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Volume
14, Number 8 |
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Also
in this section:  Panama's economic players aren't only found in air conditioned offices Between March 21 and 23 in the Ngobe-Bugle Comarca community of Quebrada del Guabo, members of 16 organizations met to discuss their response to a number of political and economic challenges, above all the Torrijos administration's policy of promoting hydroelectric dams, strip mines and island and beach tourist resorts that displace local communities, either directly by taking their members' land or indirectly by appropriating or polluting water or other resources upon which the local people depend. The politically volatile comarca, a swing voting region in which presidential elections are won and lost, has received a lot of attention from the Torrijos administration and that was a problem for the people at the meeting. Many of the people at the meeting were behind the 2006 General Congress resolution that deposed Máximo Saldaña, a supporter of the Torrijos administration policies, as the comarca's general cacique. The national government has refused to recognize that decision, with the president working to overcome the unpopularity generated by its slight to indigenous democratic institutions and the controversial policies underlying that insult by highly orchestrated political events wherein he hands out envelopes containing $35 and makes speeches denigrating his critics. This gathering, in addition to passing resolutions and plotting strategies to defend communities in the comarca from unwanted developments, renewed the demand for Saldaña's ouster. These kinds of meetings have been taking place for years and have resulted in the defeat of proposals to strip mine the copper at Cerro Colorado during the days when General Omar Torrijos ran Panama and later during the Pérez Balladares administration. The old tactics of governments and corporations selecting or buying indigenous "leaders" of their own, divide and rule games and the cultivation of political patronage machines answerable to non-indigenous forces were used then as they are today. However, the political and economic landscape upon which these dramas unfold has changed in several respects. There is the existence of the supposedly autonomous comarca, which came into being when Pérez Balladares was president, albeit with the Ngobe communities that have the most tourist development potential cut out of it and with the national government calling exclusive dibs on the water and mineral resources. Poverty is much more severe in the comarca, with advanced deforestation and exhausted soil forcing many who had previously lived off the land to leave as migrant coffee pickers or to seek jobs in the cities. All of the social problems that go with poverty have festered and become worse. But even though most kids in the comarca never even complete their primary educations, there are charitable groups working to see that more of them do and there's a growing band of university-educated indigenous activists who have knowledge and connections to throw into the balance of forces. Photo by Derechos Humanos - Universidad de Panama Also
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