Growing Repression

The mobilizations have involved the banana, construction, and teachers’ unions, who called for an indefinite strike on April 28, as well as students, feminists, indigenous populations, and other social movements. The demands carry over grievances from the previous demonstrations: the under-resourced social security fund, now facing imminent privatization after the approval of a new law, and President José Raúl Mulino’s stated intentions to reopen the Canadian-owned Donoso mine.

One of the world’s biggest copper extractors, the mine was declared unconstitutional in 2023. On top of this, there is widespread condemnation of the memorandum signed in April between the government and US secretary of defense Pete Hegseth, which allows for an increased US military presence in Panama around the Canal Zone. The Canal was built and managed by the United States during its almost century-long occupation of Panama, which ended in 1999 after a long struggle for sovereignty.

Mulino’s government, headed by the right-wing RM party (Realizando Metas, Spanish for Accomplishing Goals) has responded with violence, with the president opposing the demonstrations from the start. Over three hundred demonstrators are reported to face judicial charges and more than a thousand have been brought before justices of the peace. With Chiquita’s recent firing of over five thousand banana workers in the Bocas del Toro province, it’s clear that big business is also retaliating.

As a security minister during Ricardo Martinelli’s administration in 2010, Mulino himself played a key role in repressing Bocas del Toro’s striking banana workers, leaving a tally of eleven dead, two blinded, and sixty-seven partially blinded from rubber bullets, according to Human Rights Watch.

Now as president, his administration is stepping up the repression, especially against unions. It has called for the arrests of prominent union leaders, raiding union offices without warrant; shut down affiliated cooperatives; and attempted to cut essential funding for teachers’ unions. The construction workers’ union, SUNTRACS, also the biggest and most militant in the country, is bearing the brunt of the government efforts. Already in February, Mulino had referred to the union as a terrorist mafia. SUNTRACS secretary general Saúl Méndez, also under warrant, is currently awaiting political asylum in the Bolivian Embassy.

Among the charges are money laundering and fraud, with some of the claims dating to almost twenty years ago. While these charges remain to be proven in court, the government’s methods have raised alarm even by SUNTRACS’s political adversaries on the Right. Critics have contrasted this persecution with the government’s inaction on convicted former president Martinelli, then Minister Mulino’s former boss in 2010, who was granted political asylum by Colombia in May.

The Political Response

Response from political parties and public representatives has been lukewarm. On April 30, a coalition of activists, independent politicians, and representatives from across parties signed a declaration  condemning the memorandum and calling for Panamanians to defend their sovereignty in international forums. The declaration, meant to show a consensus in the political establishment, did not include the issues surrounding the mine and social security privatization. Among the signatories are a former president, former vice mayors, and former and acting congresspeople. Yet Panamanian politicians are overwhelmingly unpopular.

Panama’s party-political landscape has historically relied on corruption, patronage, inter-elite struggles, and varying degrees of loyalty to the United States and free market. This has been even more true under Mulino’s administration as lines between government and opposition in Panama are blurrier than usual. The social democratic PRD (Revolutionary Democratic Party), despite being the only force to vote en bloc against privatizing social security, often collaborates with the RM on legislation.

There isn’t a left-wing party to channel these demands into institutional politics. A prevalent anti-leftist sentiment — fueled by US influence during the Cold War and the Panamanian oligarchy’s grip in politics and media — has proved difficult to shake off among Panamanian voters. All left-wing electoral efforts, headed by SUNTRACS or figures affiliated with the union like Saúl Méndez, have fared poorly, with no elected lawmakers and an average of 1 percent in presidential elections.

Instead, popular discontent has been channeled through “anti-corruption” independents, centrists backed by economic elites, who campaigned against the political establishment to great success. While the anti-corruption label has proved successful among voters, its proponents often use it to launder any social demands and push instead for austerity. Almost half of the independent caucus has voted for privatizing social security.

Lessons From the Recent Past

In 2023, a mass mobilization successfully pressured the Supreme Court to rule on an immensely unpopular mining contract. It was a victory conquered on fertile ground: then president Laurentino Cortizo was highly unpopular, Panamanians were driven to the streets by a broadly shared environmentalism, whether as a source of national pride or a source of revenue in the green economy. Contract clauses that gave mining company First Quantum almost sovereign control over the mine territory brought up negative historical parallels to the US occupation. More importantly, it was a single-issue movement: declare unconstitutional a demonstrably unconstitutional mine.

That wasn’t the case with the 2022 protests. Kickstarted by a fuel price hike, the protest soon compiled a broader list of demands, including a solution to the social security deficit, lower prices for the basic food basket, and devoting 5 percent of the GDP to education. Coalesced as the United People’s Alliance for Life, workers, indigenous peoples, and social movements held a strike for over a month, until the government agreed to sit down for negotiations with the Catholic Church as mediator.

Ever since the early 1990s, such talks have been a frequent pressure valve in times of crisis in Panama. As well as the government, these extra-institutional dialogues have often included civil society, unions, and business guilds. But in a country as unequal as Panama, it’s not only employer representatives that channel the economic elite’s influence but also state and civil society actors from the NGO complex. In 2022, workers not only succeeded in establishing one-to-one negotiations with the state, but also won a rare public platform by broadcasting the talks on public television.

A first set of agreements were reached, but after demobilization and pressure by the business class the negotiations were discontinued. The changes stipulated in the agreements — including a reduction in basic food prices and an increased medicine supply in the public health system — were never followed through.

The outcome of the last protests has shown the state’s readiness to disregard law and the constitution in pursuit of its interests, and once again confirmed the Panamanian people’s well-placed mistrust of their institutions. Like the colonial maxim quoted recently by Panamanian human rights lawyer Carlos Bichet, acátese pero no sígase, “comply but do not implement.”

With four years before another presidential election, the Panamanian tradition of forcing negotiations remains the social movements’ best chance to exert power outside of the institutions. But the window of opportunity is shrinking. The banana workers’ union recently called off the strike after reaching an agreement with members of congress. The lawmakers have promised a debate on maintaining the banana workers’ pension benefits, which the new law eliminates, as well as mediating with Chiquita to reinstate the thousands of fired workers. Meanwhile, construction and teachers’ unions remain on strike. Whether they can be able to force negotiations without the banana workers’ active support remains to be seen. If 2022 can be of any lesson, it is that they should never let their guard down.