Panama's Indian albinos a revered elite

ISLA TIGRE, Panama, Mar 14 (Reuters) When Kuna Indian medicine man Mandiuliguina Flores speaks, everyone listens. For his dark-skinned indigenous audience, the albino shaman's milky white skin gives him special powers.

In a quirk of history and genetics, Panama's Kuna tribe has one of the world's highest occurrences of albinos, revered as an elite group that the Kuna call ''the children of the moon''.

Kuna mythology puts albinos -- who have pale skin and white or ginger hair due to pigment deficiency -- at the heart of creation, teaching that God sent his albino son to Earth to teach humans how to live.

Even today, the Kuna see albinos as highly intelligent and some even claim they have supernatural powers.

''I can heal any snake bite,'' said healer Flores outside his thatched hut on tiny Isla Tigre island, his pale-yellow eyes flitting around in their sockets, a side-effect of his albinism, and his ginger hair peeping out from his pork-pie hat.

''I attend to women in childbirth. I can remove stuck fish bones from your throat with this pill, and I can cure headaches by touching your head,'' he said.

''He can tell your future, too,'' whispered one bystander.

The Kuna, known for their colourful and intricate woven fabrics and indigenous dress, live on a string of remote islands running 200 miles along Panama's Caribbean coast toward Colombia.

They moved here from the rain forests of eastern Panama in the mid-1800s to avoid mosquitoes, snakes, diseases and territorial rivalry. They farm on the mainland and sleep on the islands, an autonomous territory known as Kuna Yala.

Charles Woolf, an anthropologist at Arizona State University, says the incidence of albinism here is higher than any comparable population on the planet.

A BLESSING, NOT A CURSE In the United States, among white people of European descent, albinism overall occurs at a rate of 1 in 30,000-40,000. On some islands in Kuna Yala, the rate stands at 1 in 165.

Anthropologists attribute the high frequency to cultural protection of albinos and the slaughter wrought by Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century.

The Spaniards devastated the Kuna with attacks or diseases, reducing the islands' founding gene pool to only 5,000 people from a population that once hit 750,000.

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