Life.Culture.Discovery.

Tourism as a preserver of traditions – in Panama it engages youth in the country’s culture while creating for visitors memories that last a lifetime

Villagers and visitors in Pedasí, Panama, build mud-brick houses together, keeping alive a rural matrimonial tradition and passing it on to the country’s youth

‘We’re building tourism with values to pass the generational baton,’ the tourism minister says, with a goal of making Panama a leader in sustainable tourism

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People in Pedasi take part in the junta de embarre, in Panama. Building mud houses is one of the activities that tourists can take part in as the country attempts to keep dying traditions alive. Photo: Steph Dyson

Published: 7:45pm, 26 Mar 2022

It’s the afternoon of a blazing hot day in the town of Pedasí, on Panama’s Pacific coast, 325km (200 miles) south of the capital, Panama City. The air throbs as a live band belts out rhythmic, drum-filled folk music.

Buoyed by the festive atmosphere, villagers and visitors alike stand shoulder to shoulder as they embark on a muddy march forwards across a 10-metre (33 feet) plot of foot-churned earth, shimmying, bouncing and slipping as they go.

As they reach the edge of the quagmire, other villagers – aged anywhere between 40 and 90; coated in a glossy shell of mud, it’s impossible to tell – plod steadily through the soil, layering the earth with hay.

The process repeats as the tide of mud stampers makes the return journey and, lying behind the commotion, the wooden frame of a tiny, one-storey house awaits the moment the mud is sufficiently coarse for it to be applied in thick, slimy slabs.

Traditionally, the junta de embarre takes place to provide newlyweds with a home. Photo: Steph Dyson

Panama faces the same challenges experienced by nations around the world. Jobs and opportunities are concentrated in cities, spurring on rural-to-urban migration and the debilitating drain of young people away from their ancestral homes.

With their departure, cultural traditions so often passed from generation to generation are destined to die. But Panama’s minister for tourism, the charismatic millennial Iván Esklidsen, believes he can change this.