Guaymí

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Guaymí or Ngäbe are an indigenous group living mainly within the Ngäbe-Bugle comarca (or reserve) in the Western Panamanian provinces of Veraguas, Chiriquí and Bocas del Toro. Guaymí is the traditional term for the Ngäbe and is derived from the Buglere term for them (guaymiri). Local newspapers and other print media usually misspell the name Ngäbe as Ngobe or Ngöbe because Spanish does not contain the sound represented by ä, a low-back rounded a, slightly higher than the English aw in the word saw and Spanish speakers hear ä as either an o or an a. The Ngäbe and the Buglere are distinct languages in the Chibchan language family. They are mutually unintelligible. The language spoken by the Ngäbe is Ngäbere. There are approximately 200,00-250,000 speakers of Ngäbere today. A sizable number of Ngäbe have migrate to Costa Rica in search of work on the coffee fincas.

The Guaymí are mainly subsistence farmers. On the Pacific slopes, the main crops are rice, corn, yucca, otoy, ñame (both tubers), several species of beans. Small-scale livestock production of chickens and pigs is maintained and in the higher elevations is supplemented by hunting. The primary crop for the Guaymí on the Atlantic slopes is green bananas.

In order to obtain money many Guaymí resort to working in the cash economy. Coffee picking, work on large cattle farms and work on banana plantations provide the main source of cash.