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The photos you see on this page were taken on the afternoon of May 8 on the Pan-American Highway near Horconcitos, Chiriqui. Several hundred people from the Ngobe - Bugle Camarca, accompanied by Catholic priests and nuns, came down from the hills to demand a hearing from Virgilio Vergara, the governor of Chiriqui province, and to get the government's written assurances that they would not be displaced from their homes by planned hydroelectric dams and strip mines in the area.

After blocking the highway, they got a brief meeting with Vice Governor Luís Denis Arce, with no assurances of any sort. Then the riot squad moved in and let loose with a tear gas barrage.

Pretty neat way for the government to keep the road open and development projects on track, huh?

Except that the Ngobe - Bugle Comarca is the most politically volatile place in Panama and accounts for about nine percent of the nation's population.

Yes, the PRD has always had its boosters in the comarca and it and the companies that seek to flood or strip mine indigenous communities have always selected certain purchased individuals to pose as spokespeople for the Ngobe nation. However, this has never been particularly effective with indigenous people --- it's mainly a tactic for governments to tell people in the city that the Ngobe are hopelessly fractious and that the responsible spokemen among them are just getting shouted down by unreasonable angry young men. But the problem has always been that religious people among those communities have always been able to convincingly dismiss such characterizations. Now, because so many people have been forced by economics out of the comarca and into the city to find work, because now there is a core of university educated Ngobe, and because there is now a nationwide environmentalist movement allied with indigenous communities on the subjects of strip mining and hydroelectric dams, the old arguments are no longer very weighty in the city. The PRD, allegedly social democratic, increasingly has to appeal to more overtly racist notions of backward Indians blocking national progress.

Meanwhile, the Ngobe - Bugle Comarca isn't the only trouble spot for the government.

To the northeast in Bocas del Toro, the plan is for a series of four and possibly five hydroelectric dams on the Changinola River and its tributaries. One of these, the Bonyic Dam, has divided the Naso nation, which has a population of a bit more than 3,000 and mainly lives on the Teribe River, adjacent to the Amistad International Park that straddles the Panamanian - Costa Rican border.

The Naso, who don't have their own comarca, do have collectively owned lands and a king. In 2004 King Tito Santana accepted the dam project, and was driven out of the comarca by an uprising that installed his uncle as the new king. But the Electoral Tribunal held a vote on the matter, after, according to dam opponents, doctoring the voter rolls to favor Tito Santana. The insurgents abandoned the palace but boycotted the vote. According to the Torrijos administration Tito Santana is king but he has never returned to the palace, something that would probably be dangerous for him to do.

Last November the Naso General Assembly passed resolutions rejecting Tito Santana as king and opposing the dam, but the national government didn't recognize the assembly. An alliance of Panamanian and international environmentalist groups, however, is supporting the assembly, and that has Martín Torrijos and Tito Santana alleging that opposition to the dam is the work of foreign agitators.

On May 18 the Colombian dam construction company, Empresas Publicas de Medellin, sent in a private army of about 50 paramilitary gunmen to take the dam construction site by force, firing shots to disperse Naso protesters. The following day the company sent in about 100 non-indigenous, non-governmetnal reinforcements. The day after that the National police descended on the Naso community in support of the Colombian-led private army, going door to door searching homes for arms.