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newsAlso in this section: Two
bomberos electrocuted, five others injured, in Colon Free Zone blaze Martín Torrijos on the campaign trail Miguel Antonio Bernal on the campaign trail Partido Alternativa Popular on the campaign trail Méndez
fights charges that he tried to set up a shooting incident Police open fire with shotguns, wound journalist and others Violence at Kuna land protest in Madugandi by Eric Jackson Back in 1976 more than a dozen indigenous communities, mostly Kuna but also including some Embera, were evicted from the Bayano River Valley by the Omar Torrijos dictatorship, to make way for a lake to be created behind the old state-owned IRHE power company's Bayano Dam. That hydroelectic plant produces more than one-quarter of Panama's electricity today. The people who lived in the valley didn't want to go, but General Torrijos got them to leave their homes and the graves of their ancestors by promising them compensation. He lied. The people who were displaced by the Bayano Dam have never received a penny of compensation for their loss. The lands to which the people were moved were not as fertile and the communities that were established for the refugees were overcrowded from the point of view of maintaining the traditional indigenous farming / fishing / hunting and gathering economies. Moreover, despite promises of government recognition of indigenous collective land rights and even the creation of the semi-autonomous Kuna comarca of Madugandi during the Pérez Balladares administration, the lands to which the people of the Bayano Valley were moved were subject to frequent invasions by colonos, non-indigenous settlers from Panama's central provinces. The colonos would cut down the forests, quickly exhaust the land's farming potential, then usually sell out to wealthier cattle ranchers. Often these land invasions took place with the financial support of government agricultural loans. Over the years the situation has led to frequent violent clashes between the Kunas of Madugandi and the colonos, and between Kuna protesters and the National Police. "We demand the rights justly due to us for having been dislodged without our prior consent from our traditional places to make way for the Bayano hydroelectric dam, from which we have seen no benefits," the Kuna General Congress of Madugandi declared in a communique. And to press those demands for compensation, in a time of tension when the comarca has been affected by a malaria outbreak that has been held up as "proof" that the indigenous comarcas are incapable of self-government, on October 24 hundreds of Kunas from Madugandi poured out onto the Pan-American Highway near the Bayano Bridge to block traffic. Vice Minister of Government and Justice Severino Mejías --- once known as Major Mejías, General Noriega's adjutant --- showed up at the scene, but not to negotiate over the Kunas' demands. The protesters demanded to see the vice minister's boss, Minister of Government and Justice Daniel Delgado Diamante --- once known as Colonel Delgado, a member of General Noriega's general staff and commander of the San Miguelito garrison at the time of the 1989 US invasion. Mejías left, and shortly afterwards riot police moved in to clear the road, firing shotguns and tear gas. Among the more than a dozen persons wounded by the birdshot pellets were La Prensa photojournalist Carlos Lemos. The police arrested 97 protesters, hauling them off to the jail in Chepo, occupied much of the comarca, and at one of the roadblocks they set up later seized a Kuna man carrying a shotgun, described by all parties as a hunting weapon. The following day the National Police issued a press statement saying that it had been the Kunas who had opened fire on them. However, all eyewitnesses who have attached their names to their statements insist that it was the police, not the Kunas, who were doing all the shooting. None of those arrested could be tied to the shooting at the confrontation scene, and within a couple of days all 97 detainees were released by a judge's order. The Kuna General
Congress of Madugandi dismissed the police press release as "cowardly and vile disinformation" and vowed to
continue their movement for compensation. The congress offered that "we are open
to a dignified dialogue, but one with responses."
Also in this section: Two
bomberos electrocuted, five others injured, in Colon Free Zone blaze Martín Torrijos on the campaign trail Miguel Antonio Bernal on the campaign trail Partido Alternativa Popular on the campaign trail Méndez
fights charges that he tried to set up a shooting incident News
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