Radio Mundo Real

Despite community resistance, Ricardo Martinelli’s Panamanian administration continued the works of the recently inaugurated Chan 75 hydroelectric project built by company AES Changuinola in Bocas del Toro province.

Nearly 20 social organizations issued a press release warning about the “lack of respect” of the
Panamanian government after the project’s inauguration. They claim that the Executive Branch, by means of the National Environmental Authority (ANAM) and the Public Services Office (ASEP), moved forward with “the transnational corporations’ privatization plan by auctioning rivers and lands for the construction of hydroelectric dams in the country”.

The press release claims this “hydroelectric projects’ epidemic” in a small country like
Panama “does not agree with our peoples’ energy needs but with the interest of transnational
corporations and of politicians who aim to profit from our common goods by putting them to
auction as commodities”.

The organizations claim that this government plan answers to the international economic policies
that promote an electric interconection of all Latin America to sell electricity to mining industries, agribusiness and other big projects.

They also call peasant and indigenous communities “to organize, protest and resist in the places
where a hydroelectric or mining project is aimed to be built”. “After Chan 75 we don’t want
any more dams”, said the coalition of environmental, trade union, indigenous and peasant
organizations”.

They also repudiated the international banks who are funding hydroelectric projects in Panama and the “green business” areas like REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) and Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM). They also expressed their solidarity with the struggles against dams in Mexico, Colombia and Brazil.

In an interview with the show Pueblos Libres of Radio Temblor, leader Gertrudis Sire referred to
the struggle of the regions where Ngabe indigenous live, against dams and mines. “The village’s
development does not rely on mining. The discourse needs to change”.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/misc-mar/