Indigenous protest at the Presidencia

Ricarrdo Martinelli lost in the votes cast in the indigenous comarcas, although in some places it was close and he did better in some of the indigenous communities outside of the comarca. It was unusual for him to win without carrying the swing-voting Ngobe-Bugle Comarca in particular.

October 12 was the 517th anniversary of the first encounter between Christopher Columbus's men and the inhabitants of the New World. Given all that has inspired, should anyone be surprised that all across the Americas, indigenous peoples took it as a day to protest or mourn, even as others celebrated the anniversary of the beginning of Christian evangelization in the Western Hemisphere or the daring voyage of an Italian who made his mark in history?

Here in Panama, the primordial "indigenous issue" is land. People don't want to be driven off of their ancestral lands by strip mines or hydroelectric dams, or to make way for upscale tourists. They don't want the water they need for themselves and their crops and their farm animals dammed and privatized by corporations foreign or domestic, nor do they want their drinking water tainted by mining chemicals or tailings.

Yet the constitution that Panama inherited from the dictatorship makes all mineral rights and all water resources property of the national government, and the "Washington Consensus" neo-liberal economic policies that are chic with all factions in the national government contemplate the privatization of mineral and water rights by way of concessions granted by national governments, without regard to what local people might think. How acute can the issue get? Consider that by the end of the Torrijos administration, at least one and usually several hydroelectric dam concessions had been granted for every river in Panama. Consider that in Chiriqui province alone, concessions have been granted for more than 50 dams. And the projects that are underway? Almost all of them affect indigenous communities --- some in the comarcas, some in the collectively held indigenous lands outside of the comarcas.

Martinelli is going to have to back down on some of the dam concessions. All of them are not economically viable, and if they were all built it would wreak havoc on Panama's coastal fisheries and lead to water riots across the country. But he seems willing to defy the Inter-American Human Rights Court ruling against the dispossession of the Ngobe community of Charco La Pava by the US-based AES energy company, which was carried out with the support of the National Police and a private corporate paramilitary force.

There are however, some signs of progress. Torrijos specifically didn't recognize any collective land ownership rights outside of the comarcas, and thus sent in the police to destroy a Naso community that had existed for 40 years on land claimed by a cattle rancher. He was set to sell off those Ngobe communities that had Caribbean beachfront, to make way for expensive and exclusive resorts whose owners would definitely not be Ngobe. But Martinelli, in his proposed beach and island land titling law, by his appointments of people involved in the struggles for Embera land rights outside of the comarca and otherwise, appears ready to accept the collective landholdings of groups like the Bribri and Naso who don't have comarcas of their own, and of indigenous communities that were left outside of the comarcas when boundaries were drawn.

On October 12, Martinelli did not have the cops beat up the protesters who came down to Plaza Catedral, but he also didn't meet with any delegations to hear their demands. That same day his Cambio Democratico party did, however, hold its own indigenous observances. There are internal differences of opinion within each of Panama's first nations, and thus different takes on Martinelli and his intentions. Despite all of the angry shouted slogans, some protesters at Plaza Catedral told this reporter that they were pleased with some of the positions that Martinelli has taken and have hope for movement on other issues.

However, each of Panama's indigenous groups has its particular demands, and the lists tend to be extensive and detailed. Land tenure and opposition to projects that compromise this top the list, but matters of cultural survival like bilingual education, broadcasting concessions for the comarcas, and the establishment of indigenous universities outside the control of the University of Panama are also there. So are political demands like an end to the use of patronage and appointments as means of influencing public affairs within the comarcas, the establishment of a Naso comarca, and the recognition of Valentín Santana and not his Torrijos-recognized nephew Tito Santana as king of the Nasos.

It has been a long struggle since the Spanish conquerors arrived, and nobody expects that it will be over anytime soon. But there was a sense among many of the protesters that momentum is shifting, that after so many bitter defeats the tide of history is starting to run in their favor. This was a protest of desperately poor communities, and in some cases communities that have been dispossessed and left homeless --- but the tone on Indigenous Resistance Day was one of defiance and self-confidence rather than despair.

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