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With its mighty rivers, rugged mountain chains and vast, impenetrable rainforests, Darien is in many ways much closer to South than to Central America, its incredible biological diversity matched only by the cultural diversity of its population, which is made up of three main groups: black, indigenous and colonist. Other than a few Kuna communities, the indigenous population of Darien is composed of two closely related but distinct peoples, the Wounaan and the more numerous Embera , classic semi-nomadic South American rainforest societies characterized by their traditional use of blowpipes for hunting and their encyclopedic knowledge of the rainforest. Easily recognizable by the black geometrical designs with which they decorate their bodies, the Embera-Wounaan have been migrating across the border from Colombia for the last two centuries. Only since the 1960s have they begun to settle in permanent villages and establish official recognition of their territorial rights in the form of a comarca , divided into two districts: the Comarca Embera Cemaco , in the north, and the Comarca Embera Sambu , in the southwest. The black people of Darien, descended from the cimarrones and released slaves, are known as Darienitas or libres (the free). Culturally distinct from the Afro-Antillano populations of Colon and Panama City, they live in the larger settlements, acting as intermediaries between the Embera-Wounaan and mainstream Panamanian society. The colonists , meanwhile, are the most recent arrivals, poor peasants driven off their lands in western Panama by expanding cattle ranches and encouraged to settle in Darien during the construction of the Darien Highway. Also known as interioranos , many colonists still wear their distinctive straw sombreros as a badge of identity and maintain the folk traditions of the regions they abandoned. The Darien Highway was built in the 1970s and early 1980s to open up the region's supposedly empty lands to colonization and to complete the last link in the Carretera Interamericana from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. At present it goes no further than Yaviza, 276km east of Panama City, and the 106km "Darien Gap" between the road systems of Panama and Colombia remains unbridged. Both governments are keen to complete the highway, but various factors have conspired to prevent this: the enormous expense; fears that a road link with Colombia would facilitate drug trafficking and the spread of foot-and-mouth disease from South America; and the opposition of environmentalists and indigenous groups. The environmental consequences of the progress that the highway was supposed to bring are sadly evident along its existing length: the lands on either side are heavily deforested, plundered by illegal logging companies and cleared and replaced by low-grade cattle pasture. For the moment the exceptionally rich rainforests that stand in the highway's path along the border are protected by the 5790-square-kilometre Parque Nacional Darien . Given the security concerns currently affecting the border area, including parts of the national park and the Comarca Embera Cemaco, a visit to southwestern Darien is a better option if you want to experience the ecology and culture of the region independently but without risking an encounter with armed groups. The provincial capital of La Palma , on the Pacific, is a good base from which to rent a boat to take you along the coast and up the Rio Sambu into the Comarca Embera Sambu.
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