Lest We Forget – The Road Closures, the Marches, People Shot, Gas Stations Empty, Food Running Out
The response rolled in like a tidal wave…unexpected and overwhelming…Growing until it would crash like a tidal wave across the entire country. People marched in every city…on every highway. They took over roads. They lit up old tires. Shut down traffic…And promised to stay in the streets until their voices were heard… And it was not a small sliver of society. It was everyone… students, teachers, workers, environmentalists… Indigenous communities and even some expats, who should not have participated for fear of expulsion from Panama, were out on the streets. There was the middle class and even the wealthy…businessmen and bankers. They marched. They chanted. A resounding choir echoed “No” across the country, their voices bouncing from shore to shore…refusing to cave or to be silenced.
What was the focus of their rage? A new government contract with a mine—the largest open-pit copper mine in Central America, producing 300,000 metric tons of copper a year. It was more than half of Panamanian exports. It had been under operation for a few years, but never under a legal contract. The Panamanian Supreme Court had ruled it unconstitutional. The president Laurentino Cortizo vowed to renegotiate the deal. When they were done, the president announced the news to huge fanfare, heralding the windfall profits, the jobs and the benefits the Canadian mining company—First Quantum—would bestow on the country. Congress approved the contract the same day. But Panamanians were not having it.
They and their ancestors had lived through a century of US invasions and occupation. The area around the Panama Canal was known as the Canal Zone and for a hundred years it had belonged to Uncle Sam. A segregated apartheid zone, roughly half the size of Rhode Island, smack dab in the middle of their country. It was ‘off limits’ to Panamanians except for those working for, and serving the military personnel and the families living under the Stars and Stripes. And this new contract smelled very similar. It ceded land and sovereign rights to the Canadian company for extended periods of time. Panama’s president promised the profits would strengthen the country’s Social Security fund and increase pensions. He cheered for the jobs. Panamanians did not care. They were not going to hand over a piece of their country to a foreign nation EVER AGAIN.
“The sovereignty of our country is in danger. That’s why I’m here,” said one protester in a yellow raincoat, marching under a thick downpour. That sentiment was echoed in the voices of thousands and maybe millions across the country. And they kept their promises to stay in the streets, despite everything. Days turned to weeks, which turned into months. The roadblocks shut down the country. Gas ran out at filling stations. Supermarket shelves grew empty. And still the protests continued…. That is, until… November 28, 2023. That’s the day that celebrates Panama’s independence from Spain. That morning, the country’s Supreme Court of Justice ruled the new mining contract unconstitutional. Protesters waved the red, white, and blue Panamanian flag. They danced in the streets in front of the Supreme Court. They sang the national anthem.
The people had done what the president and Congress would not. They had defended their country against the interests of a foreign nation, which had promised money and development—but at what cost? Was it the destruction of their environment? The loss of a chunk of Panamanian land in the hands of a foreign entity… again? Not happening. The US occupation of Panama is not ancient history, here. It is still in the forefront of everyone’s mind. So are the decades of blood, sweat, and tears that it took to finally win back the region of the Panama Canal from the United States in 1999. They remember the 1989 US invasion. They remember the thousands killed. They remember what it was like to have a US enclave in the middle of their country. And Panamanians are not going back there again. Not at the hands of a Canadian copper mine…and certainly not at the order of Donald Trump.
