Panama’s Guna Yala is, in many ways, the antithesis of the glossy magazine version of a Caribbean destination: The archipelago (formerly known as San Blas) has no resort hotels, no cruise ships, no teens on jet skis. Almost all the 32,000 people who live on its 49 inhabited islands (of 365 total) are Guna, the first Indigenous community in Latin America to gain political autonomy exactly 100 years ago, in 1925. Beyond the polychromatic reefs and alabaster sands, the most Caribbean thing about Guna Yala may be the dilemma it faces in the fight against rising sea levels.

“There are times when my island is like Venice in Italy with water flooding through the streets,” Gilberto Alemancia, director of the Indigenous Tourism Network of Panama, told me on an October visit to Gardi Sugdub (Crab Island). “You can see little fishes swimming down the road.”

In June 2024, the Panamanian government evacuated 182 families from Gardi Sugdub, including Alemancia’s, and settled them in Isberyala, a modern, concrete community one mile away on the mainland that the state developed at a cost of about $12 million. Another 28 families—about 200 people—stayed behind in traditional cane and bamboo homes. The event sparked global headlines about some of the first climate-change refugees in the Americas… (continue reading at AFAR)