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Environmentalists, who are probably not the biggest opposition that the president's mining program will have to confront. Archive photo by Eric Jackson

Martinelli maneuvers to reduce indigenous autonomy, transfer land, water and minerals to foreign governments

The Martinelli administration has promised Cerro Colorado, a copper-rich mountain in the heart of the Ngobe-Bugle Comarca whose slopes are the source of the San Felix, Cubivora and Cricamola Rivers, to the government of South Korea. There are some problems with this.

First, there are people who live there, not just in the comarca but also in downstream communities that depend on the water from those rivers for their household or agricultural needs. Inside and outside the comarca, the rivers are used by the locals and some tourists for fishing, swimming, bathing and other recreational pursuits. Mangrove swamps (and thus coastal fisheries) and beach and coral formations depend on these rivers for their healthy existence.

Second, there is a 1963 mining law, passed at the height of Panama's struggle to gain sovereignty over the old Canal Zone that had been conceded to the United States in 1903. It's still in force and it prohibits concessions of national lands or resources to foreign governments.

Third, the matter of indigenous sovereignty and land ownership in Panama has never been resolved to the general acceptance of all major persons and institutions involved. The dictatorship's constitution, which is still in effect and has never been fully accepted by the successive leaders of Panama's original nations, reserves water and mineral rights for the national government. While the indigenous groups have rejected such claims within their traditional lands, national governments have rarely pressed the issue. However, in those instances in which these issues have been disputed, bitter legacies have been left. Long before the dictatorship, control over mineral rights was the precipitating issue for the 1925 Dule Revolution in Kuna Yala --- a vicious little race war that ended in a US-mediated settlement in which an American mining speculator was removed, the Panamanian government's policy of forced assimiliation of the Kunas was ended and Panama City authorities took a tacit "hands off" approach toward the San Blas Archipelago and the adjacent Caribbean littoral. In the 1970s the government dammed the Bayano River in eastern Panama province for a hydroelectric project, driving many Kuna, Embera and Wounaan residents off of their lands with little or no compensation. In the late 70s and early 80s, and again in the 90s, there were efforts to strip mine Cerro Colorado that ultimately were abandoned due to low world copper prices, but not until after highly insulting national vilification campaigns against the area's indigenous residents, their leaders, and the clergy and environmentalists who supported them in thier opposition to mining. All across Ngobe and Naso country during the Torrijos and Martinelli presidencies there have been land grabs for hydroelectric, mining, cattle ranching and tourism projects that have featured the governments' claim that traditional indigenous collective ownership of lands or resources is invalid. These land and resource battles aggravated the recent violent confrontations in Changuinola, as Ngobe and Naso protesters came down from the hills to add their bodies to the labor protests for reasons of their own.

Fourth, large-scale mining is an inherently dirty industry. Because the leaders of so many Third World governments have been bribed by foreign corporate interests to ignore or repeal environmental protections, those resource extraction companies that strictly follow proper environmental safeguards would be at a competitive disadvantage.

Just as the Martinelli administration, having already repealed environmental impact studies and thus as a practical matter all environmental law enforcement, was set to introduce a new mining law to eliminate the old ban on concessions to foreign governments, a mining-related environmental crisis arose.

Richard Fifer's cyanide spill

Heavy rains topped off the cyanide pond at Richard Fifer's Petaquilla gold mine, the nation's poster child for ecological thuggery. On August 15 residents of Coclesito, a few miles downstream from the mine complained of fish kills in the Coclesito River. Over the next few days downstream neighbors reported fish kills, skin irritations from contact with waters downstream from the mine and pets and farm animals becoming sick from drinking the water. Fifer's company, in its own name and through its online shill Don Winner, denied any spill and belittled those who complained. The National Environmental Authority (ANAM) said it would send investigators, but that a report on the truth of the matter would take at least three weeks. Environmental activists noted that ANAM has the capacity to verify a cyanide spill report within hours and chalked the agency's foot-dragging to Martinelli's anti-environmental policies.

The company pleaded that it was in the process of building a catch basin for overflows from its cyanide pond, but that this would take months to complete. But the controversial permit that Fifer's company got from ANAM provided that the backup was supposed to be installed before operations began. It does not appear that the Martinelli administration cares to enforce such things.

Fights brewing in the comarca

Meanwhile, preparations both familiar and unusual were underway for a battle over Cerro Colorado.

Always in these disputes, indigenous public officials have weighed in and as usual there is nearly unanimous opposition to mining. Despite the comarca's notoriously fractious politics, almost all of the leaders of the Ngobe-Bugle General Congress have taken public stands against the mine concession. On August 17 Celestino Montezuma, the mayor of the comarca's Nole Duima district, told a team of Chilean mining consultants for a company named Mineria Responsable that the community had passed a resolution ordering them to leave town.

But the mining interests have always created local front groups to make it appear that there is a demand for mining and the jobs that the companies promise. Thus on August 12 a new group calling itself the Jadran Nigwe Nirien Gwaire Ngobe (the Ngobe Social Development and Rights Association) sent out an email ordering environmentalists to stay out of the comarca. The organization has a corporate funded presence on YouTube and counts among its members Rogelio Moreno, the regional cacique for Nedrini (whose term has expired without new elections having been held), who has declared himself general cacique of the comarca but whose claim is recognized neither in the comarca nor by the government. "You come to the comarca to provoke problems and once there are acts of violence our people are affected," the purported order to environmentalists said.

This year's elections for the Ngobe-Bugle General Congress were supposed to have already happened, but the Martinelli administration and the Electoral Tribunal have taken control of the process away from indigenous authorities and rescheduled the elections until October, after it is planned that the new mining law and the sale of Cerro Colorado to the Koreans will be an accomplished fact. The Electoral Tribunal has for years imposed an urepresentative Naso regime under Tito Santana which is only recognized by the national government and those companies that are taking Naso land. But there are no more than 4,000 Naso, while the combined Ngobe and Bugle populations approach 250,000, about 80 percent of which live in the comarca. Although the president's Cambio Democratico party took one of the comarca's three seats in the legislature, Martinelli lost in the comarca and among indigenous voters generally even as he won the rest of Panama in a 2009 landslide. With Cerro Colorado in particular and indigenous sovereignty the hot-button issues, it is unlikely that Martinelli supporter or any other sort of mine supporters would win any legitimate election.

With controversial comarca elections looming, opposition politicians from both the PRD and the leftist FRENADESO alliance are working the area to lay the groundwork for 2014 campaigns. Warnings from a pro-mining faction may not keep environmentalist, labor and human rights activists out of the comarca, but the National Police might. The situation there is volatile and probably will become more so.

Nearly half of Panama staked out by mining companies

It's not just Cerro Colorado and the Petaquilla gold mine. There are about 20 places where metal mining concessions have been granted and mining has taken place, is ongoing or is contemplated shortly. There are 181 petitions for new concessions, which combined with existing concessions add up to more than 44 percent of Panama's land surface. There are concessions granted or requested in the Embera-Wounaan, Kuna Yala and Ngobe-Bugle comarcas, in the smaller Kuna comarcas of Madungandi and Wargandi, on indigenous lands outside of the comarcas including those of the Naso and Bri Bri groups, on Isla Bastimentos in the Bocas del Toro Archipelago, and in many of Panama's national parks and nature reserves.

It's not just the government of South Korea, either. The government of Singapore has bought a technically illegal stake in the INMET copper mining concession that surrounds the Petaquilla gold mine.

With or without the element of anti-Asian racism that is common in Panamanian society, all of the concessions to foreign companies, and now foreign governments, are sure to form the core of a lot of nationalist agitation. The power of this remains to be seen.