The Council of the Naso Tjër Di indigenous region of Panama dethroned this Monday Reynaldo Alexis Santana, convicted of the rape of a minor, and appointed Ardinteo Santana as the new interim king, second in line of succession, who will rule for an initial period of five years.

“This Monday the meeting was held where the Council Board proposes that Alexis be suspended and where Ardinteo Santana assumes the position of new king,” said the president of the indigenous council, Ignacio Bonilla Torres. “Right now the new monarch is already ruling the county territory,” he stressed.

The meeting was held in the King's palace, located in the community of Siëy Shik, capital of the region, a place with difficult access and no telephone coverage near the Costa Rican border, so although the appointment of the new king was took in the early afternoon, the news took time to reach the outside.

Twenty members participated in the Council Assembly, made up of 32 community leaders, of whom 12 voted in favor of the suspension of Reynaldo Alexis Santana and eight abstained. Ardinteo Santana, 63, received the crown of feathers, the throne and the scepter from the deposed king.

“They were satisfied that I remain as first king in the position of Mr. Alexis Santana”, who was “dethroned from office”, the new monarch told EFE, who explained that initially his “interim” mandate will be five years, a time in which he hopes to fulfill the wish of the Naso people.

This decision comes after last week a court sentenced Reynaldo Alexis Santana to 5 years in prison for raping a minor. The events occurred in a town in the Naso region in 2016, when the victim was 12 years old, and after the minor's confession, the mother filed the complaint.

In addition, the court disqualified him “to exercise public functions”. However, the court accepted the request to replace the sentence with community work, triggering strong outrage.. There are 5,000 Naso living there scattered in about twenty isolated villages in the exuberant jungle of Bocas de Toro.

The Naso people, one of the seven indigenous ethnic groups of Panama together with the Emberá, Wounaan, Guna, Ngäbe, Buglé and Bri-Bri, are organized in an “assembly monarchy” led by a king.

The throne used to pass from father to son, but for some years the subjects themselves are the ones who choose the monarch among the members of the royal family who decide to stand for “elections” and those who also have the power to remove him. Reynaldo Alexis Santana competed in 2011 against a cousin and uncle, calling himself the “last indigenous king of the Americas.”

The victim of the rape, also a native of the Naso people, said last week that she felt “bad and sad because justice was not done”, at the same time that she is “scared” because “she does not want to see that person.”. According to her, Santana, on the throne since 2011, “tried” to rape her up to three times and threatened her.

“It was family, he lived behind our house. When I got home from school, I took off my uniform, I was alone and he called me. I trusted him because he was my uncle. I went, what happened happened. I didn't want to, I was 12 years old,” said the victim, now 19.