
Panama is a country with a diverse and complicated history when it comes to its indigenous. There are approximately half a million indigenous in Panama, making up around 12% of the total population, split into eight tribes (Embera, Kuna, Ngobe-Bugle, Guayami, Bokota, Talamanca, Teribe, and Wounaan). Despite making up over 10% of the total population, Panama’s indigenous suffer the most poverty per capita of any demographic in the country, and that makes it hard for many of them to live a quality life. For centuries, political and cultural clashes between the indigenous and the government have made progress hard, but things are slowly changing, and are about to get a big leg up from the World Bank.
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