Swimming with Magatdä

© Astrid Caridad Scheuermann - Image from the Swimming with Magatdä photography project © Astrid Caridad Scheuermann - Image from the Swimming with Magatdä photography project © Astrid Caridad Scheuermann - Image from the Swimming with Magatdä photography project View all images ↓
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Swimming with Magatdä traces contemporary Ngäbe life through enduring relationships with nature across rivers, mountains, and communities, highlighting knowledge, care, and cultural continuity.

Swimming with Magatdä explores the relationship between the Ngäbe and water as a source of memory, spirituality, and resistance, tracing how communities navigate environmental and cultural pressures in a changing landscape.

For the Ngäbe, Panama’s largest Indigenous group, water is origin and memory, a sacred force connecting communities to ancestors and land. In Ngäbe cosmology, Magatdä, the great serpent, shaped the world through rivers and mountains, embodying water as both creator and destroyer.

Set in the Ngäbe Buglé Comarca, an autonomous territory in western Panama, the project traces everyday life tied to rivers, forests, and mountains, increasingly under pressure from extractive industries and energy projects. Through encounters with families, cultural initiatives, and sacred landscapes such as Klosay and Cascada Kiki, the work documents how communities maintain and negotiate their connection to land and water.

Structured as an evolving visual archive, the project focuses on continuity and local agency, bringing together fragmented yet connected perspectives where water carries memory, embodies conflict, and opens space for coexistence.

© Astrid Caridad Scheuermann - Image from the Swimming with Magatdä photography project
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Barro Blanco Dam, one of the most controversial infrastructure projects in recent Panamanian history. Its construction displaced Ngäbe families and submerged farmland and religious sites.

© Astrid Caridad Scheuermann - Image from the Swimming with Magatdä photography project
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The construction of hydroelectric dams across Indigenous territories has directly altered ecosystems and river systems. Although Panama generates more electricity than it consumes, many communities in the region still lack access to electricity.

© Astrid Caridad Scheuermann - Image from the Swimming with Magatdä photography project
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Leonardo works at a local church in Guayabal near the continental divide, using that income to support and feed his children. In this remote region, families often walk for hours to reach school, healthcare, or other basic services, relying on community networks to get by.

© Astrid Caridad Scheuermann - Image from the Swimming with Magatdä photography project
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Once known mainly to local residents, Klosay waterfall has become an emerging destination for adventure tourism. Ngäbe guides are developing community-based tourism initiatives here as a way to generate income while maintaining control over land and resources.

© Astrid Caridad Scheuermann - Image from the Swimming with Magatdä photography project
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The abandoned mining camp at Cerro Colorado has remained inactive since widespread Ngäbe protests in 2012 halted plans to advance mining development in the area. Today, local guides lead visitors to the site, turning it into a place of memory, storytelling, and territorial awareness. The deposit is considered one of the largest undeveloped copper reserves in the world.

© Astrid Caridad Scheuermann - Image from the Swimming with Magatdä photography project
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Anselmo Abrego spent most of his life working on banana plantations for Chiquita. Today, he runs a small grocery shop from his home, creating a modest but important source of income for himself and his family.

© Astrid Caridad Scheuermann - Image from the Swimming with Magatdä photography project
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The red-tinted Colorado river. The coloration is caused by natural oxidation: when mineral-rich rock containing iron is exposed to air and water, it produces iron oxides that stain the water a rust-like hue.

© Astrid Caridad Scheuermann - Image from the Swimming with Magatdä photography project
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Adrián reads the laws of the Ngäbe-Buglé comarca, an Indigenous autonomous territory officially established in 1997 after decades of political organizing. The comarca grants a degree of self-governance intended to protect land, culture, and collective rights.

© Astrid Caridad Scheuermann - Image from the Swimming with Magatdä photography project
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Wilfredo Mitre stands at sunrise on Cerro Pavón, a sacred mountain tied to powerful local legends. He founded a local ethno-tourism fair, now in its sixth year, as part of a broader effort to strengthen cultural preservation and community-led development.

© Astrid Caridad Scheuermann - Image from the Swimming with Magatdä photography project
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Wilfredo Mitre at Cascada Kiki, considered the tallest free-falling waterfall in Panama. For the Ngäbe, waterfalls are sacred places of connection with ancestors and spiritual forces. Today, Kiki is also becoming part of a community-led tourism effort rooted in cultural and environmental stewardship.

© Astrid Caridad Scheuermann - Image from the Swimming with Magatdä photography project
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Ángela dries natural fibers in the sun before weaving them into kras, the handwoven shoulder bags worn by Ngäbe men and women alike, a practice that continues to sustain both cultural identity and household income.

© Astrid Caridad Scheuermann - Image from the Swimming with Magatdä photography project
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Berta Abrego roasts cacao pods before grinding them into cacao paste for sale. She recently joined a local cooperative, part of a growing movement among Ngäbe families to build small-scale, community-based economies.

© Astrid Caridad Scheuermann - Image from the Swimming with Magatdä photography project
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Coffee beans dry in the sun in Cerro Venado. Across the Ngäbe-Buglé comarca, many families rely on subsistence agriculture and small-scale crop production to sustain their livelihoods.

© Astrid Caridad Scheuermann - Image from the Swimming with Magatdä photography project
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Victoriano Tugrí performs Ka chants in the backyard of his home. Among the Ngäbe, Ka songs carry myths, oral history, and ancestral knowledge, preserving stories about the land, the comarca, and the spiritual relationship between people and territory.

© Astrid Caridad Scheuermann - Image from the Swimming with Magatdä photography project
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Victoriano Tugrí at his home in Peña Blanca, where he lives without electricity, near one of the region’s sacred mountains. Despite Panama’s extensive hydroelectric network, many rural Indigenous communities still live without reliable access to electricity.