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Eighth grade A and eighth grade C students wait in line to board small motorboats with their English notes in hand. In the 20 minutes it takes them from Cartí Sugdub Island to the mainland, they still have time to review something for the exam. Before getting on the boat, Blanca, 13, puts her hand to her head and runs out. “I forgot my backpack at home,” she shouts as she runs through the alleys of this overpopulated island in the Panamanian Caribbean that is at risk of disappearing due to climate change. “Either you come quickly, or the boat will leave without you,” threatens her teacher.
On the boat, her classmates wait for her with backpacks on their knees and nerves on their faces, not only because of the English test. This morning in early June is the drill for the new school on the mainland, where they were moved due to the risk of flooding. This is the school they planned to start using soon, but none of them thought they would not set foot there again in the next three months. The facilities are still closed, ironically, due to lack of water.
Although Panama has been preparing for more than 10 years to become the first Latin American country to relocate an entire region as a result of global warming, the education of some 600 children has been put on the back burner. The classrooms on the island are deteriorated and are not immune to flooding, humidity or breezes. “It is very common for chairs to get wet and for water to leak,” explains teacher Bernadeth Navarro. special education teacher. “We really want to move to the other school. It is urgent, but a school this big cannot open without water.”
This school has 120 rooms planned for students from other islands in the archipelago who cannot travel back and forth every day. “I go back and forth to take my daughter. And crossing is a challenge because of the tide. We often arrive wet. We also have to get up earlier… It’s not easy,” says the teacher. Teachers fear that school dropouts will increase in the face of these difficulties. In 2022, more than 100,000 Panamanian children and young people had left school early. These minors were concentrated in the capital and areas where the indigenous population predominates. The difficulties in moving have a lot to do with the numbers of the indigenous communities.
The drill for the eighth graders coincided with a bittersweet day for the island’s residents. On June 3, the inhabitants of Cartí Sugdup were relocated to a neighborhood created exclusively for them on the mainland, leaving behind the life they knew. Rising sea levels due to global warming are making many of the islands of the paradisiacal archipelago of Guna Yala uninhabitable. Thus, the Government of Laurentino Cortizo has implemented a project that has been in discussion since the previous two mandates: to relocate at least 63 of the 365 Panamanian islands. According to studies led by Ligia Castro de Doens, director of Climate Change at the Ministry of Environment of Panama, none of them will be habitable by 2050. Blanca was the first to move.
In addition to the relocation of the homes, the government has promised to create a multilingual and multiethnic school just over a kilometre from Isber Yala, the neighbourhood where most of the 300 families from Cartí have already moved. According to some residents, most of them go to and from the island, but sleep on the mainland.
The change of Government last July, with the assumption of power of José Raúl Mulino, left the educational community in suspense. For this reason, a dozen mothers implored the former Minister of Education, Maruja Villalobos, during a visit to the island, to “pass the message” to whoever came next. “Don’t forget our children,” a mother asked, holding the former minister’s arm. “In this government we have wanted to take this seriously,” says Gregorio Green, national director of Bilingual Intercultural Education. “We hope to open at the end of August. Maybe in September they will be able to go to classes at the model school with a multiethnic curriculum,” he explains. Some islanders like Atilio Martínez, a Guna historian and community leader, are less optimistic and believe that there will be no classes there until next year.
Less than a month into her position, Green says by phone that they are carrying out a pilot plan to bring material in Guna, Bri Bri or Bunglé, among others, to the rural areas where the country’s eight indigenous communities are located. Although this plural agenda will not be taken into account in the city. “When we bring the texts and do the training for the teachers, I know that for many it will not be news, because they already did it. But now we want to follow up. And do it well,” she says. This plan has a budget of 65,000 dollars and is focused on ensuring that Law 88 does not remain just on paper.
This regulation, approved in 2010, recognizes cultural diversity as a historical value and part of the heritage of humanity and urges educational institutions to design plans that take into account the mother tongue and spirituality of the indigenous peoples of Panama. “For us, it is better not to lose our traditions,” explains the teacher. “We cannot tell children that they come from other places, we have to love what our ancestors left us. In addition, we have something that is not available in the capital and that is the way in which we love nature. We have to teach that in schools as well.”
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