Panama Between Social Protest and Geopolitical Tension

By Ociel Alí López  –  Apr 30, 2025

Although Panama has remained free from political conflict in recent decades, it seems that the country’s relative peace is evaporating.

With its privileged geographical location that allowed the construction of the Panama Canal which, in turn, provides huge resources to its econom and provides for an extended paralegal financial structure (revealed in 2016 with the Panama Papers), the Central American country has not seen social turbulence since the US invasion of 1989.

However, for some time now, things have been changing. On April 28, an “indefinite strike” called by unions, such as the teachers’ and construction workers’ unions, put further pressure on the government, which suspended classes and dispersed some demonstrations.

The public discontent against the government, which has been ongoing for many months, reached its boiling point after the approval of Law 462 in March, which introduced reforms in the Social Security Fund (CSS) and which is being criticized by the demonstrators as a direct path to the privatization of social security amid the implementation of a framework of economic adjustments by the president of the country, José Raúl Mulino.

In the meantime, Panama has become a scene of geopolitical tension since US President Donald Trump’s announcement of his plans for the retake control of the Panama Canal.

Washington committed to the canal
On April 9, during US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s visit to Panama, the two governments signed a memorandum of understanding which, among other things, allows the US to temporarily use military bases in Panama and to carry out joint military actions.

Amid Washington’s anti-China rhetoric and the concessions granted by the Panamanian government, the Hong Kong-based company CK Hutchison Holdings Limited agreed, in February of this year, to sell some of its shares in ports on Panamanian coasts to the US vulture fund BlackRock.

However, at the end of April, amid the current context of commercial tensions, China’s regulator of the stock market opened an investigation on the purchase-sale agreement, and therefore, the sale has been paused, and Beijing has not yet ratified the commercial commitment that was supposed to be carried out on April 2.

Prior to Hegseth’s visit, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio himself, during his first tour since taking office, visited Panama first, with the clear mandate to neutralize China’s “influence” over the Canal. For his part, Mulino unilaterally terminated the economic agreement with China, through which China was making significant investments related to its strategic Belt and Road Initiative.

Following Rubio’s visit, the head of the US Southern Command, Admiral Alvin Holsey, arrived in Panama at the end of February in order to “guard the area.” These repeated visits are evidence of the US’s increased interest in the geopolitical significance of Panama and the region.

The Panamanian president has responded to the US offensive by saying that China does not meddle in his country’s internal affairs and that US ships have to pay for the use of the canal, despite the fact that both Trump and Rubio have claimed free passage for US ships on the waterway as among their achievements. Nevertheless, Mulino has very diligently acceded to several of the Trump administration’s demands.

After China paused the commercial process of the sale of the ports in Panama, international tension is rising over the canal, and in parallel, social movements are preparing for confrontation.

Indefinite National Strike Continues in Panama, Defying Arrests and Repression

A week of protests
It is not only in the geopolitical plane that Panamanian waters are agitated.

Since 2022, Panamanian social movements have taken to the streets and have pushed the government back on several occasions. In 2022, a series of protests intensified and reversed the fuel price hike decreed by the government of the then president, Laurentino Cortizo. In 2023, a Supreme Court ruling overturned the government’s contract with a transnational mining company after large environmental mobilizations had paralyzed key sectors of the country for days.

The protests of April 2025 are not new, and the social movements seem to have enough power to confront the government and maintain mobilization for long periods, trying to neutralize both the economic adjustment plan and the surrender of national sovereignty to the US as foreseen in the aforementioned memorandum of understanding.

Thus, Panama has now become a nerve center of struggle, both in the geopolitical space and in the socio-political space—the latter dominated by the active and mobilized unions which acknowledge the impact of the new social policies of the Mulino government.

For its part, the government has broadened its repressive narrative and has threatened teachers and workers with dismissals and elimination of pay, which augurs further polarization. The government intends to criminalize the unions and obtain international backing for tougher actions to contain the protests in order not to return to a situation of political instability as in previous years.

However, leaders of the social movements have already called for new demonstrations in May, while they continue to demand the withdrawal of the reform of the Social Security Fund.

Tensions are rising in Panama. It is no longer a peaceful country.

 

 

(RT)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/SC/SL