Citizens stage rally for re-opening of Cobre Panama copper mine

[Redator]

Thousands of former workers, members of supplier companies and residents of the districts of La Pintada, Omar Torrijos and Donoso, staged a march on Sunday along the Pan-American Highway in the city of Penonomé to ask the government of President José Raúl Mulino to start negotiations with Minera Panamá, S.A. for the reopening of the giant Cobre Panama copper mine, local media El Capital Financiero reported.  

Minera Panamá is a subsidiary of the Canada’s First Quantum Minerals (TSX: FM), which operated the mine until Panama’s Supreme Court ruled its contract to operate the only mining operation in the Central American country, was unconstitutional in 2023. 

Challenges against the contract, which would have allowed Cobre Panama to keep operating for the next 20 years, piled up in court following public protests against the deal inked in October by the government and Minera Panamá.  

The demonstration on Sunday occupied a section of the Inter-American Highway in the direction of Nata de Los Caballeros, and took place peacefully, with a rally in which the sectors affected by the closure and their families participated, El Capital Financiero reported. 

Cecilia Martínez, a resident of the community of Coclesito in the Omar Torrijos Herrera district, told local media the residents of the areas adjacent to the Cobre Panama mine they participated in the demonstration to “demand their right to have a decent job”, “to contribute to the construction of a country that advances socially and economically in peace” and to reject the accusations of those who demonstrated against the mine as “sellouts of the homeland” for demanding “equal rights and opportunities” for those who reside in the rest of the country.  

Panama legislators had ratified the new contract between the executive and First Quantum, but reconsidered their decision after massive protests almost paralyzed the country. 

The land and sea ongoing demonstrations  blocked the delivery of crucial supplies to the mine. 

Martínez told the news agency that after the closure of the Cobre Panama mine, local economies experienced a breakdown and left residents without opportunities to earn a livelihood. 

Meanwhile, Katherine Márquez, a former worker at the Cobre Panama mine, described to El Capital Financiero it was “shocking” to see how businesses, communities and people who were growing hand in hand with mining activity “have been left without dreams or opportunities” with the closure of the mine.  

Cobre Panama, Central America’s largest open-pit copper mine, produced 330,863 tonnes of copper in 2023 before the government ordered to shut it down. It would have become a 100 million tonnes a year operation in 2024, placing it near the top of the world’s copper throughput ranking. 

In April, a joint venture between First Quantum Minerals and the Panamanian government was presented as a practical solution to the dispute that has kept the Cobre Panama copper mine shut since November 2023.