business & economy

Angry reception for dam surveyors
by Eric Jackson, partly from other media

On May 18 Héctor Velásquez was just doing his job. Along with a colleague at the consulting company where he works, he was studying the Cerro Pelado area of the Ngobe-Bugle Comarca for the potential that Hidroelectrico Tabasara SA might realize by putting in the two hydroelectric dams on the Tabasara River that runs through there. The company has already received concessions from the government, and indeed almost every river and stream of any consequence in Panama has been conceded to a private party expressing an interest in installing a dam.

The local Ngobe residents were not amused. They slashed the tires on the survey company vehicle that was parked by the river, sicked their dogs on the surveyors and their horses and sent Velásquez fleeing into the forest. The following day a team from the government came in a negotiated Velásquez's safe exit from the area.

Hidroelectrico Tabasara SA is headed by businessman Gabriel Btesh. Btesh may be better known for his real estate partnership of Btesh & Virzi with Felipe "Pipo" Virzi, the latter who served as second vice president in the PRD administration of Ernesto Pérez Balladares. Btesh & Virzi are politically connected via the former vice president and protagonists in a number of urban development controversies in Panama City.

Residents of Cerro Pelado have for more than two years been putting up organized resistance to the plan, which they claim would flood some of their lands and appropriate all of their water supply. Their local anti-dam organization has been one of the central players in a movement to unify those groups opposing dams or strip mines in communities across Panama and to connect these groups with international environmentalist and human rights organizations. In August of 2006 some of the same activists involved in the attack on Hidroelectrico Tabasara SA, along with residents of 13 other Ngobe communities in that part of the comarca within Veraguas province detained a group of four gold mining prospectors in the same area.

In the wake of this latest incident spin doctors from the pro- and anti-mining forces swung into action. The company brought out Fermín Franco, an activist with the ruling PRD's junior coalition partner the Partido Popular and also an advocate of strip mines, to argue in La Critica that the dams would bring jobs to the area. But Bernardo Jiménez, a member of the Ngobe-Bugle General Congress and a leader in the movement opposing mining and hydroelectric projects, told La Prensa that the people of Cerro Pelado wouldn't allow anybody working for a hydroelectric company to enter the community without the permission of local authorities.