The Uprising That Came Before

In late 2023, an uprising against Vancouver-based mining company First Quantum Minerals swept the country, effectively shutting down Panama’s economy until the government agreed to shutter the mine. At first, the government responded with intense repression to protect the valuable project, including a crackdown on unions and upwards of fifteen hundred cases of arbitrary detention. Four protesters were killed during the uprising. At its height, the Cobre Panama mine accounted for about 5 percent of Panama’s GDP and 40 percent of the company’s annual revenue. However, corrupt backroom deals between First Quantum and the Panamanian government, the mine’s distressing environmental impact, and the resilience of the protesters ultimately got the contract with First Quantum cancelled and the mine closed.

Panama’s May 2024 general election was held against the backdrop of these events. In the lead-up to the election, all candidates pledged to uphold the cancellation of First Quantum’s widely unpopular contract, including pro-business candidates like Raúl Mulino. Mulino, who only became a presidential candidate after right-wing businessman and ex-president Ricardo Martinelli was rendered ineligible by a money-laundering conviction, ended up winning with 34 percent of the vote. Popular anger at the ruling Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) was so intense that it secured a mere 6 percent of the vote on election night.

Mulino had promised to bring economic prosperity and social harmony to Panama after months of protest. But upon assuming office, he immediately riled Panamanians by calling for the reopening of the Canadian-owned mine.

During his campaign, Mulino had promised to bring economic prosperity and social harmony to Panama after months of protest. But upon assuming office, he immediately riled Panamanians by calling for the reopening of the Canadian-owned mine. “The mine paid the price for accumulated national discontent,” the president said in November 2024. “For me, mining is a critically important issue in the country’s current economic context.”

Mulino’s about-face on the mine was not just about economic considerations. He also likely bowed to pressure to please the Canadian operators of the mine, a move that would be well within the realm of possibility for a man who has spent his political career refusing to stand up to Western imperialism. At times, he has even courted it directly.

A History of Subservience to the United States

José Raul Mulino’s failure to defend Panamanian sovereignty is hardly surprising given his ties to the United States. He has both studied there and actively courted its intervention.

In the late 1980s, Mulino lobbied for US intervention against then military leader Manuel Noriega. Mulino was one of the founders of the Civic Crusade, an opposition movement that included activists and unionists but was led and created by businessmen who felt that Noriega had stripped them of power and influence. This faction hoped to regain their influence through foreign intervention, a wish the United States was happy to accommodate. They sent Noriega’s opposition $10 million to run in the May 1989 elections. The opposition’s victory, and its annulment by the military, gave the United States more justification to attack.

The US invasion of Panama, which Mulino and other businessmen lobbied for, ultimately killed thousands and turned the poor Panama City neighborhood of El Chorrillo into a “Little Hiroshima.” Mulino’s influence was soon restored; he served as minister of foreign affairs in the government that succeeded Noriega. These stories are not lost on today’s protesters. As Sánchez of JR put it: “[Mulino] was part of the group that asked for the US military invasion. There are even pictures of him celebrating in the US embassy — in the meantime, Panamanian people were being murdered by the US army.”

Mulino’s close ties to the United States have continued. From 2009 to 2014, he was a close advisor to President Martinelli, whose administration oversaw the signing of the Panama–United States Free Trade Agreement. As Martinelli’s Minister of Public Security, Mulino announced that the US military had been granted access to two Panamanian naval bases on the grounds of combatting drug trafficking. Now as president, Mulino has again approved the presence of US troops in Panama, this time with the added justification of “protecting” the Panama Canal.

Mulino’s subservience to the United States — on military issues, economic policy, and the Panama Canal — is one of several factors that have spurred social movements to action. As one protestor told the German news outlet DW: “This man in the US government [Donald Trump] decided the canal belongs to them and in Panama he has a president that is obedient.”

Protest and Repression

Public discontent began to swell in January 2025 amid Donald Trump’s threats to “retake” the Canal, which the United States turned over to Panama in 1999. Protestors took to the streets to denounce Trump’s threats and burn effigies of the US president.

The following month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Panama City and told Mulino that China’s economic presence in the Canal was “unacceptable.” Mulino got the message: he quickly announced that Panama would reverse its 2017 decision to join China’s Belt and Road Initiative. For many Panamanians, this was another indication of Mulino’s eagerness to sacrifice the country’s sovereignty to please the United States.

It does not stop there. Mulino has agreed to close the Darien Gap in order to limit irregular migration to the United States, and has offered Panama as a destination for “third-country nationals,” deportees sent from the United States to a country that is not their home. In April, meanwhile, Mulino signed a security agreement with the Trump administration that gives US ships priority in the Panama Canal. The agreement will also see US military personnel perform “rotating stays” on Panamanian bases.

Anger at neoliberal austerity, Canadian mining corruption, and US imperialism have converged into a powerful protest movement in which a diverse cross-section of Panamanian society has played a crucial role. The country’s largest construction union, SUNTRACS, has been a driving force behind the protests. In response, the government has raided their headquarters, announced bogus arrest warrants against its members, and even forced its leader, Saúl Méndez, to seek political asylum at the Bolivian embassy.

As SUNTRACS, alongside scores of student and teachers’ unions, have staged massive protests in the capital, banana workers in Bocas del Toro have also been on strike. Francisco Smith, the leader of one of their major unions, SITRAIBANA, was arrested last month on charges of orchestrating roadblocks in Bocas del Toro. Prior to his arrest, thousands of banana workers had been fired by Chiquita — formerly known as United Fruit Company — for joining the strikes.

Anti-mining groups opposed to the reopening of Cobre Panama and youth organizations like JR have also joined the protests and encountered repression. So too have Ngäbe-Buglé Indigenous communities. They were reportedly surveilled by drones and helicopters, subjected to deliberate power cuts, and threatened with the use of firearms.

For his part, Mulino has insulted almost every faction of the protest movement. He called opponents of Cobre Panama “freeloaders.” He said student protestors were behaving like “terrorists.” His security forces have labeled strikers “radicals” and “vandals.” Now, Mulino’s disapproval rating sits close to 70 percent. Under his austerity regime, only 9 percent of Panamanians believe their country is heading in the right direction.

“We Dream of a Panama That Is Free”

The protests in Panama are a struggle for sovereignty, egalitarian development, and the right to protest itself. The violence of the state’s response must be blamed first and foremost on President Mulino, who has cracked down with zeal, refused to negotiate, and walked back key campaign promises. By pushing for greater military dominance in the region, however, the United States is also deeply implicated in the unrest.

So too is the Canadian government. Back in 2023, during the national uprising against First Quantum, the silence of Canadian politicians and the media was reportedly deeply puzzling to Panamanians who expected some form of condemnation over the company’s corruption. This time around, the story is much the same. Mark Carney, elected prime minister as an opponent of US expansionism and a stoic defender of Canadian sovereignty, has nonetheless said nothing about the protests. Carney has instead continued the tradition of Canadian governments backing Canada-based mining companies in disputes with Global South governments.

Panama, long subject to domination by foreign powers, now has a president who is doing little to fight back. It is no surprise, then, that freedom looms large as a dream of the protesters.

As Sánchez put it: “We dream of a Panama that is completely free, where there is no presence of US imperialism anywhere. Our anthem begins by saying that we ‘finally reached victory.’ That’s what we want. To finally get our true and only victory, which is to take out the boots of imperialism and lift our people up to build sovereignty, actual sovereignty.”