COCAINE INTRUDES ON PARADISE

Addiction Is Threat To Kuna Independence

ACHUTUPO . After keeping the world at bay for five centuries, the
Kuna Indians on Panama's unspoiled Caribbean coast now confront an
insidious intruder: cocaine traffickers.

The fiercely independent tribe inhabits Kuna Yala, a semiautonomous
area that includes a coastal strip and the San Blas islands. The
region is known mainly to foreign eco-tourists who can afford to
reach its isolated white sand beaches.

The Kuna have fought off incursions by Spanish conquistadors, rubber
growers, gold miners and, most recently, tourism promoters who ply
them with a steady stream of resort proposals. But they jealously
protect their sovereignty, won after a bloody uprising in 1925.
Today, the tribe permits no outside ownership of its land.

The Kuna control almost 400 picture-postcard islands but inhabit
fewer than 50 of them, which are crammed with bamboo-sided,
thatch-roofed huts. The women are known for gaily colored dresses and
for their embroidered molas, or tapestries, coveted souvenirs. Men
spend the day fishing, gathering coconuts and catching lobsters.

"Foreigners often view the Kuna as simple mola makers with hardly a
care in the world, but it is they who decide when and if outsiders,
including Panamanian police and other authorities, can enter their
lands," said Scott Doggett, author of Lonely Planet's Panama guide.

In the past few years, however, the Kuna have faced an interloper
that has proved difficult to fend off -- and has brought the scourge
of addiction.

The 200-mile-long Kuna lands lie just south of a transit route for
Colombian drugs on their way to the U.S. market, much of them stowed
aboard sleek boats often outfitted with a trio of 200-horsepower
engines and guided by satellite positioning systems.

A consequence of the increasing drug traffic is the increase in drugs
that wash ashore, dumped by drug runners to avoid detection or to be
picked up by associates. The cocaine then gets sold or used locally.

The so-called go-fast boats have proved elusive to U.S. and
Panamanian authorities trying to stem the flow of drugs. They are
difficult to track and intercept because their speeds reach 80 mph
and they travel at night.

Officials who run the U.S.-Panamanian drug interdiction program say
they have had success recently in catching some of the boats. This
nation's top anti-drug prosecutor, Patricio Candanedo, said that in
2005, Panama seized 35 tons of cocaine in seaborne raids, nearly four
times as much as in 2004.

One American official said the anti-drug efforts have been helped by
a U.S. gift of several go-fast boats that Panamanian law enforcers
use to chase down the drug runners.

But the surveillance has pushed drug boats' skippers to run closer to
Kuna Yala shores so they can ditch their boats and cargo on shorter notice.

And that has increased the incidence of what the locals call "ocean
jackpots," or the recovery by Kuna tribesmen of cocaine that is then
distributed locally. On some islands, up to half of Kuna men between
18 and 25 are addicts, said pharmacist assistant Galindo Morales, a
health-clinic worker.

Residents still talk about an incident over the summer that brought
home the risks of being close to a narcotics shipping lane. After a
boat loaded with a ton of cocaine beached on the mainland in June
with mechanical problems, the skipper asked a fisherman to stand
guard over the cargo.

Instead, the Kuna tribesman sold it to traffickers in Colon for
$700,000, according to several island sources. Traffickers returned
days later to find their merchandise gone and threatened the entire
population of Achutupo with death.

Terrified, elders then made an almost unheard-of appeal to the
Panamanian government for police protection. For a time, 40 police
officers stood guard over the island waiting for the reprisal from
drug runners. Today, four remain on constant watch.