On My 17 a group of about 50 men armed with machetes and chainsaws and led by anti-environmentalist activists Graciano Cruz invaded the Volcan Baru National Park (PNVB, by its Spanish initials), felling about 100 trees along the Sendero Los Quetzales nature trail at Respinguito. A network of neighbors and environmentalist groups organized to warn of any attempt to begin construction of the “Ecological Road” that President Moscoso wants to build through the park quickly sounded the alarm, which brought the director of the park and other local officials from the National Environmental Authority (ANAM) along with Boquete Mayor Omar Buchaín and five police officers to the scene within a few hours.
Cruz told La Prensa that his group was “cleaning” the area to make way for the road, which has been stalled since ANAM rejected an environmental impact statement by its proponents earlier this year, “by decision of persons in the two communities” (Boquete and Cerro Punta) that the proposed road would connect.
Although the road has supporters in the area, polls, election results and the crowds that have been mustered to demonstrations by the opposing sides to the dispute would suggest that the “persons in the two communities” to whom Cruz refers are in the minority there. However, they have been a powerful minority.
The group that invaded the park at least partly coincides with the vigilantes whom members of the Cruz family mobilized last November 9 to block a road near Boquete and thus prevent environmentalists from attending a planned demonstration against the road. In that November vigilante mob were the sister of Minister of the Presidency Mirna Pittí and several employees of Mireya Moscoso’s coffee farm in Boquete. The National Police and Chiriqui’s governor --- a presidential appointee under our system of government --- were present and affected an allegedly “neutral” position between the two groups of protesters, allowing the vigilante road closure to continue. Cruz’s vigilantes were at the time outnumbered by the environmentalists, but the latter refrained from attempting to force their way through the blockade.
The Cruz family are owners of one of about 20 private properties along the proposed route. In land records, the largest single property along the way is the ARKAPAL estate, which was owned through a company called ARKAPAL, SA, by the president’s late husband Arnulfo Arias, and which passed to Mireya Moscoso when he died. The company’s officers of record are Mireya Moscoso as president and Mirna Pitti as treasurer.
During the course of the dispute, Panama City Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro, who rose to prominence through the National Association for the Conservation of Nature (ANCON), accused the president of supporting the road because it would serve her property. Mireya denied that she owned property along the road and said that she would charge the mayor with criminal defamation --- which she has yet to do.
Later El Panama America ran a story based on public records, showing the ARKAPAL estate’s location near the road and Mireya’s connection with that property. However, the next day Alfredo Arias, the nephew of the president’s late husband and head of the Interoceanic Regional Authority (ARI) under the Moscoso administration, produced an unrecorded deed that purported to show that most of the ARKAPAL estate had been transferred to Arnulfo Arias’s nieces and nephews. El Panama America ran a correction.
However, by the records on file and the deed shown by Alfredo Arias, Mireya Moscoso’s company would still own a residue of hundreds of hectares near the road. The president has never clarified this point.
(One rumor currently circulating around Panama is that actor Sean Connery has brought property near the proposed road. Nobody is saying whether he allegedly bought from the old ARKAPAL estate, or from some other person or entity. But if this is the case, it has so far not been demonstrated either by public record or any acknowledgment on the Scottish entertainer’s part. Though any rumor should be taken with a large grain of salt and unverified assertions usually have no place in journalism, in this instance the popular belief that Connery would be the beneficiary of a controversial road --- whether or not that belief is justified --- has become one of the underlying presumptions that is shaping an important national debate. Thus we mention it, while warning that the story may not be reliable.)
In the recent presidential campaign, the proposed Boquete-Cerro Punta road was the only issue on which the Mireyista candidate, third place finisher José Miguel Alemán, differed from the president. He said that he preferred the proposed “Southern Route” which runs outside the park, largely through cow pastures --- the route that the environmentalist groups favor --- rather than the road by ARKAPAL and the Cruz family’s property and through the park.
On May 2 President-elect Martín Torrijos and runner-up Guillermo Endara, both of whom strongly oppose the “Ecological Road,” between them swept around 80 percent of the vote in the Chiriqui highlands.
On May 17 and 18 The Panama News and other media received communiques from several different national and Chiriqui groups that oppose the road, all of them demanding the prosecution of those who invaded the park and cut down trees. And although the police who went to stop the invasion made no arrests, the mayor of Boquete, the Public Ministry’s environmental prosecutor and ANAM director Gonzalo Menéndez have all said that those responsible would be charged with crimes under Panamanian environmental protection laws.
(Menéndez, when he was recently graduated from college in the mid-90s, was an occasional contributor to The Panama News. The son of the late National Police chief under the Endara administration, he comes from a strongly Arnulfista family and, after he stepped up to ANAM’s leadership in the wake of back-to-back resignations of its two prior directors, he was blasted by some environmental activists as a Mireyista yes-man who was put in his position for the purpose of approving a new environmental impact statement and thus removing the major legal obstacle to construction of the “Ecological Road.” However, as this story was uploaded ANAM had neither approved a new application for the road nor made key procedural decisions such as whether a new environmental impact statement would need to be started “from scratch” and thus could not be completed before the Moscoso administration leaves office.)
Most of the environmentalists’ messages in response to the PNVB invasion also called for an increased law enforcement presence in the area. As an emergency measure to prevent further incidents, ANAM closed the Sendero Los Quetzales after the vigilante invasion. On May 26 the trail was reopened.
Meanwhile ANAM, police and prosecutors have identified Graciano Cruz and 11 other participants in the raid and accused them of a series of crimes under a 1976 law that prohibits the occupation of lands within PNVB as well as the felling of trees or exploiting of natural resources there. In a May 18 press release Menéndez said that ANAM would prosecute all who had been “directly or indirectly” involved, and also warned that those who threaten the authority’s forest rangers will similarly be brought to justice. He called for calm and denounced “violent, intransigent and irresponsible actions that attempt to set Panamanians against Panamanians.”
Attorney Fidel Murgas, representing environmentalist clients, has also filed private criminal charges against the invaders. This is permitted under Panamanian law and is frequently done when those who believe themselves aggrieved by criminal activity do not trust the government to adequately prosecute those allegedly responsible.
