18.2.12

As she stands among vil­lagers in the high­lands of west­ern Pana­ma, their cho­sen leader, Sil­via Car­rera, is an image of bucol­ic har­mo­ny. Then Car­rera, elect­ed chief or gen­er­al cacique of the Ngäbe-Buglé com­mu­ni­ty, ges­tures to a woman who hands her a bag of spent US riot-con­trol equip­ment – rub­ber bul­let cas­ings, shot­gun shells, sting-ball grenades, tear­gas can­is­ters.

Pana­ma nation­al police, she explains, used these against her peo­ple only days ear­li­er to break up a protest against gov­ern­ment plans for a vast cop­per mine and hydro­elec­tric schemes on their ter­ri­to­ry. Three young Ngäbe-Buglé men were killed, dozens were wound­ed and more than 100 detained.

What began with vil­lagers at Ojo de Agua in Chiriquí province using trees and rocks to block the Pan-Amer­i­can high­way ear­li­er this month – trap­ping hun­dreds of lor­ries and bus­loads of tourists com­ing over the bor­der from Cos­ta Rica for six days – has now placed Pana­ma at the fore­front of the endur­ing and often vio­lent clash between indige­nous peo­ples and glob­al demand for land, min­er­als and ener­gy. Car­rera is emerg­ing as a piv­otal fig­ure in the con­flict.

“Look how they treat us. What do we have to defend our­selves? We don’t have any­thing; we have only words,” Car­rera protests. “We are defence­less. We don’t have weapons. We were attacked and it wasn’t just by land but by air too. Every­thing they do to us, to our land, to our com­pan­ions who will not come back to life, hurts us.”

At the height of the protests, thou­sands of Ngäbe-Buglé came down from the hills to block the high­way; in El Vol­cán and San Félix they briefly rout­ed police and set fire to a police sta­tion. In Pana­ma City, stu­dents and unions joined with indige­nous pro­test­ers march­ing almost dai­ly on the res­i­dence of Pres­i­dent Ricar­do Mar­tinel­li. Some daubed walls near the pres­i­den­tial palace with the words “Mar­tinel­li assas­sin”.

Car­rera pulls from her satchel a hasti­ly drawn-up agree­ment bro­kered by the Catholic church that oblig­es the Pana­man­ian nation­al assem­bly to dis­cuss the issue. It did not guar­an­tee that the projects would be halt­ed. Nei­ther she nor the Ngäbe-Buglé peo­ple expressed opti­mism that the gov­ern­ment would keep its word on the min­ing issue.

“The vil­lage doesn’t believe it,” she says, “and it wouldn’t be the first time that the gov­ern­ment threw around lies. They do not lis­ten to the vil­lage. There was a sim­i­lar mas­sacre in 2010 and 2011, when there were deaths and injuries. Some were blind­ed, some of our com­pan­ions lost limbs.” A cry goes up: “No to the min­ers! No to the hydro­elec­tric!”

The Ngäbe-Buglé comar­ca, or ter­ri­to­ry, sits atop the huge Cer­ro Col­orado cop­per deposit, the rich­est min­er­al deposit in Pana­ma, pos­si­bly in all of cen­tral Amer­i­ca. Pro-busi­ness Mar­tinel­li, a self-made super­mar­ket tycoon, signed a deal with Canada’s Inmet Min­ing with a 20% Kore­an invest­ment to extract as much as 270,000 tons of cop­per a year, along with gold and sil­ver, over the 30-year lifes­pan of the pro­posed mine. Panama’s tribes form 10% of the pop­u­la­tion but, through a sys­tem of autonomous comar­cas, they con­trol 30% of the land, giv­ing them greater lever­age.

Mar­tinel­li could hard­ly have found a proud­er adver­sary than Car­rera who, at 42 and elect­ed only in Sep­tem­ber, is the first woman to lead Panama’s largest indige­nous tribe. “The land is our moth­er. It is because of her that we live,” she says sim­ply. “The peo­ple will defend our moth­er.” Car­rera holds Mar­tinel­li in scant regard. She accus­es him of “mock­ing” indige­nous peo­ple and con­sid­ers his admin­is­tra­tion a gov­ern­ment of busi­ness­men who “use us to enter­tain them­selves, say­ing one thing today and anoth­er tomor­row”.

Two days before the police cleared the road­blocks, the pres­i­dent invit­ed her to the Pala­cio de las Garzas in Panamá City for a “good meal and a drink”. The Ngäbe-Buglé chief, who received edu­ca­tion to sec­ondary lev­el, was unim­pressed. The offer, she said, revealed “a lack of respect”.

In past min­ing dis­putes, the gov­ern­ment blamed “for­eign actors” and jour­nal­ists for stir­ring up trou­ble. Last week it accused the Ngäbe-Buglé of “kid­nap­ping” and “hostage-tak­ing” when refer­ring to the trav­ellers delayed on the high­way. By the time the smoke cleared, Panama’s for­eign min­is­ter, Rober­to Hen­ríquez, con­ced­ed that his gov­ern­ment was “only pro­duc­ing deep­er wounds”.

Car­rera ges­tures to women in the group she says have been injured. Over the pre­vi­ous 24 hours she had trav­elled between towns to ensure that all the pro­test­ers had been released, but some reports sug­gest that dozens are still miss­ing. One woman holds up a ban­daged hand, a wound that she says came from an army bul­let.

With the dead – includ­ing Jerón­i­mo Rodríguez Tugri, who had his jaw blown off, and Mauri­cio Mén­dez, a learn­ing-dis­abled 16-year-old – still lying in the mor­tu­ary, Carrera’s anger is plain. “This is the strug­gle of the indige­nous peo­ple. We are try­ing to make con­tact, ask­ing our inter­na­tion­al broth­ers to join us in sol­i­dar­i­ty. We call for jus­tice from the UN. The gov­ern­ment doesn’t want oth­er coun­tries to know about this. That’s why they cut off our cell­phone ser­vice. We couldn’t find each oth­er. Nobody knew any­thing. They were try­ing to con­vince us to give up.”

Fear­ful of the envi­ron­men­tal and polit­i­cal fall­out, gov­ern­ments through­out cen­tral Amer­i­ca are tight­en­ing min­ing con­trols. But Mar­tinel­li, who came to pow­er with the cam­paign slo­gan “walk­ing in the shoes of the peo­ple”, seems deter­mined to find a way around leg­is­la­tion that pro­tects indige­nous min­er­al, water and envi­ron­men­tal resources from exploita­tion.

The Mar­tinel­li gov­ern­ment faces accu­sa­tions of sys­tem­at­ic crony­ism in the allo­ca­tion of more than $12bn in new con­struc­tion projects, fund­ed in part by increased rev­enue antic­i­pat­ed from a $5.25bn Pana­ma canal expan­sion pro­gramme. Among the dis­put­ed projects is a $775m high­way that will encir­cle Pana­ma City’s old quar­ter of Cas­co Viejo, cut­ting it off from the sea and iso­lat­ing a new Frank Gehry-designed muse­um cel­e­brat­ing Panama’s influ­ence as a three-mil­lion-year-old land bridge between the Amer­i­c­as. Crit­ics say the road is point­less and Unesco is threat­en­ing to with­draw its world her­itage site des­ig­na­tion if it pro­ceeds.

Despite the region’s his­to­ry of con­flict and shady bank­ing prac­tices, Pana­ma is aggres­sive­ly posi­tion­ing itself both as an eco­nom­ic haven (GDP growth is run­ning at close to 7.5%) and a tourist and eco-tourist des­ti­na­tion. New sky­scrap­ers thrust up into the humid­i­ty like a mini-Dubai; chic restau­rants and hotels are open­ing up .

Offi­cials express con­cern that the Ngäbe-Buglé and oth­er indige­nous dis­putes may undo Panama’s care­ful­ly orches­trat­ed PR push, spot­light­ing the dis­par­i­ty of wealth in a coun­try where 40% of the pop­u­la­tion live in pover­ty. “The gov­ern­ment says Good, Pana­ma is grow­ing its econ­o­my. Yet the econ­o­my is for a few bel­la­co [macho men],” Car­rera says. “But progress should be for the major­i­ty and for this we will go into the street, and from fron­tier to fron­tier, to protest.”

The tourism Pana­ma seeks is threat­en­ing their way of life, she says. Along the coast, pri­vate devel­op­ments are begin­ning to restrict access to the sea. “We work and we own prop­er­ty, but the tourists take the land and the best prop­er­ty. Then we can’t go there.”

At the bot­tom of the hill the gen­er­al cacique waits for a bus to take her and sev­er­al dozen women to Pana­ma City, 200km to the west, for anoth­er anti-gov­ern­ment ral­ly, where they will be joined by the Kuna and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Emberá and Wounaan peo­ples, who are oppos­ing encroach­ment of farm­ers on their land in the east­ern provinces. Car­rera vows that the Ngäbe-Buglé cam­paign will con­tin­ue. “We are not vio­lent. We just want to reclaim our rights and jus­tice. Above all, we want to live in peace and tran­quil­i­ty.”