The Copper Wars

Believing that no leader could stay in power in Panama simply with the support of the military, Omar Torrijos, Panama's leader from 1968 to 1981, attempted to garner broad-based support for his regime by announcing a "revolution" based on three principles: "sovereignty, economic independence, and popular programs to favor the poor." He touted a mining project called Cerro Colorado on the Continental Divide of western Panama as the answer to the country's economic woes, and promised that Panama would maintain control of the project despite the involvement of foreign multinational mining corporations.

The Guaymies, a group of approximately 50,000 people indigenous to the proposed Cerro Colorado project area, would have been most directly affected by the project, but they were not consulted as the Panamanian government and its multinational partners debated the terms and conditions of the project. In Conditions Not of Their Choosing, Chris Gjording, a Jesuit priest and anthropologist who worked with a team of researchers that provided information to the Guaymies on the effects of the Cerro Colorado project, tells the story of the Guaymies' struggles to make their voice heard in the debate.

The Panamanian government created a semi-autonomous state corporation for its dealings with the mining multinationals which it called Corporacion de Desarrollo Minero Cerro Colorado (CODEMIN). In its partnership with Texasgulf, Inc., CODEMIN claimed that it had created "a new, equal relationship between a third world host country and a transnational mining corporation," and it publicized the project with slogans like "Copper: Better Business Than the Canal" and "The World Needs Copper. We Need the World .. . And We Have Copper!" CODEMIN also maintained that "Copper Production is Less Risky for the Environment than Oil Production."

As plans for the Cerro Colorado project progressed, Panama tried to maintain sovereignty over the development of its own resources, but the government could not overcome the greater power of the transnational corporations with which it was dealing. Despite Panama's majority ownership of the project and its claims of sovereignty, Texasgulf controlled all major project decision-making, including labor policies. The contracts stipulated that the enterprise would be governed by the agreements themselves, and by Panamanian law only to the extent that the law did not conflict with the contracts.

After 10 years of feasibility studies and Panamanian partnerships with three multinationals--Texasgulf, Canadian Javelin and Rio Tinto-Zinc--the project was abandoned due to circumstances beyond the control of every party involved: world copper prices fell.

During the 10 years in which the project was considered, substantial, organized opposition to the project emerged among the Guaymies. Had the mine actually been completed, its impact on the Guaymies would have been devastating. They would have lost much of their land; families would have been relocated; roads would have passed through Guaymi communities; and the water which they use for drinking and washing would have been contaminated.

The exploratory work which was completed had less severe, but still harmful, effects on the Guaymies. The project "rendered the Guaymies powerless and incompetent in their own territory," writes Gjording. Without warning or explanation, roads were built across Guaymi family farming lands and, while the Guaymies were compensated for destroyed crops, they were not indemnified for the loss of fallow land. Mining officials did not provide information about where roads and camps would be built, so Guaymies were dependent on rumors, heightening their sense of powerlessness.

When the Guaymies asked about the effects of the project, government officials responded that the effects were under study and that any loss to the Guaymies would be compensated. A typical Guaymi response was "money is fine; but in no time, it's gone. We need land. Land never goes away. You can't plant money. You can't grow money. You can't eat money. Only land assures us of food."

In the years after the project was launched, the Guaymies became increasingly concerned about the effects it would have on their lives. They began to hold community meetings, and, in September 1979, Guaymi leaders convened the First General Guaymi Congress. Through their meetings, the Guaymies educated themselves about the project, defined specific concerns and gained confidence in discussing the issues. At another congress in April 1980, the participants agreed to oppose the mining project and demand its suspension until the government provided a legal delineation of their territory (known as comarca).

The government responded to Guaymi activism by claiming that "outside agitators" were misleading the Guaymies into believing that the Cerro Colorado project would be harmful to them. This accusation was a reference to Catholic bishops and priests who had published two pastoral letters regarding the effects of the project on the Guaymies and on Panama as a whole. After a speech at the 1980 congress by Ricardo Rodriguez, the minister of government and justice, the "people of the Congress responded, refuting all the accusations made by the Minister, with solid arguments which left clear that the Guaymi people are not being manipulated," according to the congress minutes.

Yet the Guaymies did realize that they would need outside support if their concerns were to be taken seriously. Catholic priests and bishops from Panama and the developed countries who had been working with the Guaymies wrote an open letter calling for solidarity with the Guaymies and helped generate international attention.

When the Cerro Colorado project fell apart, so did most of the Guaymi organizing efforts. The Guaymies still do not have their comarca, and Gjording does not seem optimistic about the possibility of effective political organizing among the Guaymies, since they tend to divide on the basis of kinship.

Gjording believes they would face significant difficulties even if they were unified as an ethnic group. The most effective form of organizing to advance the Guaymies' general interest, Gjording argues, would be a class-based strategy that crossed ethnic lines. But this is not a strategy to which the Guaymies have traditionally been open. Because Guaymies have been threatened by outsiders throughout their history, "they have generally defined the world and their own problems in their own terms, and according to their own viewpoints; they have had little experience of, and little sympathy for, other points of view that purported to be more comprehensive."

Gjording contends that the church group which worked with the Guaymies and of which he was a member was able to take a much broader view of the effects of Cerro Colorado than the Guaymies were. Rather than focusing solely on the Guaymies, the church group saw that the project would have devastating consequences for a much broader spectrum of Panamanians. It would require large equity loans, plunging Panama even deeper into debt than it already was. The investment was risky and, despite surface appearances, Panama maintained little control over the project. Like the Guaymi case, the problems facing Panama as a whole "involved a poor population (a world minority) struggling for survival, threatened by transnational corporations and the national government, and denied the right to an opinion about its future."

Gjording complains that it is easier to focus international attention on a group of colorful Indians being threatened by a mining project than on an entire nation made up of mostly poor people, of which the indigenous people are only one facet.

Unfortunately, Gjording saves his advocacy of class-based struggle for the last page of the book, rather than using it as a theme around which to organize the book's many disparate facts and ideas. While Gjording does cite an instance in which campesinos allied themselves with the Guaymies, the issue of such alliances is largely passed over.

This is only one of several ways in which Conditions Not of Their Choosing leaves questions unanswered. The environmental impact of copper mining, beyond muddy water and intrusive roads, is hardly mentioned, for example. Additionally, the perspective of Guaymi women is almost completely overlooked; Gjording states that this is because he does not speak the difficult Guaymi language and most Guaymi women do not speak Spanish.

The dry, impersonal style of Conditions Not of Their Choosing weakens the book; a more anecdotal and informal tone would, in places, have allowed Gjording to recount some of his experiences working with the Guaymies and to better convey what the Guaymies are actually like. Gjording promises the reader that he will "get beyond names and categories like 'Indians' and 'peasants' and even 'poor,' to the discovery that these are Francisco and Eneida and Chepita, fellow human beings." However, he too rarely discusses the Guaymies as anything other than a category.

Gjording's impersonal style is unfortunate, because it detracts from one of the book's strengths: tracking not only how a massive development project would hurt an indigenous group, but also how the group organized itself in response. This is a view rarely available to those in the industrialized world, and it makes Gjording's work a useful resource.