Between childhood and dreaming: Guna pedagogy of autonomy (Panama)

Abstract This article addresses children’s process of growing and the social production of autonomy among the Guna (“Kuna”), people who traditionally inhabit the archipelago of San Blás, in the eastern portion of the Atlantic coast of Panama. My goal is to emphasize dreaming as a personal experience that serves as a context or “frame” for pedagogical practice. Considering the processes of learning during childhood, as well as the Amerindian classical discussion of rhetoric and power, I argue that Guna social philosophy establishes a sophisticated correlation between the dominant cultural discourse and the possibility of escaping it. It expresses the ideal of shared life (bulagwa iddoged, “feeling together”) while emphasizing personal autonomy as the means to realize it. This ambivalence was well expressed by Atencio López, Guna intellectual and activist who told me: “The world spins in the same and different way for everybody.”