For this volume, our tutor Natalia Donner talks about her experience in the field, to be more precise, her experiences in the tropical rainforest in Panama, close to the Colombian border. Natalia has a background in archeology. So, as an archeologist, Natalia deals with the relationship of people with their surroundings, so she is not only “digging up old stuff” but she also uses a lot of ethnographic approaches and talked to the various population groups in the region.

For her postdoctoral research, she spent the summer of 2019 in the so-called Darien Gap in Panama, which is located in the tropical rainforest and still is home to many indigenous and mixed peoples. She and her fellow researchers first surveyed the terrain to see whether there is something to discover. They found more than 17 archeological sites from 1300 BC until the present and there is evidence of intensive agriculture throughout the ages. Her project will focus on Panama as the “bridge of the Americas”. She studies what role did Panama have in the population of the Americas and observes migration throughout the time until today.

Close dialogue and local connection
During her research, she did not only discover new facts about the history of migration but also had for the first time intense contact with the indigenous population. “In urban Mexico, where I am from, people are more mixed,” she explains. “There is also that idea in Panama that indigenous people only want to take money from foreigners. But we talked to the local community chief, and he understood immediately that we are researchers. He told his people to show us two so far unrecorded archeological sites”. This encounter inspired her to enter a more close dialogue with the indigenous people and to even start learning their language.

Memorable moments
When asked about the most memorable situation during her fieldwork, Natalia remembers the time when she was on a boat on the Pacific ocean and the captain suddenly stopped, put his hand in the water and pulled out an enormous dead fish. He barbecued it for dinner for them. This, says Natalia, shows how connected to nature the people there live and also how rich the rainforest still is. ”And it was delicious!”, she adds.

“Research in Latin America never ceases to surprise me”, Natalia states, “I never seem to know enough!” She really wants to inspire everybody to look around, be curious and enter the dialogue with local people. When she realized that students from Leiden University passed by the local people without looking, she told them to actually pay attention and look. That made a huge difference and there emerged real contact between the two groups that earlier had skeptically looked at the other.

What Natalia brought home
Coming home from her fieldwork, Natalia takes her findings as well as her passion straight to the classroom: “Research is a trigger for my curiosity and passion. You transfer that to the classroom directly. I now have new data, which I can directly use for my History of Latin America tutorials. I think that students can feel my passion in the atmosphere in the classroom. It also inspires me to do research on other fields, such as the different itineraries migrants from all over the world take in order to go to the US.”

Advice for students
Natalia wants to encourage our students to be curious and to walk untraveled paths. “Be humble, observe and copy! Go into the wild! The best way to submerge in an area is to experience it first-hand. Of course you need some knowledge. Do internships, go on exchange, learn the languages!”