'We will give our lives': Farmers reject new Panama Canal reservoir

Magdalena Martínez has always lived on the banks of the Indio River, but her house will be submerged because of the new Panama Canal reservoir and, like her neighbors, she plans to resist until the end.

The 49-year-old shares a modest wooden house with a tin roof with her husband and five of her 13 children in Boca de Uracillo, a town surrounded by green mountains.

His entire family was born in this village of houses with latrines and around 200 residents dedicated to the cultivation of cassava, corn, rice and bananas, and to raising animals.

Martínez’s house has two bedrooms and a kitchen with a table, a few plastic utensils and a couple of pots and pans. There is no television, although they can watch YouTube on their cell phones when the signal allows.

But everything could change with the works planned to ensure the operation of the Panama Canal, the route that connects the Caribbean with the Pacific and divides the Central American isthmus in two.

“I feel bad about this threat we have,” Martínez told AFP, as he made himself a cup of coffee as a storm hit the town.

In the village, they oppose their houses being underwater.

“We have to fight until the very end,” says Yturbide Sánchez, 44.

– “Responding to a need” –

The Panama Canal Authority (ACP), the autonomous public entity that operates the canal, decided to build the reservoir to prevent the effects of severe droughts like the one in 2023, which forced a drastic reduction in ship traffic.

Opened over a century ago, the interoceanic waterway operates with freshwater obtained from rain, which was once abundant in Panama. The same basin also supplies half of the Panamanian population with drinking water.

The reservoir will occupy 4,600 hectares. From there, the water will be taken through a nine-kilometer tunnel to Gatun Lake, which is part of the Canal basin.

“This project on the Indio River really comes to respond to a need that was identified a long time ago, it is the water of the future,” Karina Vergara, manager of the Social and Environmental Team for Water Projects at ACP, explained to AFP.

Work is expected to begin in 2027 and end in 2032, with an investment of 1.6 billion dollars (9.05 billion reais). Of this, 400 million (2.2 billion) will be used to compensate and relocate 2,500 people from various villages.

“We have a firm commitment to dialogue and to be able to reach agreements” with those affected, says Vergara.

Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino expressed his support for the project.

The ACP wants to talk and reach agreements with the communities, but if the reservoir is not built, “we will regret this within 15 years,” says Vergara.

The 80-kilometer-long canal moves 6% of the world's maritime trade and is the engine of the Panamanian economy.

Jorge Quijano, former head of the canal authority, explained to AFP that without the reservoir, in the event of a drought year, the canal “will not be able” to meet the water demand of the population, nor of ships.

– “Where are we going?” –

But farmers are reluctant to abandon their land.

“We feel bad because we don’t know where we’re going and they don’t offer us anything that excites us. I won’t be able to live the way I do here,” says Martínez.

On Friday, 400 farmers demonstrated on the Indio River, aboard boats and raising Panamanian flags, in rejection of the reservoir.

There are also social organizations that are against the project. They estimate that around 12,000 people will be affected, as they say it would affect the entire Indio River basin, which covers 58,000 hectares.

Some of these groups, including unions and committees against the reservoir, propose using water from Lake Bayano. But the ACP rules out this possibility because it is more than 100 kilometers away, which would imply more expensive works that would impact neighborhoods on the outskirts of the capital.

In the town of Limón, which can be reached after a 15-minute motorboat ride from Boca de Uracillo, residents also refuse to abandon their homes.

“We are not leaving, they will have to take us away by force,” Maricel Sánchez, a 25-year-old university student, told AFP.

“None of us have a salary to retire on, but the land guarantees us a lifetime, we have everything on the land,” says farmer Olegario Cedeño.

And, in the house where he lives with his wife and three children, surrounded by chickens, hens and parrots, he warns: “We will give our lives in this fight.”

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