Democracy of Disruption

When we were caught in the Panamanian protests of last summer.

For two weeks, we drove the Hilux pickup around Panama - Pacific Coast and the Caribbean, East and West. The country is smaller than our old home state of Wisconsin. We planned five hours for our ultimate drive from Boquete to Bocas Town, over ten-thousand-foot mountains, across the hydroelectric dam, and down to the Chiriqui Bay on the Caribbean side of the peninsula. We did not know it would take us twenty-eight grueling hours and a night in the pickup truck. The protests launched that morning.

The first sign of trouble appeared three hours into the trip. We descended the serpentine of the well-paved Highway 10 from the cold heights of the mountain pass into the thick humidity of the jungle. The road leveled and cut through small settlements, each a few homes along the road, a fonda with food and a few seats for locals and tourists, a church or two. Ngäbe kids walked to school on the narrow shoulder, and adults with machetes headed to work in another direction. A few turns past one of the settlements, cars and trucks halted in line.

Road Inspection, I thought. The police, or ATTT - Autoridad del Tránsito y Transporte Terrestre, as the traffic cops are known in Panama, would park on the side of the road and check documents. Everyone stops, some are waved through, others are inspected closely. The tourists are rarely hassled. The locals are a bit more.

We stopped at two checkpoints that morning and passed through without trouble. The police look for human traffickers and drugs, someone told us, but, no worries, they said, you don’t fit the profile.

For five minutes, we did not move. Then for ten. A driver exited the vehicle behind us and walked to the semi-truck ahead. The truck driver climbed down from his cab, and the two men talked, pointed ahead, shrugged, raised their hands in confusion. I joined them. They spoke Spanish in a local dialect, too fast for me to follow. I listened without understanding, smiled when they did, and nodded when they nodded.

Ahead was a barricade. Tree trunks blocked the road, big boulders piled in between. Women in indigenous dress sat on chairs facing the traffic. A few men loitered between the logs, kids ran from the signs set up on the pavement, and a tienda just past the corner. The sign said Law 429 in large font, and more in a font too small to read from the distance of our small group.

What is happening, I asked a man who spoke slower than the other. I understand Spanish, I told him, but not as fast as you speak to each other. Protests, he said. They happen every few years. The government does something to take more money away from the people, and people block traffic on the streets to change politicians’ minds. The last outbreak lasted for weeks in 2022; no way to say how long this one will go on. Yes, they will let us through, but maybe not today. Yes, today, the trucks driver said, around two pm - someone told him they would open the barricade then. He shrugged, but there will be another block five kilometers up the road, and then more. That is how they do it. So don’t plan to get where you are going for a day or two.

I felt excitement at the prospect of witnessing people in another country practicing democracy. I also felt a tinge of worry. My mind replayed the old TV footage of protesters throwing rocks, canisters of tear gas flying the other way, riot police with shields, blood streaking down people faces. But the TV footage was from another part of the world. Panama is more peaceful, I calmed myself.

In two hours, the sun rose over the mountains and baked the cars. We drove off the road into the shade of the tree and parked along with other travelers hiding in the shade. The line of vehicles had grown behind us at first, but no new cars arrived for over an hour.

They blocked the road behind us, too, a Panamanian driver told me in English. No way to go back. Organized, I said. Yes, the banana workers’ union - very organized, too much power. Not too much, I said, if the government can take something away from them. Not enough power to stop the government, no, he shakes his head.

A bus pulled up to the other side of the barricade and disgorged backpackers, a well-dressed group of Panamanian women, and a few families. The group walked around the barricade and trudged the two hundred meters under the shade of our tree. The bus turned around and drove away.

Where are you going, I asked a woman from the group. Back to Panama City. We took a ferry from Bocas Town to Chiriqui Grande, and now we’re hopping buses back to David. Hopping buses? Yes, buses drive from barricade to barricade and people hop between them, slowly moving south. You can leave your car here, hop the buses to Chiriqui Grande, then take the boat home if Bocas is where you are going, she says. It is a rental. I pointed at the truck, we must take it back to Changuinola. No, you won’t make it that far, she said.

How could the buses be organized this fast? The protests only started this morning, I wondered. The protests happen every few years, she said, the system is already in place. They are practiced. It is inconvenient, takes seven hours to get to David instead of the usual four, but I don’t mind. She nods at the people by the barricade, they make the least money in Panama and work the most, so I don’t mind the inconvenience to support their cause.Her speech brightened my mood. The few hours in the heat, without action, without news or expectation had drained the excitement I felt, dulled the worry, and replaced it with annoyance at the inconvenience of compromised plans. I loved the trip around Panama, but now I wanted the comfort of our home and familiar routines. Yet, she reminded me of the stakes, of people fighting for their rights. I did not know enough about the local politics then to take sides, but I had to choose the right to protest on principle. Fine, I tuned down my irritation.

The bus arrived from the David side, and the women, families, and backpackers loaded up and drove off. We sat in the sun for another few hours, walked to the tienda for drinks and a candy bar. The protesters watched us enter and their following eyes settled me with pang of fear. Maybe we were the outsiders, like the politicians, the objects of their anger? Were we even safe? I looked closer and saw no malice in their faces but a mild curiosity. They are used to Europeans and North Americans passing through. I decided that we were fine.

At three in the afternoon, the loitering drivers at the front of the line ran to their cars. We got in and started our pickup. The protesters dragged a log from the roadway to open a small opening. The cars passed one at a time. We sped up on the other side to follow those in front. I felt elated. Then in five kilometers, we were at the next barricade. Stopped. In the same line of cars. Dammmmmmit!

I live in Changuinola, the truck driver tells me. We are talking by his cab. I have three children and a wife, but I’m on the road a lot, driving to Panama City or San Jose, Costa Rica. No, protests are not good for me. How am I supposed to feed my family if I cannot work? No, not good. I understand, he says, we have friends who are teachers and they are protesting too. They have to stand up for themselves. But there must be another way. I have to feed my family.

The darkness fell on the next barricade. The logs and branches lay across the road inside the settlement. People walked the sidewalks. Adults strode serious and determined, kids ran festive, carrying messages amongst themselves. A European man paced along his parked car. Each minute, his steps grew angrier and his face contorted with rage. We are tourists and have nothing to do with your politics, he screamed at the women and men at the barricade. Let us through. His anger wound the general tension. Let us the fuck through, he screamed at a man’s face.

We retreated behind our car. I did not want any part of his rage. I wanted cover from the backlash charged emotions snapping and whipping against us in violence. I understood what the European man felt, but I faulted him for the disrespect of showing it.

Let us the fuck through, the man screamed. The Panamanian stood calm, not amused, but neither intimidated. ‘No puedo,’ he said. I can’t. Then he walked away.

The European man charged across and began to clear the road, pulling the branches away. The Panamanians replaced them behind him. He screamed at them, rushed to his car, revved the engine hurled it against the barricade. He stopped just in time, before he ruined his rental.

You need to calm down, another European tells him. You will get your ass kicked and get us all in trouble. It is their country and you are a guest.

At the next barricade, it was already night, and we slept in the pickup until the rumble of the truck woke us. We drove again. We slept more at the next road closure, then we learnt in the morning that this one will remain closed. It will not open today. It will not open tomorrow. Not this week.

But we are lucky, we were close to the ferry now. We found a secured parking lot and for three dollars a day parked the rental behind razor wire and a heavy gate. Then we walked to the ferry. We will return the car when we can. And no, I will not pay for the extra days of a rental.

During the first week of protests, the tourist flows thinned in Bocas Town, leaving empty streets and empty hostels. People canceled their plans in the face of uncertainty. In the second week, the construction project to repave the Main Street ground to a halt. The barricades blocked the asphalt trucks on the way from Santiago, Panama. The produce shelves went bare on the third week, and our favorite local vendor temporarily shuttered. Gasoline became hard to come by in week four. In the second month, restaurant menus came with entrees crossed out in black marker. Not much got through to the island to replenish the inventories. Except beer. There was always enough beer, somehow.

The empty store shelves were a call from my past, from the time when the Soviet Union, rotted from inside, collapsed, and for four years after, the economy sputtered on a single cylinder barely running on the bad fuel of apathy and despair. The same empty shelves and lines at gas stations. I shuddered inside at the reminder.

In two months, the tensions rose, pressurizing the province. There was no violence still, but the piles of fist-sized rocks grew along the barricade, perfect for hurling. Mercifully, the rocks stayed put.

Then, Chiquita Fruit Company dropped a bombshell. It shuttered its operations in Bocas Del Toro after the loss of the crops on the abandoned plantations, and moved to its Costa Rican base. Six thousand banana workers were now without jobs. They protested against the government law that raided their Social Security into which they paid from their jobs, and now they had no jobs at all. Another twenty thousand people connected to banana production also went without income.

In the end, the politicians, the banana and the teachers’ unions shuttled to talks. Why so long to meet? Optics, they said. Neither side wanted to look weak. Optics at the cost of poverty. Then a compromise and a forced dismantling of the barricades, a return to alleged normalcy. The store shelves refilled, the road construction finished, and the gasoline became abundant again.

The protests slowly become a memory, for some a curious marker on the timeline of existence, for others an existential wound not eager to heal with time.

The protesters did not accomplish all that they wanted, but they moved the needle away from a disaster. The teachers clawed back some of what they lost. The banana workers did too. They lost a year of income, but Chiquita is coming back next year with a better plan for the workers. Take some wins, they say. Yet to many here, they feel Pyrrhic.

Were the protests worth the disruption to the whole province? Everyone has an opinion, none are the same; the thoughtful ones acknowledge both sides.

I was heartened to witness the exercise of democracy without notable violence from the police or protesters, although a few instances took place. The protestors were people who broke from apathy and stood up for something they believed in, at a great personal cost. And whether you agree or disagree with their positions, I hope you respect their right to do so. I have a certainty that some real or proverbial barricade of the past, made your life, whoever you are, better than it could have been. Democracy does not always look like a ballot, sometimes it looks like a barricade.