By IWU-FI
From the International Workers’ Unity – Fourth International (ITU-CI), we are promoting an international campaign of solidarity with the struggle of the Panamanian people, against repression and for the freedom of the leaders of SUNTRACS (construction union), persecuted and detained by the government of José Raúl Mulino.
For several months now, the people and the workers of Panama have been developing massive mobilisations in defence of their sovereignty against Trump’s attempts to take control of the Panama Canal for preferential use with his military and commercial ships. The policy of the Mulino government is to apply a brutal austerity plan, and attack the rights won by the working people. Mulino seeks to implement the privatisation of the Panamanian Social Security Fund (CSS) through Law 462, and the reopening of the ‘Cobre’ mine, an open-pit copper mine that was closed in 2023 when it was declared unconstitutional, ans following massive protests and mobilisation in defence of the environment. In the same plundering and destructive sense, the government, along with the administration of the Panama Canal, are seeking to impose the construction of a dam and reservoir in the Indio River, to guarantee that millions of litres of freshwater can be delivered in times of drought so as to raise its level; thus, large regions would be flooded and the communities that live there would be evicted, with the consequent destruction of the environment in the region.
Mobilisation and strikes are the tools of struggle that the working class and the poor are using to reject Law 462, passed by the National Assembly at Mulino’s request. The strikes have continued, more than a month after they began. At the moment a strike of ‘Chiquita‘ banana workers in Bocas del Toro is still ongoing, the teachers’ strike is spread all over the country, and the construction workers’ strike is still going strong. Mass mobilisations of women and health workers have recently taken place all over the country, and national protests are expected to continue.
In order to break the strikes and mobilisations, and to continue to implement its austerity measures, the repressive Panamanian government has unleashed a fierce repression against the mobilised people. It imprisons the women that are fighting, in the communities of Darien, it is punishing university students, with the the rector of the National University of Panama giving away their data to be used in repressive measures, it has declared the strikes as illegal and is beating and shooting the workers who block routes and roads. A state of emergency has even been declared in Bocas de Toro.
Repression has reached unprecedented levels, and its worst aspect is the arrest and imprisonment of the leaders of the powerful SUNTRACS union (National Union of Workers of Construction and Similar Industries), one of the organisations currently leading the struggle of the Panamanian people. The government has set up baseless trials since 2022, and has placed Jaime Caballero and Genaro López in pre-trial detention. Saúl Méndez is awaiting political asylum in the Bolivian embassy and Erasmo Cerrud is being sought as a ‘fugitive’.
In addition to these arrests and persecutions, the government declared the banana strike in Bocas de Toro illegal and the multinational ‘Chiquita‘ has dismissed about 5000 workers. It is seeking to push financial audits through the comptroller’s office in order to attack and dissuade the teachers, and it is arresting leaders of the native communities.
From the International Workers’ Unity – Fourth International, and together with our comrade Priscilla Vasquez and Socialist Proposal (IWU-FI section in Panama), we repudiate the imprisonment of workers’, popular and trade union leaders, who are leading the fight of the working and poor people of Panama. We reject the judicial persecution and the hoaxes and repression against the organisations currently in struggle. We call on the workers’, popular, democratic, human rights, women’s, youth and native peoples’ organisations, as well as the democratic political organisations, to launch a firm campaign of international solidarity to demand the freedom of the detained and persecuted leaders of SUNTRACS and to express support for the demands of the Panamanian people against the repressive and pro-imperialist José Raúl Mulino.
