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Abstract
Mola blouses, sewn and worn by Kuna Indian women living in Panama, display iconography from many sources and are subject to fashion trends. This study examines molas with iconography related to local, national, and international politics dating to the 1950s and 1960s that are found in museum and private collections. These mola designs suggest the wide political concerns of Kuna women from the time of universal suffrage in Panama, exercised from the 1948 election, until the early years of the military dictatorship that began in 1968. The motivation of Kuna women is explored in terms of their changing roles in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, and the political involvement of the Kuna people in Panamanian national politics. The purposeful promotion of political and social issues displayed on dress may be considered a direct form of activism.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Sophia Errey, Sherry Harlacher, and Ana Sanchez Laws for their constructive comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and also to thank the Editor and the anonymous reviewers very much for their valuable comments and suggestions.
Notes
1 The Introduction of Diana Marks, “The Kuna Mola: Dress, Politics and Cultural Survival,” Dress 40, no. 1 (2014) provides background information about the Kuna Indians living in the Kuna Yala. It also includes a description of how a mola blouse is sewn and worn as part of a dress ensemble, with a wrap skirt and a head scarf, and three illustrations show the mola being worn by Kuna women.
2 Rodelick Valdés Richard, “Analisis De Los Pocesoc Electorales De La Comarca Kuna Yala Desde 1932 Hasta 2009,” La Loteria 488, Enero/Febrero (2010), 66.
3 The Panama Railway was constructed 1851–1855; the French attempted to build a Panama canal 1880–1889, and the construction of the Panama Canal by the US took from 1904 to 1914.
4 In a representative sample of 247 molas, the majority were related to the natural environment and Kuna daily life. Print-based, brand, trademark, and political molas together comprised 8.5% of the sample. Four molas in this sample appeared to be inspired by political issues. Twenty-eight percent were not able to be categorized. The source of the sample was a reference collection of molas, developed for my doctoral research, from five US museums: the National Museum of Natural History, the National Museum of the American Indian, the Field Museum, the Logan Museum, and the Denison Museum, and the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin. Additional research in other museum and private collections confirmed the dearth of political molas. See EN 5 and Marks, “From Part to Whole: Developing an Appreciation of Kuna Molas as Collectibles,” Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture 13, no. 2 (2015): 161–162 for a discussion of mola design categories, especially ancestral designs.
5 Collections in the following museums include molas with political themes: the Denison Museum, at Denison University, Granville, OH; the Field Museum, Chicago; the Logan Museum of Anthropology, Beloit College, Beloit, WI; the Fowler Museum of Cultural History, UCLA, Los Angeles; MINPAKU, the National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka; the Museum fur Volkerkunde, Vienna; the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney; the National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC; and the William Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT. I have also examined political molas in private collections in the US, Germany, Japan, and Australia.
6 Marks, “The Evolution of the Kuna Mola: From Cultural Authentication to Cultural Survival” (PhD diss., RMIT University, 2012), 68. Detailed embroidery would not necessarily increase the time needed to sew a mola because the embroidery would take the place of appliqué work.
7 Mari Lyn Salvador, “Molas of the Cuna Indians: A Case Study of Artistic Criticism and Ethno-Aesthetics” (PhD diss., University of California, 1976), 139, refers to the aptitude of the Kuna women in obtaining novel designs and adapting designs from print and other sources. Also Michel Perrin, Magnificent Molas: The Art of the Kuna Indians, trans. Deke Dusinberre (Paris: Flammarion, 1999), 34.
8 Note that in a recently adopted orthography, the letters “C” and “K” do not appear, thus the new spelling of Guna instead of Kuna. The Kuna Yala comarca, formerly called the San Blas, is now referred to as the Guna Yala. This paper is based on earlier research in which the spelling used in the literature was Kuna or Cuna.
9 Panamanian census data recorded around 17,000 Kuna living in the San Blas in 1920, increasing to 19,000 in 1960. In 2010, 33,109 people lived in the Kuna Yala, including some non-Kuna people. The Kuna also live in other areas of Panama, mainly in Panama City. In 2010, 80,526 Kuna lived in Panama, which had a population of 3,661,835. Source www.contraloria.gob.pa, accessed November 13, 2015. Three main indigenous groups live in Panama: the Kuna—less than 20% of the indigenous population, the Guayani (Ngobe-Bugle)––more than half of the indigenous population, and the Choco (Embera–Wounan) as well as three smaller groups. The indigenous population in 2010 was 12.3% of the population of Panama. Source http://panama.unfpa.org/poblacion-panama, accessed November 14, 2015.
10 Karin E. Tice, Kuna Crafts, Gender, and the Global Economy (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995), 63–64. This book provides the social and economic background to the mola’s commercialization in detail.
11 Ibid., 101–102.
12 Ibid., 63–69.
13 Ibid., 63–64.
14 Marks, “The Evolution of the Kuna Mola,” 209–214.
15 Tice, Kuna Crafts, Gender, and the Global Economy, 68–69.
16 Deborah A. Deacon and Paula E. Calvin, War Imagery in Women's Textiles: An International Study of Weaving, Knitting, Sewing, Quilting, Rug Making and Other Fabric Arts (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014), 97–123.
17 Kirsty Robertson, “Rebellious Doilies and Subversive Stitches: Writing a Craftivist History,” in Extra/Ordinary: Craft and Contemporary Art, ed. Maria E. Buszek (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 186.
18 Betsy Greer claims to have developed the term. Betsy Greer, “Craftivist History,” in Extra/Ordinary: Craft and Contemporary Art, 183. For examples of craftivism projects, also see Greer, ed., Craftivism: The Art of Craft and Activism (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press), 2014.
19 Tanya Harrod, “The Making of Protest,” Crafts: The Magazine of Contemporary Crafts, July–August 2014. Also see http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/disobedient-objects/disobedient-objects-about-the-exhibition/, accessed November 24, 2015. Two examples of textile craft as protest are small issue-specific protest banners sewn in cross-stitch messages, attached to public sites in London in 2010 and a patchwork quilt with each individual patch containing a message, used at a staged installation at a gallery in Liverpool in 2010. Sarah Corbett and Sarah Housley, “The Craftivist Collective Guide to Craftivism,” Utopian Studies 22, no. 2 (2011): 344–351.
20 Rozsika Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine (London: Women's Press, 1984).
21 Theresa M. Winge and Marybeth C. Stalp, “Nothing Says Love Like a Skull and Crossbones Tea Cozy: Crafting Contemporary Subversive Handcrafts,” Craft Research 4, no. 1 (2013): 75.
22 This term is used by Fiona Hackney, “Quiet Activism and the New Amateur,” Design and Culture 5, no. 2 (2013): 179. In some cases of “quiet activism,” the intention may be subversive in the mind of the maker, however the presentation of the crafted object may not make the message overt.
23 This is noted by Kuna scholars including James Howe and Joel Sherzer, “Friend Hairyfish and Friend Rattlesnake, or, Keeping Anthropologists in Their Place,” Man, New Series 21, no. 4 (1986); Sherzer, “On Play, Joking, Humor, and Tricking in Kuna: The Agouti Story,” in Native Latin American Cultures through Their Discourse, ed. E. B. Basso (Bloomington: Indiana University Folklore Institute, 1990); Sherzer, ed., Stories, Myths, Chants, and Songs of the Kuna Indians, Llilas Translations from Latin America Series (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003).
24 The social aspects of knitting activism are discussed by Manuela Farinosi and Leopoldina Fortunati, “A New Fashion: Dressing up the Cities,” Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture 11, no. 3 (2013).
25 Margherita Margiotti, “Kinship and the Saturation of Life among the Kuna of Panama” (PhD diss., University of St Andrews, 2010); Margiotti, “Clothing Sociality: Materiality and the Everyday among the Kuna of Panama,” Journal of Material Culture 18, no. 4 (2013).
26 Salvador, “Kuna Women's Arts: Molas, Meaning, and Markets,” in Crafting Gender: Women and Folk Art in Latin America and the Caribbean, ed. E. Bartra (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 56–61; Marks, “The Evolution of the Kuna Mola,” 117–120.
27 Marks, “The Kuna Mola,” 22.
28 The 1970 Census found that 65% of the San Blas Kuna over ten years old were illiterate in the Spanish language, compared to the national rate of 10%. Sarah Foss, “Ahora Todos Somos Panameños: Kuna Identity and Panamanian Nationalism under the Torrijos Regime, 1968–1981” (MA thesis, Vanderbilt University, 2012), 19–20.
29 San Blas became politically independent from the province of Colon immediately after the 1968 military coup, and a separate electorate was created for the San Blas. Ibid., 22.
30 Valdes Richard, “Analisis De Los Pocesoc Electorales,” 66. In the 1936 election, over 1000 Kuna voted; in the 1940 election, 2738 Kuna voted. The Kuna people were recruited at the leadership level in 1945. The voting age of 21 was lowered to 18 in 1972. Paul W. Drake and Mathew D. McCubbins, The Origins of Liberty: Political and Economic Liberalization in the Modern World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 133–134.
31 A fourth division in the San Blas electorate, near the Colombian border, contains no Kuna population, effectively limiting Kuna representation in this electorate to three divisions. Twenty-two years of military rule ended in 1989 with a return to democratically elected representation.
32 Foss, “Ahora Todos Somos Panameños,” 14.
33 The short-lived 1941 constitution gave some educated women the right to vote. The political history of Panama is intricate and difficult to comprehend to a non-specialist in the field. I have relied on the sources noted. Scholarly interest in Kuna voting history is developing, for example Valdés Richard, “Analisis De Los Pocesoc”; Valdés Richard, El Voto Guna En La Historia Electoral Panameña (Panama: Tribunal Electoral, 2011); Valdés Richard, “Evolución Y Elección De Las Autoridades Tradicionales En La Comarca Gunayala,” La Loteria Año 5, Enero, no. 13 (2012). There were “elections” under the dictatorship, initially with all political parties banned.
34 For example Erland Nordenskiold, with Ruben Perez Kantule, An Historical and Ethnological Survey of the Cuna Indians, ed. Henry Wassen, vol. 10 (New York AMS, 1979 [1938]), 46–49; Regina E. Holloman, “Developmental Change in San Blas” (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 1969): 225–298. See also EN 36.
35 Note that most Kuna lived on the mainland until the move to the San Blas from the mid-1800s. Lionel Wafer, A New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America, ed. George Parker Winship (Cleveland: Imperial Press, 1903 [1699]) describes meetings and Councils in his account of his life amongst the Kuna Indians, without specifically outlining their political role.
36 Howe, The Kuna Gathering, 261.
37 Salvador, “Kuna Women's Arts,” 66.
38 Ibid. See also EN 52.
39 The author would greatly appreciate feedback from readers with suggestions for further researching the political molas and cartoons in this paper or who have knowledge of the original sources.
40 See EN 4 and EN 5 for collections examined.
41 Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, September 3–October 13, 2013. Source: http://benton.uconn.edu/handstitched-agendas/, accessed November 19, 2015. Fifteen political molas are in this collection of 300 molas, collected in the 1960s and 1970s.
42 Famous octopus cartoons include “The Curse of California,” 1882, US and “The Yellow Peril,” 1886, Australia.
43 Ann Parker and Avon Neal, Molas: Folk Art of the Cuna Indians (Barre, MA: Barre, 1977), 211.
44 Foss, “Ahora Todos Somos Panamenos,” 13.
45 Ibid.
46 The influence of Arnulfo Arias spanned many decades in Panama. He supported his brother in the 1931 election when Harmodio Arias became President; his first period as President was in 1940, and his last was in 1968. The Arias brothers were influenced by the nationalist racist policies espoused in Germany and Italy in the 1930s. Arnulfo Arias was possibly exposed to white eugenicist views during the time he was studying medicine at Harvard in the 1920s. Arnulfo Arias served as Panama’s Ambassador to Italy in the mid-1930s and reportedly met with Hitler in 1937. Various sources are in The University of California–San Diego Library website (UCSD), which contains an excellent archive of Latin American election source material. http://libraries.ucsd.edu/collections/about/collections-of-distinction/latin-american-elections-statistics/index.html. Retrieved March 26, 2015. Some of these sources are not easily available, and information about Panamanian elections and events is acknowledged.
47 Ana L. Sanchez Laws, “Panamanian Museums: History, Contexts and Contemporary Debates” (PhD diss., University of Bergen, 2009), 64.
48 Arias was also known to be anti-Asian, anti-Arab, and anti-Semitic, as well as anti-US. Sources same as EN 46.
49 Sanchez Laws, “Panamanian Museums,” 65.
50 Sources same as EN 46.
51 Sources same as EN 46.
52 Louise Agnew, “Symbolic Communication and Decoration of the San Blas Cuna” (PhD diss., Illinois Institute of Technology, 1956), Part III, 233–235, 239. The mola in FIGURE is not an exact replication, but resembles the poster closely.
53 An exception is a mola blouse collected in 1984 (private collector) with no candidates identified, just the wording “Vota Liberal” and “Partido Liberal.” This party was part of the military government’s coalition for the 1984 election, which won by a very small margin. Orlando J Pérez, Political Culture in Panama: Democracy after Invasion (London: Palgrave McMillan, 2010), 69–70.
54 Jeannette R. Mueller, Molas: Art of the Cuna Indians (Washington, DC: Textile Museum, 1973), 25. Exhibition catalog published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name at the Textile Museum April 3, 1973–September 9, 1973.
55 Double quotation marks have been sewn on the mola after the tenth letter. In the newspaper La Estrella de Panama, January 10, 1964, on the editorial page, in the header above a photograph are the same words, with quotation marks within a phrase Pantalla de “LaEstrella” [sic]. See http://panamapoesia.com/9eneroLaEstrella10.php, accessed December 5, 2015.
56 The assistance of Francisco Herrera in interpreting the possible double meanings of the lettering in FIGURE is appreciated.
57 Examples are given by Mohd Shahrudin Abd Manan and Chris L. Smith, “Text, Textiles and Technê: On the Barthesian Myth of the T-Shirt,” Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture 12, no. 2 (2014).
58 A 2014 exhibition at UCLA “Yards of Style, African-Print Cloths of Ghana” included examples. Political fabric is sometimes distributed as a gift by politicians and sewn into garments to be worn at campaign events.
59 Marks, “The Evolution of the Kuna Mola,” 128–140. The method included scaled measurements of molas in museum collections, which were compared to contemporaneous archival photographs of women wearing mola blouses. For some designs, especially those with bilateral symmetry, I could assess the amount of a panel obscured by the skirt by estimating the part of the design not seen. See also Marks, “The Kuna Mola,” 20–23.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Diana Marks
Diana Marks completed her doctorate on the development of the Kuna Indian mola blouse, using an interdisciplinary approach, which included the examination of molas in museum and private collections, and archival photographs. Her current research includes studying the iconography on molas. Her first article in Dress (40, no. 1), covered the period 1900–1950, and looked at how Kuna men defended the right of Kuna women to wear the mola and the political ramifications of attempts to prohibit it. This second article provides examples of molas commencing from the 1950s, when molas directly referencing political parties and candidates began to appear.