There are Those Who Question the Reactivation of a Controversial Copper Mine in Panama: How the Digital Offensive Operates Against the Reopening

More than 100 accounts amplify support for the reopening of the First Quantum mine. Several of these accounts were involved in more than 500 instances of harassment.  Behind these accounts are profiles with fictitious identities, pages that impersonate Panamanian media outlets, and employees of Cobre Panamá. Some of these accounts, which show signs of being managed from the same structure, spent nearly $60,000 on paid advertising in Meta.

The digital offensive against activists opposing the reactivation of the Cobre Panamá copper mine operates through a blend of corporate PR outreach, targeted political rhetoric, and aggressive disinformation campaigns. The operation centers on several distinct digital tactics:

• Dismissive Political Rhetoric: Government officials, including President José Raúl Mulino, use social media and public statements to discredit activists. Critics of mining are frequently dismissed as a marginal, economically illiterate minority—often referred to as “cinco gatos” (a handful of cats) who do not generate payrolls.

• Corporate Digital Outreach: First Quantum Minerals (the mine’s operator) has deployed Virtual Reality (VR) installations like “Cobre Conecta” to secondary schools and public spaces. These digital experiences use 3D simulations to portray the mine as an eco-friendly and necessary operation, specifically attempting to shape the perspectives of younger demographics.

• Economic Disinformation Wars: Pro-mining advocates utilize social media and online media outlets to emphasize the severe fiscal impacts and job losses caused by the mine’s closure, framing the anti-mining movement as a destructive force that harms the national economy.

• Stigmatization and Smear Campaigns: Environmental defenders and local community leaders who push for permanent closure have been targeted in aggressive online smear campaigns. These digital attacks aim to undermine their credibility, criminalize peaceful protests, and delegitimize environmental concerns.

Civil society and Indigenous groups, operating under movements like Panamá Vale Más Sin Minería (Panama is Worth More Without Mining), counter this offensive by hosting digital seminars, publishing independent reports on human rights abuses, and using social media to maintain the momentum of the historic 2023 protests.

On November 28, 2023, environmental defenders in Panama achieved a unique victory: halting an open-pit mine located in a protected biological corridor. Following unprecedented protests, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the law that extended the concession for the extraction of copper and other metals to the local subsidiary of the Canadian company First Quantum Minerals.  “We have unanimously decided to declare the entirety of Law 406 unconstitutional,” said the president of the Supreme Court of Justice, María Eugenia López.