The Phantom Gringo Boat : Shamanic Discourse and Development in Panama

As in the myth of a phantom gringo boat receding into the mist, elusive promises of participatory democracy and a semiautonomous forest reserve have spurred the Emberá Indians of Panama to leave their dispersed settlements in the Darién forests and become more involved with the outside world. Since the late 1960s, they have elected representatives to the national government and sought to equalize their political and economic relationships with neighboring blacks.

In this first full-length ethnography of the Emberá of Darién (also known, with the Wounaan, as the Chocó), Stephanie C. Kane investigates their use of myth and magic to interpret the changes that occurred in the mid-1980s after Manuel Noriega assumed command of the Panama Defense Forces. She reveals how magical discourse, founded on the ancient global practice of shamanism, is the language used to cross the gap between the known and the unknown. Approaching local history with shamanic logic and organizing each chapter around a set of interpretive dilemmas, Kane highlights the ways in which myth and magic relate integrally to Embed life, including ecology, economy, politics, health, constructs of race and gender, and memory.

Arguing that anthropology is both empirical and imaginative, Kane modifies the ethnographic gaze to include Indian views of the anthropologist and, more generally, Euro-Americans. Kane also presents analyses of indigenous women's land rights and the politics of rainforest development.

First published in 1994, this second edition of The Phantom Gringo Boat includes a new preface by the author, as well as two supplementary essays, "The Rise of Patriarchy in Emberá Indian Village Law" and "Emberá (Chocó) Medicinal Plant Use: Implications for Planning the Biosphere Reserve in Darién, Panama", and three reviews of the first edition.