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Striking Coca-Cola workers. Photo by Jeanne Alexander

After deaths, arrests and injuries, Martinelli blinks
by Eric Jackson

It's too early yet to declare clear winners and losers in the social confrontation over the "Chorizo Law," a legislative grab bag officially known as Law 30 of 2010. The Martinelli administration has suspended the law's implementation for 90 days but is not disposed to change anything and has set up a "national dialogue" that will end up supporting the measure more or less as is.

Meanwhile, political balances and momentum have been seriously altered, to what extent we will only know with time, with the first indications coming in the next credible national opinion polls.

Overlaying the objections of organized labor, the environmentalist movement and civil liberties advocates, during the course of a 10-day banana strike in Changuinola we saw the emergence of an indigenous uprising that may be the wildest of all cards to be played. The banana strike and the intervention of hundreds of Ngobe and Naso protesters from the hills above Changuinola were put down at the cost of at least three lives, the blinding of dozens of protesters shot in the eyes with birdshot, hundreds of other injuries and hundreds of arrests.

A canal construction workers' strike brought the government to intervene in labor-management negotiations and hand the company's prerogative of whom to hire or fire to the police. The Martinelli administration also jailed more than two dozen SUNTRACS construction workers' union members in Colon without charge. The government then had to back down from all of these actions.

A call for a national strike brought on another wave of arrests, including of patients who had been flown from Changuinola to Santo Tomas Hospital to be treated for eye injuries, on trumped-up or non-existent charges. The strike itself took place quietly and quite effectively in a few sectors, and with many unorganized Panamanians staying home in protest or out of fear on the appointed day.

In the course of the crisis the government jailed or otherwise detained four journalists, including from its most supportive media, and was caught in several crude lies. On the other side of it, however, the government's adversaries made some small steps toward unity but amply demonstrated their weakness and divisions.

Although Commerce and Industry Minister Roberto Henríquez now laments that Law 30 was poorly drafted and Education Minister Lucy Molinar complains that it was not well explained, as members of the Cabinet Council they were part of an administration decision to jam the law through the National Assembly in four days --- intentionally, while the president was out of the country --- without time for proper hearings or consideration of its flaws. During that process groups that had rarely seen together in the same place at the same time converged around the legislative palace to protest, while other even more unexpected groups lodged their objections. From the National Private Enterprise Council (CoNEP) on the right to the November 29th National Liberation Movement (MLN-29) on the left, with most of the nation's lawyers, all of Panama's environmentalists, the feuding factions of the labor movement and many civic groups between them, there was a widespread complaint.

The opposition was ignored and the law was passed and signed, but hidden from public scrutiny by way of exclusion from the National Assembly's website and burial in an obscure supplement to the Gaceta Oficial. It was even put up on the Gaceta Oficial website with part of its first page illegible, a fault subsequently corrected. (If the Gaceta is taking forever to download, click here.)

The hush and rush tactics did not stop the protests, but as they developed old divisions among the middle and upper class "civil society" organizations and the labor movement, and among factions of organized labor and the left that go back to which of them made peace with the dictatorship and which did not, were never far below the surface. There were labor contingents in the environmentalist march, and all labor and left factions and many environmentalist ones came together to march on the Presidencia, but then during the Central American summit the FRENADESO and ULIP labor/left alliances called for separate demonstrations at the same time.

Inter-factional agreements were made for a one-day national strike on July 13 and boycotts of Super 99 grocery stores and Hermanos Varela liquors, and different groups came together to interpose legal challenges to Law 30. However, the demonstrations of factional division persisted in the form of many small and narrowly based protests.

Changuinola

One will not find a single business in Latin America with a more anti-labor reputation than Chiquita Brands, formerly known as United Fruit, which runs massive banana plantations in Changuinola under the name of its subsidiary, the Bocas Fruit Company. The US-based parent company is, after all, the company that incited a 1954 coup in Guatemala that began a decades-long bloodletting in which at least 150,000 people were killed, and the employer that in this century hired the AUC paramilitary death squads to torture and murder union organizers in their Colombian plantations.

Law 30 provides that "the employer shall not be obliged to deduct from its workers for a union the ordinary and extraordinary dues that it establishes." The company told the Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Industria del Banano (SITRAIBANA) that it would no longer collect union dues. The union had a contract that called for dues check-off, and in light of this breach of the contract its members walked off the job on July 2, for what was originally to have been a 48-hour strike. The company announced that the strike --- the call for which was heeded by all of the Bocas Fruit Company's 4,200 permanent and temporary workers --- was illegal, and that pay would be docked. The Ministry of Labor authorized these reprisals. Beyond those measures, as a means of economic pressure, the company did not pay workers for their labor in two weeks before the walkout, citing the losses of bananas that spoiled due to the strike.

The two-day strike was extended into an indefinite one. The workers escalated their demand against the company to one against the government, for total repeal of Law 30. The walkout spread to the public schools serving the banana plantations and barricades went up on the main streets of Changuinola.

On July 6 Labor Minister Alma Cortés flew to Bocas, and under the guise of mediation told the union that it would have to wait for and abide by the decision of the Martinelli-controlled Supreme Court on the legality of Law 30. Without objection from the minister, the company announced that it would only pay those who went back to work for labor previously performed and unpaid. There was no settlement.

That evening workers felled trees across the road from Almirante to Changuinola in five different spots, as the Martinelli administration was mobilizing riot squads from different parts of the country and flying them into Bocas.

On the evening of July 7 the police began to open fire on striking workers, generally with birdshot.

As the shooting started, Ngobe and Naso protesters, mostly young men from communities that the Martinelli administration is trying to evict to make way for hydroelectric dam projects, streamed out of the hills and into Changuinola to join the fight. Some of them headed in different directions, blocking the roads between Almirante and Changuinola and between Chiriqui and Chiriqui Grande at times. What began as a strike over labor issues now took on the aspect of an indigenous uprising over land rights.

By the morning of July 9 more than 100 strikers and protesters had been injured and more than 100 arrested --- and then it was announced that President Martinelli would be flying off to South Africa to catch the World Cup finals in person. Changuinola erupted.

Four police officers were taken hostage, a juvenile police post was trashed and burned, a curfew was declared and police began to tear gas residential areas of Changuinola, shooting or arresting those who ran out of their homes choking from the gas for violating curfew. Roadblocks went up over much more of Bocas. The first death, that of 25-year-old banana union steward Antonio Smith --- who was a member of the president's Cambio Democratico party and who worked to get out the vote for Martinelli in 2009 --- was confirmed. Smith had been shot by police. Among those injured by police birdshot was La Prensa photojournalist Eduardo Grimaldo.

The Labor Ministry changed its tune, announcing that it would fine the Bocas Fruit Company for refusing to deduct union dues and for retaining wages owed to strikers.

But those measures failed to calm the situation. Banana workers and indigenous protesters surrounded the Changuinola airport, set fire to the Banco General and set up more barricades. The police were arresting virtually all indigenous young men and adolescent boys whom they encountered, and shot hundreds of people. Red Cross officials complained of the police violence, especially of their gassing of people in their homes. The death of a second protester, 41-year-old Virgilio Castillo, was officially acknowledged. He had also been shot by police.

The fighting reached a crescendo on July 10, by which time Martinelli announced that he wouldn't be flying off to watch the soccer game after all. Several ministers flew into Changuinola and were poorly received, but a tentative accord was reached in which the government promised to review Law 30 in exchange for the banana workers returning to their jobs.

Within a few hours, President Martinelli announced that there would be no change in the law and the protests and fighting flared again.

On the 11th, a new agreement was reached, whereby the government promised to suspend the labor, environmental and police immunity provisions of Law 30 for 90 days, pending a national dialogue on those issues, to pay indemnities to the families of Antonio Smith and Virgilio Castillo, and to release all of those who had been arrested. However, that agreement was signed by Minister of the Presidency Jimmy Papadimitriu and SITRAIBANA leader Genaro Bennet, but not ratified by anyone else in Changuinola.

The fragile peace did hold, however, as the community was running out of food, had suffered costly property damage and was exhausted and battered. Ten days of conflict had taken a toll on Changuinola that will live on in local lore for generations.

The official government tally was 140 injured and two dead, but that was disputed and later, convincingly refuted. The union's and protesters' casualty counts were much higher, but also difficult to substantiate.

The mainstream media reported that, in addition to the deaths of Smith and Castillo, another man who had been shot in Changuinola died during surgery at Santo Tomas Hospital in Panama City. PRD secretary general Mitchell Doens claimed that six people had been killed by police in Changuinola, a claim that matches the union's.

One disputed claim is about an infant who died shortly after her family's home was tear gassed. Ordinarily the Public Ministry's Institute of Legal Medicine would do an autopsy and determine the cause of death, but Martinelli's accretions of power have included his assertion of control over the Public Ministry. Thus any finding absolving the police of blame --- even if it's true --- will not be credible to many people other than Martinelli supporters because Panama no longer has independent investigations of this kind.

Other reports that The Panama News received put the death toll at nine, before the death at Santo Tomas was reported.

The only place in Panama's public health care system where specialized surgery is performed on damaged eyes is Santo Tomas, and it was confirmed by officials at that hospital that more than 150 people, mostly with shotgun wounds to their eyes, had been transferred there. That alone gives the lie to the Martinelli administration's figure of 140 injured. Other serious injuries were treated in David and at the Arnulfo Arias Hospital Complex in Panama City. From multiple unofficial sources, there were more than 1,000 people injured, almost all of them by police shotguns, in the violence in Changuinola.

SUNTRACS leader Genaro López. Archive photo by Eric Jackson

The canal expansion strike

As with the banana workers, the SUNTRACS construction workers' union is taking the position that when it has a contract that provides for union dues deductions and due to Law 30 or any other reason the employer stops doing this, it is a breach of the entire contract and all other issues come back on the table. Thus when the multinational consortium led by Spain's Sacyr Vallehermoso stopped deducting dues from the paychecks of SUNTRACS members working on the new locks, the union walked out.

There followed a number of arrests of SUNTRACS members without any specific charges --- which the Martinelli administration later characterized as "preventive." That brought SUNTRACS workers into the street in Colon, where 28 of them were jailed.

Sacyr is in deep financial trouble in Spain, and has unions there to worry about. They began to negotiate with SUNTRACS. Both sides said that they were close to an agreement, including a pay raise.

But the government intervened, putting arrest warrants out for SUNTRACS leaders, attempting to invoke the law against Panama Canal strikes (which would not cover canal expansion walkouts as presently written) and, by way of the police, notifying striking workers that they were fired.

Eventually the government backed down, releasing those it arrested without charge after they had spent eight days in jail, withdrawing the arrest warrants and apparently accepting the Sacyr consortium's contention that it and not the government negotiates labor agreements and decides who it hires or fires.

However, that acceptance may not be lasting. The Martinelli administration has announced an agreement with Honduras for the importation of 5,000 Honduran construction workers, whom it will no doubt insist that private companies hire in lieu of SUNTRACS members.

Wave of repression against journalists

Call the Changuinola shooting of La Prensa's Eduardo Grimaldo an accident, if you care to give the government the benefit of a doubt. However, it coincides with a wave of government attacks on the press.

There are the verbal assaults, wherein President Martinelli himself and others in his entourage blamed the events in Changuinola on "bad information" or false reports. But the attacks have been more substantial than that:

• Carlos Núñez, a 70-year-old who ran a small Chiriqui website, has been imprisoned for a story he wrote years ago about the alleged environmental consequences of a tourism project built within a national park;
  
  
• Paco Gómez Nadal, a Spaniard who lives in Panama and writes for La Prensa and whose columns have been critical of the president's policies, was detained at Tocumen Airport and given at least three conflicting stories of why, with the latest twist being a threat of deportation;
  
  
• Mauricio Valenzuela, a talented young photojournalist for the daily newspaper most favorable to Martinelli, El Panama America, was arrested for taking photos of police arresting union members, stripped and obliged to stand in his stocking feet in a cell whose floor was covered in urine; and
  
  
• Ronaldo Ortiz, a Kuna and a prominent leftist activist who is also a journalists with FRENADESO Noticias, has been jailed for an unspecified attack public security and apology for crime.

Some of these matters have prompted protests by international freedom of the press organizations, but few outside of Panama have recognized a pattern in all of this. Within the ranks of Panamanian journalism, however, there is a consensus opinion that President Martinelli, having grasped control of formerly independent parts of the government, is now moving to assert control over the press.

DIJ agents arrest Ronaldo Ortiz. Photo by FRENADESO

Arrests of and warrants for union leaders and activists

In the days before the scheduled July 13 national strike, the government rounded up some 300 labor activists and put out arrest orders for 17 union, leftist and environmentalist leaders, purportedly for attacking public security.

The biggest roundup came on July 10, when police arrested Seguro Social workers' union leader Priscilla Vásquez and several dozen other people who were marching to the Hotel Soloy, where leaders of different unions were meeting to confirm the national strike. They were taken down to the DIJ station in Ancon, where they were held for several hours until it was determined that there had been no charges filed against them. At least eight patients, wounded protesters from Changuinola, were abducted from Santo Tomas Hospital, put through the same treatment as the other arrested labor activists, and then returned to the hospital. In all more than 200 activists were arrested that day, mainly in Panama City and Chiriqui province.

The police also showed up at the home of former Seguro Social director Juan Jované. He demanded to see the arrest order and when the police couldn't produce one they went away, saying they'd be back. Jované did not wait for them --- he headed for the University of Panama, where he camped out and began a hunger strike.

Meanwhile most of the top leaders of SUNTRACS and FRENADESO went into hiding while their lawyers went to court to file preventive habeas corpus motions. On the eve of the national strike, the courts granted these petitions.

Weird propaganda and phone tricks

Meanwhile the Martinelli administration was playing telephone tricks.

A person impersonating number two SUNTRACS leader Saúl Méndez called PRD party president Francisco Sánchez Cárdenas, purportedly asking for advice on dealing with the government. A suspicious Sánchez Cárdenas disparaged the usefulness of any talks with the Martinelli administration, and shortly thereafter a tape of this conversation was posted on YouTube as "proof" that the PRD was behind the labor strife.

Union leaders allege that in negotiations in Changuinola, Minister of the Presidency Jimmy Papadimitriu made thinly veiled references to his knowledge of their telephone conversations. SUNTRACS leaders, however, have long operated under the assumption that their phones are tapped and acted accordingly.

From among labor leaders, environmental activists, journalists and prominent critics of the Martinelli administration there were reports of strange phone calls. This reporter received one from a woman who did not identify herself, saying that she knew that I publish The Panama News and that I was just up the street from a particular business, whose telephone number she purportedly wanted to know.

Franklin Vergara and Ricardo Martinelli use a hospital patient as a political stage prop.
Photo by the Presidencia

Martinelli's hospital visit

Do you believe in the medical privacy of hospital patients? Ricardo Martinelli doesn't, but maybe you could chalk that up to his being crazy. Juan Carlos Varela doesn't but maybe you could attribute it to a low consciousness about health that comes from being scion of a family fortune that floats on alcohol. But Health Minister Franklin Vergara is an MD and knows better. Yet the three of them, along with Jimmy Papadimitriu and an entourage of unethical journalists, descended on Santo Tomas Hospital for a series of photos with patients who had been wounded in Changuinola. The president offered them cell phones and afterwards gave a little speech in which he called them ignorant pawns who had been manipulated.

So, did we have a voluntary waiver of medical privacy? When fellow injured protesters had been arrested in that hospital the day before? When these politicians held the power to deny medical care?

If you may be seeking medical treatment in Panama City and are concerned about your own privacy, the public Santo Tomas Hospital is not your only concern. When he's not playing politician Dr. Vergara is part owner of Hospital Santa Fe and practices internal medicine there and at Hospital Punta Pacifica, Hospital Nacional and Hospital San Fernando.

(Forget about bringing Vergara up on ethics charges --- he's the big bad Health Minister and has impunity for his actions.)

The strike did not halt beer deliveries. Photo by Eric Jackson

The national strike

On July 13 the 24-hour national strike went on, and it was far less than general.

As expected, the strike was largely effective in the construction industry, the public schools, the public health care sector and those places with strong unions. However, some 40 percent of the Panamanian labor force is in the informal economy, and only between 10 and 15 percent of those who are formally employed belong to labor unions. The unionized workers for the Panama Canal are legally forbidden to strike.

Still, about 10 percent or so of Panamanians identify with the left, about 35 percent identify with the PRD, and a fair number of Panamanians who identify with neither are annoyed with the Martinelli administration at the moment.

The buses were running, but not carrying many people in the day's light traffic. Photo by Eric Jackson

Thus on the day of the strike many people who are not union members stayed home. Although the buses ran as usual, there were substantially fewer people riding them. Traffic was way down on the nation's main roads. Stores and government offices were open but there were relatively few people doing business at them.

At a number of construction sites, SUNTRACS members went to work in the morning but did not work, then left later in the day to participate in peaceful and rather small demonstrations. In the public health sector, too, emergency room services went on as usual but many doctors came to work but attended to no non-emergency patients. Some of the minority of public school teachers who reported to work sent the few kids who showed up to recess all day that day.

While organized labor adjusted their tactics so that any violence would have to be coming from their foes, in the street in front of the University of Panama college and high school students showed no such tactical flexibility and blocked traffic for part of the day, until university administrators threatened to expel those who persisted.

In the afternoon SUNTRACS leader Genaro López confirmed that the one-day strike would not be extended and that organized labor and its friends would shift to other tactics.

Schools and government offices were open, but barely working.
Photos by Eric Jackson

The "dialogue"

On the national strike day, the Cabinet Council approved a plan for a "dialogue" about Law 30. There will be a committee, with those invited to participate including multiple representatives of the executive branch, a Catholic priest, a Protestant reverend, a member of the militant CONUSI labor federation, a member of the moderate CONATO labor federation, a SITRAIBANA member, representatives of the Chamber of Commerce, National Private Enterprise Council, Industrialists Syndicate of Panama and Panamanian Business Executives Association, someone from each party caucus in the National Assembly, the president of the National Assembly, somebody from the moribund presidential "Concertation" process and a facilitator selected by the president. Nothing favorable to labor will come out of such a committee, but it might be used to slight advantage for labor to get its positions out before the public. It is unclear whether anyone from the labor movement will participate.

And will the "dialogue" address the environmental and police impunity issues? There are no environmentalists, nor are there any law reform or civil liberties groups involved. Whatever the Changuinola accord said, the selection of the committee effectively removes those issues from the table.

To the extent that what happened in and around Changuinola was about the dispossession of indigenous communities, neither the accord nor the committee addresses any of that.

A protest march on Via España. Photo by Eric Jackson

New balance of forces emerging

There has been a political sea change in Panamanian politics, but it's too early to tell how deep or lasting it is. On the day of the strike TVN announced the results of a Dichter & Neira poll that showed a 14-point drop in Martinelli's approval rating since June. Unlike in other pollsters' techniques, Dichter & Neira leave no space for a neutral rating and thus they tend to give presidents slightly higher approval ratings than other pollsters do. This poll found 56 percent of Panamanians giving Martinelli good or excellent marks, with 39.6 percent rating his performance as poor or horrible. However, it also showed that were an election held today, 36.8 percent would vote for Martinelli and 54.8 percent would vote against him. (The undecideds? Particularly when there is an authoritarian government involved, almost all "undecideds" oppose the government but don't care to say that to anybody.) Bear in mind that this poll was taken as the events in Changuinola were unfolding and many Panamanians were uninformed, misinformed or disinformed about what was happening there. Thus the poll's timing probably understates the extent of the political damage that Martinelli has suffered due to Law 30.

Also up in the air is what will become of the opposition that has arisen to Law 30. The disparate groups may go their squabbling different ways, or we may be witnessing the start of new anti-government formations or alliances.

There is also the possibility that Martinelli might hope for, that the timid will fall into line and the opportunists will figure that his side is the one where the bread gets buttered. At the moment, however, the latest polls suggest that this is not the trend.