CONSTRUCTION

Construction

Construction

In a series of announcements by various officials in various contexts, the Martinelli administration has laid out a rough sketch of an ambitious road building program over the next five years. Part of the plan is the paving of many existing dirt and gravel rural roads, something that draws few objections. More noteworthy are projects for new roads. These include:

An Atlantic side highway, running from where the road along Colon's Costa Abajo ends at Miguel de la Borda along the Caribbean seashore to where Bocas del Toro's main road ends at Chiriqui Grande;

A new road connecting Boquete with Bocas del Toro, which would run over the Talamanca range through or on the eastern boundary of La Amistad International Park; and

An extension of the road along Colon's Costa Arriba from where it ends in Cuango (or if one wants to count a four-wheeler track with river fords, a bit beyond), to and through Kuna Yala all the way to Colombia.

Each of these projects has identifiable constituencies that would tend to support it, and also identifiable interest groups likely to oppose it. In general, companies whose business it is to build roads like projects such as these. There are usually landowners who would like to sell and welcome the property value increase that a new road where none existed before usually brings. There are also farmers who like the idea of a road that makes it easier to get their produce to the market.

However, where new roads cut through the wilderness or other relatively untouched or ecologically sensitive areas, one can generally count on environmentalists to oppose them. The cattle ranchers are traditionally leery of any road that pierces the Darien Gap between our roads and Colombia's, because they have hoof-and-mouth disease and other cattle contagions on their side of the jungle and we don't have these problems on our side. Indigenous people tend to fear roads going through or by their collectively owned lands, because historically these have brought landless farmers from elsewhere in Panama, and more recently Colombian and American real estate speculators, resort developers and foreign-led drug smuggling gangs, who seek to incorporate indigenous land into their portfolios.

Smuggling, mostly but not entirely related to drugs, adds a law enforcement dimension to roads that run along coasts. Panama doesn't have the resources to guard its two long coastlines and wherever there is a road near a shoreline, boats or low-flying planes bring contraband or illegal migrants to be forwarded to farther destinations by land transport. Thus there are cops and anti-corruption activists who are wary of coastal roads to the extent that proper policing is not part of the plan from the start.

The Colon-Bocas road

The first of the road projects to be announced, the one connecting Colon and Bocas del Toro provinces by way of the north shore of Veraguas, has at the moment drawn the least public criticism. However, as this would run through the Meso-American Biological Corridor, expect some environmentalist scrutiny to ...