Panama

Oct. 31 (UPI) — The Panama Canal Authority plans to move forward with construction and subsequent concession of two new port terminals, with an estimated investment of $2.6 billion.

According to information released by the authority in a press release, the terminals are planned for two strategic areas along the canal, one on the Pacific coast in Corozal and the other on the Atlantic side at Telfers Island.

The goal of both projects is to expand container-handling capacity and strengthen Panama’s position as an interoceanic logistics hub.

With the addition of these two terminals, the goal is to increase container capacity from about 9.5 million (20-foot equivalent units per year to roughly 15 million. The projects also aim to expand port capacity in the interoceanic area, which is operating near its limit.

The Corozal port, on the Pacific coast, would take advantage of its proximity to the canal’s western entrance to capture container traffic using the interoceanic route. The Telfers Island project, on the Atlantic side, would cover the other end of the canal, facilitating both transshipment and cargo transfers between ocean routes.

Together, the two projects would reinforce Panama’s strategy to move beyond a transit route and establish itself as a logistics center, transshipment port and industrial platform for the region.

The authority said it expects to award the concessions by late 2026, allowing the terminals to begin operations in early 2029. It has begun discussions with representatives from about 20 global maritime operators to identify potential partners for the port development.

Representatives from APM Terminals (Denmark), Cosco Shipping Ports (China), CMA Terminals-CMA (France), DP World (United Arab Emirates), Hanseatic Global Terminals (Germany), MOL (Japan), PSA International (Singapore), SSA Marine-Carrix Group (United States) and Terminal Investment Limited (Switzerland) took part in the initial round of talks.

However, in Panama’s public debate, there is discussion over whether the concession model is the most appropriate way to develop the projects or if the authority should operate the terminals.

The discussion follows an audit by the Office of the Comptroller General into Panama Ports Co. — a subsidiary of China’s CK Hutchison that operates key terminals in the country– that found multimillion-dollar shortfalls in payments owed to the state, though the discrepancies were attributed to a “poorly negotiated” initial contract.

The Panama Canal also faces additional challenges in developing the new ports, including the need to secure supporting infrastructure, such as road access, dredging, water supply, logistics services and environmental impact studies required for these large-scale projects.

The initiative comes amid a global context in which container ships continue to grow in size, maritime routes seek greater efficiency and logistics hubs compete fiercely across Latin America.

As part of the Panama Canal’s Vision 2025-2035 plan, container terminals are seen as key components of the supporting infrastructure, second in importance only to the locks and navigation channels. Their development aims to strengthen port capacity and ensure the competitiveness of Panama’s maritime route.

In mid-September, the authority also announced development of a natural gas pipeline. The project aims to create a new overland energy route that would complement the existing canal by linking the Pacific and Atlantic coasts across Panama.

The pipeline would transport liquefied natural gas and other gases, such as propane and butane, from one ocean to the other without ships having to transit the canal. It would extend 47 miles and have the capacity to transfer up to 2.5 million barrels of gas per day.

The authority estimates that the project, which has drawn interest from about 45 energy companies, will cost between $4 billion and $5 billion. It also expects the concession to be awarded in the fourth quarter of 2026.

Jose Raul Mulino says the visa-removal policy is ‘not coherent’ with the ‘good relationship’ he hopes to have with the US.

Panama President Jose Raul Mulino said that someone at the United States Embassy has been threatening to cancel the visas of Panamanian officials.

His statements come as the administration of US President Donald Trump pressures Panama to limit its ties to China.

Responding to a reporter’s question at his weekly news conference, Mulino said — without offering evidence — that an official at the US Embassy is “threatening to take visas”, adding that such actions are “not coherent with the good relationship I aspire to maintain with the United States”. He did not name the official.

The US Embassy in Panama did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Trump administration has previously declined to comment on individual visa decisions.

But in September, the US Department of State said in a statement that the country was committed to countering China’s influence in Central America. It added that it would restrict visas for people who maintained relationships with China’s Communist Party or undermined democracy in the region on behalf of China.

Earlier this week, the Trump administration revoked the visas of six foreigners deemed by US officials to have made derisive comments or made light of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk last month.

Similar cases have surfaced recently in the region. In April, former Costa Rica President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias said the US had cancelled his visa. In July, Vanessa Castro, vice president of Costa Rica’s Congress, said that the US Embassy told her her visa had been revoked, citing alleged contacts with the Chinese Communist Party.

Panama has become especially sensitive to the US-China tensions because of the strategically important Panama Canal.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Panama in February on his first foreign trip as the top US diplomat and called for Panama to immediately reduce China’s influence over the canal.

Panama has strongly denied Chinese influence over canal operations but has gone along with US pressure to push the Hong Kong-based company that operated ports on both ends of the canal to sell its concession to a consortium.

Mulino has said that Panama will maintain the canal’s neutrality.

“They’re free to give and take a visa to anyone they want, but not threatening that, ‘If you don’t do something, I’ll take the visa,’” Mulino said Thursday.

He noted that the underlying issue — the conflict between the US and China — “doesn’t involve Panama”.

Greg Louganis is starting a new chapter in his life.

The U.S. diving legend has auctioned off three of the five Olympic medals he won between 1976-1988, sold his home and is parting with most of his other possessions as part of a journey of self-discovery that is taking him, at least for now, to Panama.

“So, as life moves forward, what are you prepared to leave behind?” Louganis wrote Friday in a Facebook post. “I am 65 years old, and I am asking just that. I am no longer who I used to think I was. Not even close to ‘What’ other people or ‘Who’ other people think I am.”

Louganis shared some details of his plan in that post and expanded on them on two Instagram Live posts, one recorded from Los Angeles in his final night in the United States and the other recorded the following day from Panama City, the first stop in a journey that will eventually take him and his dog Gerald to Boquette.

That’s where they’re going to settle down — “for now,” Louganis said on Instagram.

“I don’t know how permanent, or, you know, I don’t know how long it’s gonna be,” he said. “I’m just embracing the ‘I don’t know,’ and also staying open for discovery. I think that’s what this part of my life is about, being open to discover what’s next and really, really, really do my best at being present in every place I go with every person I meet.”

About a year ago, Louganis said, he was in a bad place mentally, feeling “really, really alone and isolated.”

“It was really, really severe, real bad depression,” Louganis said. “And now I’m realizing, I have things to offer. So what that is and what that looks like, I haven’t figured it out. And I think that that’s what this is kind of about, is recalibration and figuring out what is next. … and just discover who I am too. I mean, that’s a big question.”

U.S. diver Greg Louganis spreads his arms and bends at the waist while in mid-dive during a springboard diving competition.

(Sadayuki Mikami / Associated Press)

Louganis says part of the process has been letting go of many of the items he didn’t realize were weighing him down. Last month, he received more than $430,000 at auction for three of his Olympic medals ($201,314 for his 1988 gold medal in 10-meter platform, $199,301 for his 1984 gold medal in 3-meter sprinboard and $30,250 for his 1976 silver medal in 10-meter platform).

“I needed the money,” Louganis wrote on Facebook. “While many people may have built businesses and sold them for a profit, I had my medals, which I am grateful for. If I had proper management, I might not have been in that position, but what is done is done; live and learn.”

Louganis has not mentioned what, if anything, happened with his other two gold medals, won in 1984 for 3-meter springboard and in 1988 for 10-meter platform.

Also on his posts, Louganis mentions that he sold his home last week. Public records list Louganis as the owner of a residence in Topanga. According to Zillow, a house at that address sold on Aug. 28 for $750,000.

As for most of his other belongings, Louganis wrote, “I decided to donate, sell what can be sold, give gifts, and give where things might be needed or appreciated. … A thought occurred to me, I had many friends, people I was close to, lost everything in the Woolsey Fire, and then the Palisades Fire just this year.

“I know I am choosing to do this, but their resilience is an inspiration for me to start anew, with an open heart and an open door. Opening up to possibilities.”

On Instagram, Louganis described the experience as “freeing.”

“The memories will always be in here,” Louganis said, placing his hand over his heart. “And so the other things are just stuff, you know? We don’t realize how much we hang on to, and what I’m also learning now in this process is how oftentimes we don’t realize they weigh us down. You know, like the shipping, the storage, all of that stuff.

“Actually, I was kind of discussing that with Michael Phelps, because he heard that I auctioned my medals. He said, ‘How was that?’ I said, ‘You know what it was? It was a relief, you know, because then it was like it was a weight off my shoulders.’”

In January, just before Donald Trump resumed command of the United States on a bevy of sociopathic promises, incoming US border czar Tom Homan announced that the new administration would be “shutting down the Darien Gap” in the interests of “national security”.

The Darien Gap, of course, is the notorious 106km (66-mile) stretch of roadless territory and treacherous jungle that straddles Panama and Colombia at the crossroads of the Americas. For the past several years, it has served as one of the only available pathways to potential refuge for hundreds of thousands of global have-nots who are essentially criminalised by virtue of their poverty and denied the opportunity to engage in “legal” migration to the US.

In 2023 alone, about 520,000 people crossed the Darien Gap, which left them with thousands of kilometres still to go to the border of the US – the very country responsible for wreaking much of the international political and economic havoc that forces folks to flee their homes in the first place.

In a testament to the inherent deadliness of borders – not to mention of existence in general for the impoverished of the world – countless refuge seekers have ended up unburied corpses in the jungle, denied dignity in death as in life. Lethal obstacles abound, ranging from fierce river currents to steep ravines to attacks by armed assailants to the sheer physical exhaustion that attends days or weeks of trekking through hostile terrain without adequate food or water.

And while literally “shutting down” the Darien Gap is about as feasible as shutting down the Mediterranean Sea or the Sahara Desert, the jungle has become drastically less trafficked in the aftermath of the Trump administration’s machinations to shut down the US border itself, essentially scrapping the whole right to asylum in violation of both international and domestic law.

In March, two months into Trump’s term, Panama’s immigration service registered a mere 194 arrivals from Colombia via the Darien Gap – compared with 36,841 arrivals in March of the previous year. This is no doubt music to the xenophobic ears of the US establishment, whose members delight in eternally bleating about the “immigration crisis”.

However, it does not remotely constitute any sort of solution to the real crisis – which is that, thanks in large part to decades of pernicious US foreign policy, life is simply unliveable in a whole lot of places. And “shutting down” the Darien Gap won’t deter desperate people with nothing to lose from pursuing other perilous paths in the direction of perceived physical and economic safety.

Nor can the enduring psychological impact of the Darien trajectory on the survivors of its horrors be understated. While conducting research for my book The Darien Gap: A Reporter’s Journey through the Deadly Crossroads of the Americas, published this month by Rutgers University Press, I found it next to impossible to speak with anyone who had made the journey without receiving a rundown of all of the bodies they had encountered en route.

In Panama in February 2023, for example, I spoke with a young Venezuelan woman named Guailis, who had spent 10 days crossing the jungle in the rain with her husband and two-year-old son. Among the numerous corpses they stumbled upon was an elderly man curled up under a tree “like he was cold”. Guailis said she had also made the acquaintance of a bereaved Haitian woman whose six-month-old baby had just drowned right before her eyes.

Guailis’s husband, Jesus, meanwhile, had experienced a more intimate interaction with a lifeless body when, tumbling down a formidable hill, he had grabbed onto what he thought was a tree root but turned out to be a human hand protruding from the mud. Recounting the incident to me, Jesus reasoned: “That hand saved my life.”

I heard about bloated corpses floating in the river, about a dead woman sprawled in a tent with her two dead newborn twins and about another dead woman with two dead children and a man who had hanged himself nearby – presumably the children’s father.

A Venezuelan woman named Yurbis, part of an extended family of 10 that I spent a good deal of time with in Mexico in late 2023, offered the following calculation regarding the prevalence of bodies in the jungle: “I can say that we have all stepped on dead people.”

For pretty much every step of the way, then, refuge seekers transiting the Darien Gap were reminded of the disconcerting proximity of death – and the negligible value assigned to their own lives in a US-led world order.

Add to that the surge in rapes and other forms of sexual violence with The New York Times reporting in April 2024 that the “sexual assault of migrants” on the Panamanian side of the jungle had risen to a “level rarely seen outside war” – and it becomes painfully clear that the individual and collective trauma signified by the Darien Gap is not something that will be summarily resolved by its ostensible “shutting-down”.

That said, the Darien Gap has also served as a venue for the display of incredible solidarity in the face of structural dehumanisation. I met a young Colombian man who had personally saved an infant from being swept away in a river. I was also told of a Venezuelan man who had carried an ailing one-year-old Ecuadorean girl through the jungle when her mother, too weak to move at a rapid pace, feared she wouldn’t make it out in time to seek medical help.

When I myself staged an incursion into the Darien Gap in January 2024, two refuge seekers from Yemen complimented me on my Palestine football shirt and did their best to assuage my apparently visible terror at entering the jungle: “If you need anything, we are here.” This from folks who had for more than two decades been on the receiving end of quite literal terror, courtesy of my own country, as successive US administrations went about waging covert war on Yemen.

The Darien Gap, too, has functioned as a de facto warzone in its own right where punitive US policy plays out on vulnerable human bodies in the interests of maintaining systemic inequality. Widely referred to in Spanish as “el infierno verde”, or The Green Hell, the gap has certainly lived up to its nickname.

And while the heyday of the Darien Gap may be at least temporarily over, the territory remains an enduring symbol of one of the defining crises of the modern era in which the global poor must risk their lives to live and are criminalised for doing so. In that sense, then, the Darien Gap is the world.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Premios Juventud announced its nominees for its 22nd annual award ceremony. Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny and Venezuelan balladeer Danny Ocean both lead with six nominations each.

Not far behind are hitmakers Anitta, Beéle, Carín León, Emilia, Myke Towers, Netón Vega and Peso Pluma, who each count five nominations. Other nominees include Becky G, Camilo, Fuerza Regida, Grupo Frontera, Kapo, Karol G and more.

It’s a monumental year for the awards ceremony, which began back in 2004 as part of the Univision network, now under the media conglomerate TelevisaUnivision.

The live broadcast will take place in Panama City, Panama, which is the first time the show will be held outside of the U.S. The decision to host abroad follows TelevisaUnivision’s “commitment to honoring the strength, values, and traditions of Latin American communities,” the network writes in a press release statement.

But location is not the only new element in the works. The theme this year is “Evolucionando al ritmo de la música,” and that certainly seems to be the case.

This year, Premios Juventud is introducing eight new categories to its lineup that better reflect evolving youth interest, including best alternative Mexican music song, best pop/rhythmic song, Afrobeat Latino of the Year.

While there has historically been an emphasis on music and television, this year the organization is also honoring creators in the beauty and fashion industry as well as podcasters, streamers, travel vloggers and soccer enthusiasts. In recent years, the award show has opened up new categories for digital creators, advocates and comics as social media platforms have become a hot spot for growing Latino talent.

Winners of Premios Juventud 2025 are determined by votes from viewers, which can be cast at premiosjuventud.com from now until September.

Hosted by Dominican actor Clarissa Molina (and others TBA), the awards show will broadcast live on Sept. 25 from the Figali Convention Center on Univision, UNIMÁS, Galavisión and ViX at 4 p.m. PT, 7 p.m. ET, 6 p.m. CT.

June 26 (UPI) — Panama will extend its suspension of constitutional rights in Bocas del Toro province through June 29 in response to escalating anti-government protests that have left one person dead, more than 300 detained and dozens injured, including 14 police officers.

After two months of roadblocks, demonstrations and vandalism, Panama’s Cabinet Council said it was necessary to temporarily restrict the constitutional rights to free assembly and movement in an effort to restore order in the region.

On June 20, the government issued a five-day decree suspending those rights and launched a special operation that deployed 1,500 additional police officers to the province.

Bocas del Toro has become the epicenter of a deep political and social crisis in Panama, sparked by mass protests following the approval of a pension system reform and a security cooperation memorandum signed by the Panamanian and U.S. governments.

While the government has presented the memorandum as a way to strengthen security and cooperation, many Panamanians see it as a surrender of national sovereignty and a sign of U.S. interference in the country’s internal affairs.

The current unrest in Panama stems from a combination of long-standing issues — including poverty, social inequality and a lack of opportunity — that have fueled widespread protests and violence.

Rejection of the pension reform, which eliminated some benefits, mobilized teachers and workers from the U.S.-based banana company Chiquita Brands. The company ultimately shut down its operations in Panama due to the strike. While some benefits were reinstated for banana workers, other affected groups — including teachers — remain mobilized and continue to demand the full repeal of the reform.

The demonstrations, which often include road blockades and clashes, have been met with a heavy police crackdown. Violent confrontations and mass arrests have led to accusations of excessive force and due process violations by authorities. According to Panamanian media reports, young people and teenagers make up a significant portion of the protesters.

The government has defended its crackdown, claiming that “criminal gangs” and “delinquent groups” have infiltrated otherwise peaceful demonstrations.

A growing concern is the lack of information about the whereabouts of those detained, who have been transferred to at least three provinces outside Bocas del Toro — compromising their right to a legal defense, attorney José Luis Santamaría told La Estrella de Panamá.

Amid the crisis, President José Raúl Mulino has proposed a sweeping “state reform” and a constitutional overhaul. He acknowledged that the current system is “broken” and “completely collapsed,” reflecting widespread public frustration with Panama’s institutions and bureaucracy.

Still, the promise of reform has been met with skepticism. Many Panamanians have seen similar proposals fail to deliver results in the past, and distrust in the political class remains high. Critics question whether the initiative offers a real solution or merely seeks to calm public anger without addressing the root causes of the crisis.

The nationwide teachers’ strike has entered its third month, with an estimated 30,000 educators participating — roughly 57% of Panama’s public school workforce.

On June 24, the government issued a decree allowing the immediate hiring of interim teachers to fill vacancies in areas where the strike continues. The measure will remain in effect through December 2025. The teachers’ union has announced plans to challenge the decree in court, arguing it is unconstitutional.

The protests have dealt a severe blow to the economy, with daily losses estimated between $80 million and more than $100 million. The unrest has directly affected key exports, local businesses and investor confidence. Panama’s banana industry — one of its traditional agricultural and export pillars — accounted for about 17% of total agricultural export value in 2023, or roughly $140 million.

While the government maintains its growth targets, any recovery will depend on ending the blockades and restoring social order.

Although the protests have not directly disrupted operations at the Panama Canal, they have caused indirect logistical delays. Road blockades have slowed or complicated the delivery of supplies, replacement parts and essential services such as crew changes and food.

Thanks to improved water levels and operational upgrades, the Panama Canal saw a 30% increase in vessel transits and a 22% rise in cargo volume between October 2024 and May 2025, according to the Panama Canal Authority.

Including both the expanded and original Panamax locks, the canal recorded 8,057 transits over the eight-month period — up 29.2% from 6,235 during the same span of fiscal 2024.

The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” now before the Senate takes the current preoccupation with making every governmental relationship transactional to an immoral extreme. It puts a $1,000 price tag on the right to seek asylum — the first time the United States would require someone to pay for this human right.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights holds that “everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.” U.S. law incorporates that right, stating that “any alien … irrespective of such alien’s status, may apply for asylum.” Neither makes this right contingent on being able to pay.

Bear in mind that asylum seekers in the United States do not have the right to court-appointed attorneys. That means the system already profoundly disadvantages indigent asylum seekers — they can’t afford a lawyer, often don’t speak English and have no road map for navigating arcane immigration law.

The new law would make asylum even more inaccessible for a poor person, in effect, creating two classes of those seeking refuge here. Those wealthy enough to pay $1,000 up front would have their protection claims heard; those unable to pay would be shunted back to face persecution and the problems that drove them from their home countries to begin with.

If this part of the bill isn’t modified before its final passage, Congress will have piled on to the obstacles the Trump administration has already put in place to block the right to seek asylum. On Inauguration Day, President Trump proclaimed an invasion of the United States by “millions of aliens” and “suspend[ed] the physical entry of any alien engaged in the invasion across the southern border.” Until the president decides the “invasion” is over, the order explicitly denies the right of any person to seek asylum if it would permit their continued presence in the United States.

Since Jan. 20, asylum seekers trying to enter the United States at the southwestern border have been turned away and, in some cases, loaded onto military planes and flown to third countries — Panama, for example — without any opportunity to make asylum claims.

“I asked for asylum repeatedly. I really tried,” Artemis Ghasemzadeh, a 27-year-old Christian convert from Iran, told Human Rights Watch after being sent to Panama. “Nobody listened to me …. Then an immigration officer told me President Trump had ended asylum, so they were going to deport us.”

On top of the basic fee for asylum seekers, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” would also require an asylum seeker to pay a fee of “not less than $550” every six months to be permitted to work in the U.S. while their claim is pending. The bill would also impose an additional $100 fee for every year an asylum application remains pending in the heavily backlogged system, punishing the person fleeing persecution for the government’s failure to provide sufficient immigration judges.

Children are not spared. For the privilege of sponsoring an unaccompanied migrant child, the bill would require the sponsor, often a relative who steps forward to care for the child, to pay a $3,500 fee. Congressional priorities for spending on unaccompanied children who arrive at our borders show a distinct lack of compassion: The bill directs that a $20-million appropriation for U.S. Customs and Border Protection “shall only be used to conduct an examination of such unaccompanied alien child for gang-related tattoos and other gang-related markings.”

Add to these barriers the complete shutdown of the U.S. refugee resettlement program, except for white South Africans; the termination of “humanitarian parole” for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans; the end of temporary protected status programs that have provided protection to people coming from countries of widespread conflict, and the travel ban that bars entry from some of the world’s top refugee-producing countries, including Afghanistan, Myanmar, Iran and Sudan.

In the meantime, Trump hypes the idea of selling $5-million “gold cards” for super rich foreigners who want to buy U.S. permanent residence. When asked who might be interested, Trump replied, “I know some Russian oligarchs that are very nice people.”

The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” includes $45 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detention capacity (by my calculations, that would more than triple capacity). It also specifies $14.4 billion for ICE transportation and removal operations, $46.5 billion for the border wall and $858 million to pay bonuses to ICE officials.

With all the money Congress is prepared to spend, it’s a wonder the bill didn’t add a few dollars for sanding down the inscription at the base of the Statue of Liberty and re-chiseling it to say, “Give me your rich and well-rested … yearning to breathe free.”

Bill Frelick is refugee rights director at Human Rights Watch and the author of the report “‘Nobody Cared, Nobody Listened’: The US Expulsion of Third-Country Nationals to Panama.”

Clashes with police have left at least one person dead and about 30 injured in a major banana-producing province.

Panama has declared a state of emergency in western Bocas del Toro province, where antigovernment protesters opposing a pension reform law are accused of setting fire to a baseball stadium and of looting businesses, including a provincial airport.

The protests that erupted two months ago in Bocas del Toro, a major banana-producing region, intensified this week, culminating in clashes with police that left one person dead and injured about 30 people, including several officers, police said on Friday.

Presidential Minister Juan Carlos Orillac said in a news conference on Friday that the move to suspend some constitutional rights and ban public gatherings would allow the government to reestablish order and “rescue” the province from “radical groups”, adding that the damage caused to public properties was “unacceptable and did not represent a legitimate protest”.

“In the face of the disruption of order and acts of systematic violence, the state will enforce its constitutional mandate to guarantee peace,” he said.

The measure will be in place for five days, he said.

The protesters, backed by unions and Indigenous groups across the country, have faced off with authorities over a pension reform law passed in March.

Confrontations have been particularly intense in Bocas del Toro, largely led by workers at a local Chiquita banana plantation. The multinational banana giant Chiquita called the workers’ strike an “unjustified abandonment of work” and sacked thousands of employees.

Those workers ultimately withdrew from the protests after they were able to negotiate the restoration of some benefits that had been removed under the March pension reform.

Still, the government has said roadblocks in Bocas del Toro have yet to be lifted, though it did not directly attribute them to the Chiquita workers.

The violence peaked in the city of Changuinola, Bocas del Toro’s main city, on Thursday when groups of hooded individuals looted businesses and partially set fire to a baseball stadium with police officers inside, authorities said.

Police said “vandals took over” the local airport, stole vehicles belonging to car rental companies, and looted an office and a warehouse containing supplies belonging to Chiquita. Flights at the airport were still suspended on Friday.

Panama’s right-wing President Jose Raul Mulino has been facing protests on several fronts in recent months.

Besides the pension reforms, Panamanians have also been in the streets over a deal Mulino struck with US President Donald Trump in April allowing US troops to deploy to Panamanian bases along the Panama Canal.

Mulino made the concession to Trump after the US leader repeatedly threatened to “take back” the US-built waterway.

Mulino has also angered environmentalists by threatening to reopen Cobre Panama, one of Central America’s biggest copper mines.

President Jose Raul Mulino, whose changes to social security laws prompted the protest, called the strike ‘illegal’ and said the company has ‘just cause’ for the layoffs.

Banana producer Chiquita has announced mass layoffs in Panama amid an ongoing strike.

The United States-owned banana giant said on Friday it was letting “all” daily labourers go for the “unjustified abandonment of work at our plantations”.

Workers have been on strike for more than a month, as part of nation-wide industrial action protesting new social security laws lowering pensions. The government has branded the strikes “illegal” and said the sackings are the result of workers’ “intransigence”.

Chiquita said in a statement that the strike had caused “irreversible damage ..[and] at least $75 million in losses”, adding that those affected by the layoffs are required to collect severance payments.

The company did not elaborate on the number of people affected by the decision. However, the Reuters news agency reported that about 5,000 workers out of 6,500 have lost their jobs, referring to an unnamed source.

‘De facto’ or ‘indefinite’ strike

Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino defended Chiquita’s actions at a news conference on Thursday.

“The company will have to act accordingly, dismissing those necessary to save its operation in Bocas [a Caribbean province in Panama]. Believe me, it hurts me, but this intransigence is not good,” he said.

“The strike is illegal,” Mulino added. “The next step according to the Labour Code is dismissal with just cause because this is a de facto strike, not a legitimate strike.”

However, Francisco Smith, secretary-general of the Banana Industry Workers Union (Sitraibana), told the Panamanian television channel Telemetro on Thursday that the strike was legal because the “deputies who approved bill 462 harmed the banana sector”.

Passed in March, Bill 462 introduced changes to the Social Security Fund that could lead to a possible reduction in pensions.

The introduction of the law led to significant anger, with unions, including banana workers, joining a national strike on April 23.

The government and Sitraibana held a preliminary meeting on Thursday to discuss amendments to the bill, which would include protections for banana farmers.

Still, Smith said, “the strike continues, we continue fighting in the streets… The strike is indefinite.”

Panama’s banana industry is a significant part of the country’s economy.

According to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, in 2023, Panama exported $273m worth of bananas, making it the 13th largest exporter in the world.