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I don't agree with Martinelli about the hydroelectric dams and strip mines that have brought many indigenous protesters into the city to press their cases. I do hope that he'll at least curb the worst abuses that we saw during the Torrijos years. I do notice that some small changes have already been made, even if it remains to be seen how far these go.

Take the matter of land tenure, the primordial issue for Panama's original nations. The Naso have no comarca, nor do the Bribri. Lots of Embera, Wounaan, Kuna, Ngobe and Bokota communities in which lands have traditionally been held communally were left outside the boundaries of the comarcas. If you wanted to atomize these communities into individuals and nuclear families owning specific lots of the communal whole, then the people in these indigenous villages would own their land by squatters' rights. Some of these communities are ancient, having existed where they are since long before anyone now living could remember.

However, it was the Torrijos administration's policy to disregard all collective land rights outside of the comarcas. That's why a Naso community that had existed in Bocas for dozens of years was summarily evicted by a cattle rancher showing a paper title. If the Naso had claimed as individuals, they had squatters' rights --- but they held their land as a community and now have been left dispossessed, wandering the streets of Panama City. The disregard for collective land rights was not only against indigenous people. Roads that had been used by communities for decades were allowed to be closed because the PRD administration didn't recognize public easements. Developers in various places have blocked access to public beaches. Long established fishing villages were ousted, sometimes by blocking ingress and egress routes that they had used for decades. There was zero respect shown for the water rights on which communities have traditionally depended.

There have been no grand announcements, but in a number of ways, some as subtle as a comma, the Martinelli administration is demonstrating that it has more respect for collectively held indigenous land rights than its predecessor did. Don't take this as too general of a statement, because Martinelli's also talking about "judicial security" that allows hydroelectric concessions that are already under construction to proceed. We can also observe that although he has so far failed to move against Richard Fifer's illegal Petaquilla gold mine we really haven't see precisely where the president is at on the general question of strip mining.

However, what about beach front land?

Economy and Finance Minister Alberto Vallarino and President Martinelli, both shrewd and successful businessmen, decided mainly for financial reasons that the Torrijos administration's Law 23 on the titling of beach and island land was unacceptable. Essentially they are trying to finance the government at a time when the national economy is not doing well, and think that $15,000 to title a 100-hectare stretch of beachfront property is absurdly cheap. Thus they offered proposed Law 71 in its stead. Criticism has ranged from the soberly self-interested to the absolutely hysterical, the former pointing out that it's a fundraising measure and that as originally drawn it was as a practical matter not applicable to certain Atlantic side locales, the latter screaming "expropriation" and calling the proposal and its backers "corrupto-communist."

But look at some of the other things that proposed Law 71 would do. The comma of importance to indigenous collective property owners is in the exemptions from the possibility of titling as alienable right of possession land "territorios indígenas, comarcales..." (indigenous territories, lands in the comarcas...) and so on. Leave that comma in and collectively held indigenous lands outside the comarcas are protected, take it out and they are not. Considering that Martinelli wants to build a road along the beach from where the highway ends at Miguel de la Borda on Colon's Costa Abajo, through Colon, Veraguas and Boscas del Toro provinces to where the highway on the Bocas mainland begins at Chiriqui Grande, this comma is of the utmost importance to Bokota and Ngobe communities along the coast. It gives them some assurance that they won't be evicted in favor of luxury resorts for foreign tourists. (If they are smart, the people of some of these communities would take advantage of a new road to develop some tourism projects of their own.)

The Vallarino - Martinelli proposal also has some strong protections for beach access, and exempts from titling land that's encumbered, as in that part of a property that has an easement for a road running across it. It also contains some severe prohibitions on land invasions on public beachfront property.

So do we have government by Sendero Luminoso moles? Hardly. We have government by businessmen who don't believe in giving away the store, who are a bit more inclusive in their respect for property rights than the people in charge of the previous administration, and who would like to avoid such situations that tend to provoke disturbances of the peace as the mass evictions of whole communities.

Land rights were the principal item of business when indigenous leaders met with the legislature as shown above. They were the main reason why, even as the business groups and frightened or annoyed foreign residents of the Bocas islands invoked the interests of indigenous people as they lobbied the legislature to keep Law 23 instead of making the changes embodied in proposed Law 71, there was no significant manifestation of indigenous support for Law 23. But of course, to give meaning to the comma, collectively owned indigenous lands outside of the comarca need to be surveyed and officially defined, which is a demand that communities left outside the comarcas --- most of which are not along beaches --- have been making for many years.

On October 12 indigenous protesters made their way to the Presidencia and couldn't agree on a small enough delegation to meet with officials there, but despite that and other grievances with Martinelli, several people in the crowd told me that they are mostly satisfied with the things that the new president is doing. There's always a natural honeymoon at the beginning of a presidency, but Martinelli's high ratings also have to do with popular things that he's doing, unpopular things that he's avoiding and concerns that past administrations have ignored but which he is taking into account.
The new flashpoint, and an upcoming test for the Martinelli administration as well as the judicial branch of government, is in the Bambu neighborhood of Changuinola, far enough inland so that the beach and island law isn't relevant. Although some of the residents are indigenous, it's also not an argument about collectively held lands. It's about 100 families who have been living there for a long time, in some cases for 60 years. Now some illustrious family from Panama City came to town with a title and is trying to have the 33-hectare neighborhood evicted. They got an eviction order from corregidor Pedro Ábrego, who says that a negotiated settlement is being sought. But if Ábrego signed such an order in the face of long-perfected squatters' rights then he's the one who needs to be evicted from the public office he holds. If he was acting under authority of a court decision, then the Supreme Court needs to investigate and discipline the judge who handed down that decision. Meanwhile, President Martinelli can claim that it's a judicial matter in which he can't interfere, but whether or not the National Police are used to dispossess the people of Bambu is ultimately his call. Routing a new batch of land invaders is one thing, but it really is time to serve notice that the police will not be used to assert specious old title claims against long-existing communities. Non-enforcement of improperly obtained orders is also part of upholding the rule of law.