Panama: Indigenous Activists Block Entry to the Barro Blanco Hydro Dam

July 14th, 2015

A 30-strong splin­ter group of Ngäbe from the M10 resis­tance move­ment has blocked the entrance to the Bar­ro Blan­co hydro­elec­tric dam in west­ern Pana­ma, pre­vent­ing work­ers from enter­ing the site. The 15 year strug­gle of the Tabasará riv­er com­mu­ni­ties to pro­tect their liveli­hoods, their cul­ture, and their ances­tral her­itage now appears to be enter­ing a tense new phase. With nego­ti­a­tions exhaust­ed and the dam 95% com­plete, M10 has an issued an ulti­ma­tum for the gov­ern­ment to can­cel the project by Mon­day, June 15, 2015. It is unclear how the gov­ern­ment will respond.

“Being Ngäbe-Buglé cul­tur­al pat­ri­mo­ny,” said Clementi­na Pérez, part of the group camped at Bar­ro Blanco’s gates. “Our riv­er, our moth­er earth, our ecol­o­gy, our exis­tence, we are here to make known to the nation­al and inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty that this pat­ri­mo­ny belongs to us and to the church of Mama Tata. With the con­ser­va­tion of peace, lib­er­ty, jus­tice and uni­ty, lib­er­a­tion and social jus­tice… [we ask] the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic the can­cel­la­tion and removal of the dam from our com­mu­ni­ties, our riv­er and our moth­er earth, which belong to us as orig­i­nal peo­ple of the Americas…”Funded by Euro­pean banks – the Ger­man Invest­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (DEG) and the Dutch Devel­op­ment Bank (FMO) – the dam is set to inun­date a string of Ngäbe and campesino com­mu­ni­ties, all of whom have voiced their objec­tions from the out­set. The flood will destroy ances­tral pet­ro­glyphs, fer­tile agri­cul­tur­al grounds, and Mama Tata cul­tur­al cen­tres, includ­ing a unique school where the emerg­ing writ­ten script of the Ngäbere lan­guage is being devel­oped and dis­sem­i­nat­ed. The dam will sig­nif­i­cant­ly impact the river’s marine life, wip­ing out migra­to­ry fish species which many com­mu­ni­ties – both up and down stream – rely upon for essen­tial pro­tein. None of the Tabasará com­mu­ni­ties have pro­vid­ed their free, informed and pri­or con­sent to the dam, a fact recent­ly con­firmed by the FMO’s own inde­pen­dent com­plaints mech­a­nism (ICM).

“Lenders should have sought greater clar­i­ty on whether there was con­sent to the project from the appro­pri­ate indige­nous author­i­ties pri­or to project approval,” said an ICM report, pub­lished on May 29, 2015. “[The plan] con­tains no pro­vi­sion on land acqui­si­tion and reset­tle­ment and noth­ing on bio­di­ver­si­ty and nat­ur­al resources man­age­ment. Nei­ther does it con­tain any ref­er­ence to issues relat­ed to cul­tur­al her­itage…”

The report is the lat­est in a series of pro­fes­sion­al analy­ses that pour a thick lay­er of scorn over the dam project’s own­er, Gen­er­ado­ra del Ist­mo (GENISA). Demon­stra­bly unlaw­ful, GENISA has been con­demned by numer­ous inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tors, the Unit­ed Nations, sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al NGOs, and Panama’s own envi­ron­men­tal agency, ANAM, who found a raft of flaws and short-com­ings in their envi­ron­men­tal impact assess­ment.

But despite fail­ing their own due dili­gence, the banks appear to have shrugged off the ICM report with an insipid call for ‘con­struc­tive dia­logue’ and ‘a solu­tion for a way for­ward’. In Feb­ru­ary this year, the FMO chose to threat­en the gov­ern­ment of Pana­ma after build­ing work was tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed on the rec­om­men­da­tion of ANAM. Writ­ing to the Vice Pres­i­dent, the FMO warned that the sus­pen­sion “May weigh upon future invest­ment deci­sions, and harm the flow of long-term invest­ments into Pana­ma.”

The gov­ern­ment seems to have tak­en this threat to heart. Panama’s pres­i­dent, Juan Car­los Varela, who was elect­ed to office in 2014, flip-flopped on Bar­ro Blan­co before final­ly falling in line. Last week, while prof­fer­ing flim­sy reas­sur­ances about hav­ing found a human rights solu­tion, his gov­ern­ment left the nego­ti­at­ing table and sig­naled an end to the sus­pen­sion of works. M10 claims the work nev­er stopped and has been con­tin­u­ing clan­des­tine­ly. They are now mobil­is­ing for action.

“If this sit­u­a­tion is not resolved,” said Clementi­na Pérez, “We will go to the Panamer­i­can high­way to ask togeth­er, at a nation­al lev­el, the can­cel­la­tion of Bar­ro Blan­co…”

Ris­ing with stark grey walls above the denud­ed banks of the Tabasará, Bar­ro Blan­co has become a sym­bol of the pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion, its fun­da­men­tal vio­lence and con­tempt for the rule of law. The for­mer Pres­i­dent Ricar­do Mar­tinel­li – now on the run in the Unit­ed States and fac­ing a cor­rup­tion probe back home – pro­voked no less than four major upris­ings as he grasped for land and resources in Panama’s indige­nous ter­ri­to­ries. Heavy-hand­ed repres­sion result­ed in the deaths of sev­er­al pro­test­ers and bystanders, includ­ing an unarmed teenage boy who was shot in the face by police. Bar­ro Blan­co is the vis­i­ble lega­cy of a proud­ly thug­gish Pres­i­dent who seri­al­ly abused Panama’s Indige­nous Peo­ples and plun­dered the coun­try at will. Thus far, Varela has been keen to strike a more decent and humane tone. How he now han­dles the cri­sis evolv­ing on the banks of the Tabasará Riv­er will be a demon­stra­tion of his sin­cer­i­ty, or lack of.

by  IC Mag­a­zine