the molas but we also highlight some of my other research with the embana and perhaps if the science circle is interested we could talk about that on some other later date and i invite you all to come to the ethnographic exhibit if you haven't i will be there after this talk if you'd like to visit i'd be happy to escort you around uh this is the mola gallery and you can get copies of the molas if you wish and uh um the uh the green sign that says the mola gallery is a mola giver so you can click on it and get one of the 38 different mola textiles if you are interested in doing that so there we go so i would just like to say uh thank you to the science circle for for supporting this and i hope that i have been able to transport you uh to the rainforest of kunayala of eastern panama for a short moment a place uh where we can appreciate the feminine craftsmanship of kuna visionary indigenous textile art and their rather complex aesthetics and maybe just maybe provide you with a peak at a unique society whose traditions and cultural heritage heritage represents an unbroken lineage into our own tribal past that existed for hundreds of thousands of years and has certainly played a key role in shaping our own cultural heritage and the nature of human consciousness thank you now very god did you have any questions for me so i wasn't able to watch chat while i was talking so if you do uh if if you do have any questions you you'll probably have to repeat them in chat or have barragon voice them to me uh hello yes this is barragon uh so bill i did i did just quickly want to uh touch base in the first uh mola um there are upside down crosses and i remember in uh one of your other presentations you mentioned that you know that's not necessarily a satanic image or or even christian at all and could you elaborate on that a little bit for us well of course in mola as you see designs that are used throughout the world and of course the cross is a common design not just a christianity and uh if you remember you can see here in the picture behind me that the crosses that she's wearing they're almost symmetrical in size and i would consider those to be uh power amulets of the female shaman so that's how i interpret that this doesn't appear to be anything from christian iconography okay okay so there is a question from uh i want i have a question oh yeah i haven't seen it in continuation of what barragon was saying uh do you know how old um these designs are because i would like to know if there is a possibility that they were influenced by the conquest oh absolutely uh the early geometric molas probably are direct descendants from uh body painting and they used uh they used uh wooden rollers to create complex designs on on their bodies but um as you can imagine from the late 1400s the kuna had contract contact with european culture so molas there are many molas that have any number of different kinds of of of iconography from western culture i've seen batman molas superman molas spider man molas are popular and uh almost any subject is suitable for inclusion in a mola design but of course many molas represent kuna miss or many molas represent the geometric designs as well or zomorphic designs that they get from the rainforest around them but anything i've seen a baking powder molas from the iconic head of an indian person on baking powder i've seen that made into a molas so of course western culture is creeped into molas designs in oh so many ways um uh bill uh kind of continuing uh with that spot uh with um uh sort of european infiltration into the new world uh do horses have much of an influence in uh kuna culture or is it sort of too forested and jungly for horses to have really um you know found found a found a home uh with the kuna well that's a good question because the horse was well adapted and integrated well integrated into the culture of the plains indians from the earliest times but indigenous in panama for the most part are focused on the domestic animals of chickens ducks and pigs like traditional people everywhere in the world uh horses and cattle are not common among the kuna and the embana among the no bay which are in western panama uh some no bay families have horses for transportation but in the rainforest uh neither the kuna uh the embana or well non uh generally speaking do not raise horses or cattle and that's a very important concept because cattle require huge amounts of deforested land for pasture in order to maintain them and so indigenous people have not adapted cattle culture and with it the associated horse culture right that's uh that's part of the pressures on the on the amazon forest is to deforest it for for cattle grazing ursa electra asks when did the first modern molas appear did they wear clothes in the 19th century and before and i'm i'll follow up that too it like sort of how old are the oldest molas that we know of that's a good question uh molak culture came into play in the 1800s uh before that the indigenous people went bare breasted the embana to this day go bare breasted when they're when they are in there alone in their community and the kuna went bare breasted as well and so with the advent of missionaries and and so forth it created a sense of embarrassment i think for women to be bare breasted uh and so the kuna adopted this blouse strategy and it has a direct descendant and direct relationship with body painting and that's why the geometric molas are some of the earliest molas that we know of from the 1800s however the embana people who live next door they're bare breasted to this day and they use the same body paints that the kuna use uh the purple body paint that comes from jennipa americanum and the bright orange red body paint that comes from pixa oralana and these are the two body paints that you see throughout the amazonian era to this day but uh i think that molas were a response to the embarrassment of western observers like missionaries who came and visited them in the 1800s and mist asked a question here in chat about the evolution of wearing a hat indicate leadership is is interesting they're not the only culture to consider the hat the formal symbol of of of political leadership and of course of in among the kuna it's considered the hat of wisdom so when you put on your hat and go to congress you're putting on the solemn responsibility of being wise and making political decisions that benefit your community and i think that this was uh uh probably influenced by the 1700s in the 1800s where it was a tradition for western people western men to wear hats which has gone out of style these days but the kuna still maintain this culture of and the symbolism of the hat as representing uh wisdom and they put it on when they go to congress varagon something else uh not for me oh i see here's another one from miss discuss the difference between mong and kuna textile art well mong in kuna textile art look a lot of same because it's both an applique method the kuna textile art is a reverse applique and the mong uh textile art is a positive applique instead of reverse applique but they both have similar kinds of geometric designs they both attempt to represent scenes from uh traditional life and and so they are completely separated uh so there is no historical influence between the two groups but they have both invented a textile art that has many characteristic good that's a very good question something else anything else okay well thank you thank you all so much for coming out in the pandemic uh spending some time i hope you enjoyed our little our little trip to kuna yalla and i hope that it helps you uh appreciate the complexity and the visionary art of of of kuna women and please don't hesitate to come visit us at the exhibit in the community virtual library we'd be happy to show you around and thank you so much to chantel and the science circle team for putting this on giving us an opportunity to talk about uh anthropology as social science in the process of education and folk art among the kuna