Hyper-Development, Waste, and Uneven Urban Spaces in Panama City Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

Hyper-development, Waste, and Uneven Urban Spaces in Panama City

Thesis

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

Natasha Kimberly Sadoff, B.S.

Graduate Program in Geography

The Ohio State University

2015

Thesis Committee:

Kendra Mc Sweeny, Advisor

Ed Malecki

Becky Mansfield

Natasha K. Sadoff

2015

Abstract

Panama City is experiencing unprecedented urban development, particular in terms of elite real estate and finance, growth associated with the widening of the canal, and illicit activities such as money laundering. Not surprisingly, this hyper-growth is exacerbating environmental hazards whose costs are unevenly borne by residents. A case in point is the 2013 Cerro Patacón Landfill fire and subsequent air quality crisis. Cerro Patacón is a landfill just outside the city where regional waste is delivered and stored. In March 2013, a portion of the landfill caught on fire, releasing harmful toxins into the air for nearly two weeks. While sooty air engulfed the entire city, it was poor residents who experienced the greatest impacts of the fire in terms of respiratory and other health conditions. State response to the fire has not been to address the fundamental question of waste management or uneven exposure to waste-related hazards. Rather, the Panamanian government—with international support —is promoting a neoliberal response and emphasizing that when air quality in the city is poor, residents can ‘choose’ to modify their behaviors to avoid health risks.

In my thesis, I use political ecology and social metabolism to conceptualize the city, waste, and development as interdependent and foundationally co-constituting. Using evidence from ethnographic field work, landscape analysis, participant observation and other secondary data analysis, I argue that Cerro Patacón and its population are externalized and vilified by city officials, contributing to and promoting the naturalization of an unproblematic growth model that denies government accountability, wrongly

ii blames certain populations, and justifies social exclusion. However resistance – coordinated or diffuse – is either nonexistent or largely hidden. I argue that hyper-growth and neoliberal governance have permeated Panama City’s social metabolism and produce expressly neoliberal subjects, resulting in Panamanians internalizing and accepting what one would otherwise see as injustice.

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Dedication

This thesis is dedicated to my family.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my advisor, Kendra McSweeney, and my committee members, Becky Mansfield and Ed Malecki, for their support and academic assistance in the preparation of this thesis. I would also like to thank my family, friends, and colleagues in the Department of Geography for their support and encouragement. The Center for Latin American Studies, the Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers, and the Department of Geography at The Ohio State University provided financial support, for which I am very grateful. I appreciate the helpful comments given by the IRB. I also am thankful to my employer, Battelle, for providing tuition reimbursement for my studies, allowing me to engage in this work. Finally, I wish to thank my collaborators in Panama at the University of Panama and Guna Nega for their help in providing me a glimpse of their lives and city.

Vita

2003...... New Albany High School

2007...... B.S. Environmental Studies, University of

Vermont

2009 to present ...... Researcher, Health and Analytics, Battelle

Fields of Study

Major Field: Geography

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Dedication ...... iv

Acknowledgments...... v

Vita ...... vi

List of Figures ...... x

List of Tables ...... xii

Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 1

1.1 Introduction and Conceptual Framework ...... 1

1.2 Methods and Evolving Research Questions ...... 4

1.3 Study Objectives and Thesis Structure ...... 7

Chapter 2: The Political Ecology of Panama City and its Waste ...... 10

2.1 Urban Political Ecology ...... 11

2.2 Panama City as a Cyborg Place of Flows ...... 13

2.2.1 Social Metabolism ...... 14

2.2.2 The Historical Underpinnings of Panama City’s Social Metabolism ...... 16

2.2.3 Global, Hybrid, Cyborg Cities ...... 23

2.3 Landfills as an Expression of Uneven, Hyper Growth ...... 29

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2.3.1 Waste in Panama City and Cerro Patacón ...... 30

2.3.2 The Fire ...... 43

2.3.3 Political Ecology of Waste and Landfills ...... 46

Chapter 3: The Logic of Externalization in Panama City ...... 50

3.1 Political Ecological Assumptions ...... 50

3.1 Unpacking the Logic: Neoliberal Governance Strategies ...... 53

3.1.1 Targeting Individuals and “Others” ...... 53

3.1.2 Technocratic Solutions...... 60

3.1.3 Non-metabolic Dualisms ...... 65

Chapter 4: A Different Discourse? Resistance and Subjectivities ...... 72

4.1 Alternative Discourses ...... 72

4.1.1 Contesting the Discourse of Externalization…...... 73

4.1.2 Through Neoliberal Means ...... 76

4.2 Resistance ...... 78

4.2.1 Panamanians as Neoliberal Subjects ...... 79

Chapter 5: Conclusion: Social Metabolism and Subjectivities for an Urban Political

Ecology in Context ...... 84

5.1 Review of Main Arguments ...... 84

5.2 Outstanding Questions ...... 86

5.3 Theoretical Implications and Contributions of the Study ...... 89

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References ...... 94

Appendix A: Semi-Structured Interview Questions, in English and Spanish ...... 99

List of Figures

Figure 1. Panama City’s downtown ...... 3

Figure 2. The President visits the Canal...... 18

Figure 3. The Canal Authority building...... 19

Figure 4. The Metro de Panama...... 23

Figure 5. Government celebrates modernization...... 24

Figure 6. The Panama Canal expansion...... 25

Figure 7. Albrook Mall in Panama City...... 26

Figure 8. Growing Markets ...... 27

Figure 9. Map of Panama City ...... 31

Figure 10. Cerro Patacón organization...... 32

Figure 11. Contaminated river near Cerro Patacón ...... 34

Figure 12. Guna Nega health center...... 35

Figure 13. President’s plaque for the health center...... 36

Figure 14. Government sign in Guna Nega...... 37

Figure 15. Community sign in Guna Nega ...... 37

Figure 16. Informal business in Guna Nega...... 39

Figure 17. Homes in Guna Nega...... 39

Figure 18. Homes near Guna Nega...... 40

Figure 19. Cerro Patacón, 2004 ...... 41

Figure 20. Cerro Patacón, 2010...... 42

Figure 21. Cerro Patacón, 2014...... 43

Figure 22. Panama City during the fire ...... 44

Figure 23. Cerro Patacón during the fire...... 45

Figure 24. Urbalia outreach ...... 56

Figure 25. Urbalia brochure...... 57

Figure 26. Urbalia brochure...... 58

Figure 27. Panama cartoon...... 70

Figure 28. Government cartoon...... 82

List of Tables

Table 1. Interviews completed...... 5

Table 2. Literatures in Political Ecology...... 10

Table 3. Key industries and institutions differ from Relational versus Global cities...... 28

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Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 Introduction and Conceptual Framework

In the summer of 2014, through my day job at a research and development non-profit organization (NGO), I was tasked with organizing logistics for a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)-funded workshop on air quality communication. Though the NASA grant focused on air quality issues throughout Latin America, Panama was chosen as the site of the workshop due to a large landfill fire that had taken place in March 2013 in the capital city. The Cerro Patacón landfill, just outside Panama City, receives all city waste (with the exception of Canal-related waste). In March 2013, a portion of the landfill caught on fire, releasing harmful toxins into the air for nearly two weeks. According to many sources, while sooty air engulfed the entire city, it was poor residents—unable to escape to air-conditioned indoors and living closest to the landfill— who experienced the greatest impacts of the fire in terms of respiratory and other health conditions (Vega Loo 2013). Further, many economically and socially disadvantaged populations living near the site did not receive information about reducing their exposure. Indeed, they were later described as responsible for the event itself and subsequently blamed for their high risk and exposures. When the Panamanian government addressed the fire, it was through promoting ‘air quality advisories’ and other individualized responses to ensure that when air quality in the city is poor, residents can ‘choose’ to modify their behaviors to avoid health risks.1 The workshop, however, did not address these issues. Rather, in keeping with NASA expertise, the workshop approached Cerro Patacón as an apolitical, technical problem. The workshop focused on topics like air quality monitoring, satellite data applications, and public participation issues in light of the fire and the air quality impacts that it had on the city. We worked hand-in-hand with the University of Panama’s Institute for

1 This was observed firsthand during a presentation by the Ministry of Health at the air quality communication workshop in Panama City, October 2013. 1

Specialized Analysis (IEA), a research organization affiliated with the university focusing on air quality monitoring and data analysis. We organized logistics like reserving space, organizing catering, and finding a translator, and they organized the agenda and invited participants from the media, government agencies, and other organizations around Panama City. In October 2014 I arrived in Panama City with a few colleagues for the workshop. We met our IEA collaborators, who informed us that only half of the 60 invited participants had confirmed their attendance. Even fewer attended and the workshop ended hours early as conversation waned. Needless to say, our colleagues at IEA were disappointed that the workshop was so poorly attended. NASA was sufficiently satisfied that the workshop even took place. While I was not surprised that a NASA-funded workshop organized by an air quality institute would focus on air quality monitoring or the use of satellite data in analysis, I was struck by the fact that none of the participants: scientists, students, government officials, or members of the media, raised any substantive questions or brought up obvious development and planning-related issues such as landfill management, urban development, and the politics of environmental governance. In fact, some of the participants who left early expressed that the fire was no surprise and no big deal – fires were a commonplace annual occurrence. I was amazed at this casual dismissal, and at the overall lack of interest among presumably concerned bureaucrats. At the same time, I was surprised by the extraordinary, modern landscape of Panama City itself. Skyscrapers, including even a Trump tower shaped like a sailboat, created a skyline that would rival Dubai’s. However, driving through the central highway, I also realized how quickly the modern buildings give way to older, shorter buildings with laundry hanging from the windows and doorways and both political graffiti and propaganda covering the soot-stained walls. Since the traffic is also horrendous (horrendous enough to have its own word in Spanish: tranke); I had time to also look in the other direction, and inevitably noticed the dozens of gargantuan cargo ships dotting the bay, waiting to enter into the Panama Canal. It’s a shocking urban landscape of modernization and wealth but also of inequality and poverty. In fact, Panama City is experiencing unprecedented urban development, particular in terms of elite real estate and growth associated with the widening of the canal (Sigler

2013). It also has an expanding tourism industry (Velasquez Runk 2012) and has become a regional hub for banking and finance, as well as illicit activities such as money laundering (Warf 2002). These and other socio-metabolic flows have resulted in Panama City’s “hyper-growth”— expanding at a rate faster than even that of Chinese cities. Panama City seems to have been overtaken by a form of ‘neoliberalism on drugs’ – literally!

Figure 1. Panama City’s downtown. Source: author, 2014.

The city’s growth has material social and environmental implications. Not surprisingly, this hyper-growth is exacerbating environmental hazards whose costs are unevenly borne by residents. Cerro Patacón represents just one instance of this. As in the workshop, state response to the fire has not been to address the fundamental question of waste disposal and uneven exposure to waste-related hazards, or broader questions of planning and development. While the cause of the fire is unknown, the media and the majority of officials with whom I spoke said illegal waste pickers and recyclers, or pepenadores, had caused the fire. I began to use my knowledge of the fire to think

3 through what to me are important questions of geography, development, and justice, specifically in terms of the links between hyper-urbanization, environmental justice, and urban governance. Drawing from political ecology, I argue that the crisis goes beyond illegal pickers. The fire was more likely what Scott Prudham (2007) would call a “normal accident,” caused by the combination of multiple factors, including mismanagement associated with the haphazard, poorly planned, and hyper- development of the city. In other words, the fire was the expected outcome of a particular type of urbanization and governance in Panama City, one that prioritizes particular forms of growth and urban structure over others (Prudham 2007). Ultimately, then, I conceptualize the Cerro Patacón Landfill fire as a condition of the specific array of processes and flows that make up the urbanization process in Panama City. Moreover, I draw from Swyngedouw’s work on social metabolism to theorize the flows of capital, people, and garbage through Panama City as socio-natural and inherently political; Panama City is not simply an “urban” place. Socio-metabolic flows transform the city and produce the urban landscape as a “continuously changing socio- ecological landscape” (Swyngedouw 2006; 20): a hybrid nature of human and nonhuman socio-ecological processes that produce what we know as urban. In an urban setting, these political environmental problems are dialectically produced through the city’s social metabolism; socio-natural processes produce uneven urban spaces (Heynen 2014). Therefore, the landfill is very much a part of the city; it is produced by the metabolism of the city and it equally produces and constitutes the city. This lens allows for the exploration of the socio-material basis of environmental problems such as fires or otherwise contamination, accepting them as inherently political.

1.2 Methods and Evolving Research Questions

Inspired by this scholarship, my initial aim was to conceptualize the ways in which the landfill and the geography and development of Panama were intimately connected; my research questions focused on understanding the forms of development and urbanization in Panama City, the ways in which those trajectories contributed to patterns of inequality, and how the landfill was produced by these trajectories. With university

4 financial support,2 I spent a total of about one month in Panama City through visits in October 2013, January 2014, and August 2014. I used various qualitative methods using secondary data such as policy documents and grey literature, as well as gathered and analyzed primary data collected in Panama. I conducted fieldwork to obtain primary data through semi-structured interviews3, landscape analysis, and participant observation. Table 1 shows the breadth of my interviews.4 I also analyzed policy and media (secondary) sources to affirm or contest what interviewees expressed.

Table 1. Interviews completed. Interviews were conducted with individuals from a variety of sectors in Panama City.

Sector Organization/Type Academia University of Panama, professor of Geography University of Panama, professor of Natural Resources Private Sector Urbalia Panama Government Agencies Environmental Authority (ANAM) Ministry of Health (MINSA) Ministry of Housing (MIVI) Ministry of Social Development (MIDES) NGOs/Institutes Institute for Specialized Analysis (IEA) CATHALAC Private Individuals 7 Guna Nega residents Liz, my Panamanian guide Pedro, my Panamanian driver Other Panamanian students Guna Nega police officer Guna Nega health clinic worker

The set of questions that initially guided me were:  How can I conceptualize Panama City and Cerro Patacón to better understand this issue and what it represents?

2 My research was supported by research grants: Ohio State University Department of Geography Rayner travel grant, Ohio State University Latin American Studies Tinker travel grant, and a Conference of Latin Americanists travel grant. 3 IRB approval was granted for this study, protocol number 2014B00254. 4 My interview questions were specific to the type of interviewee, whether they were a resident or official. I had specific questions about the landfill as well. The list of questions can be seen in Appendix A. 5

 How does the fire relate to uneven urban spaces and social/environmental injustice?

I expected to flesh out my conceptual framework with empirical examples gleamed from interviews with bureaucrats and government officials. I had assumed certain conceptual framings of urban geography and similarly assumed that my interviews would if not reflect this epistemology, then at least understand that there was indeed a ‘problem’ associated with hyper-growth, waste, and governance. However, I was unprepared for what I found upon engaging in my fieldwork. Although I spoke with a wide variety of stakeholders, it soon became clear that my research assumptions were not shared. In fact, the responses generally favored dismissal, either subtle laughter or polite avoidance, or explicitly through direct denial. My assumptions about the city as a political place and the landfill as connected through the social metabolism of the city were obviously not the assumptions held by my interviewees. In short, I found that despite the impacts that the fire had on the city – and specifically the uneven impacts it had on its population – the landfill and fire were seen as mundane and further, irrelevant, to a discussion about Panama City and development. I came to find that the event was not seen as a crisis, even for some of poorest residents themselves, and was largely completely dismissed both discursively and materially. In fact, the event was even seen by some government and NGO officials as mundane, something not worthy of their attention. They seemed to externalize the landfill from the city and from development; Cerro Patacón and the people who lived and worked there – generally indigenous and migrant mestizo populations – were found to be liminal, in-between spaces and people that did not fit within the city. This narrative was found to be pervasive across multiple social groups, from the tightly-lipped Ministry of Health to many citizens themselves. Moreover, I sought to extend an environmental justice framework to better understand how waste contributed to uneven impacts on populations based on class, race, ethnicity, etc. However, considering the interview reactions and responses, I found myself uncomfortable suggesting that the landfill fire raised issues of “justice.” While some young students recognized issues of justice at hand, others did not. How could I

6 seek to explore matters of what I deemed to be environmental and social injustice when no one – not even the so-called victims of this injustice – saw it that way? Understanding the geography and social metabolism of Panama City was no less important, perhaps now even more important; however how could I understand the pervasive logic that I found, which rendered the landfill, and those living there, completely external from development and urban governance? Overall, it became clear that the fire and the city were not seen as connected, the fire was not seen as a problem, and resistance to any perceived injustice was not obvious. I was not at first confident in this surprising outcome. However, as I become more and more confident as I found this to be a socially pervasive narrative, it caused a complete reorientation of my research questions. Therefore, my previous questions, while not the research object anymore, set the stage for a different understanding of the issues and new questions were subsequently raised and added:  How did this response differ from the ways in which other landfills in Latin America and elsewhere are seen by the city and by society?  What was the logic that seemed to be so pervasive, ranging from government officials to individual citizens?  How did this logic become naturalized? Was there any resistance? And finally,  What can we draw from this for environmental and social governance in practice?

1.3 Study Objectives and Thesis Structure

This study explores the implications of a narrative that promotes an externalization of peripheral, liminal people and places, evident throughout multiple moments and actors in Panama City, Panama. The thesis will ultimately unpack how peripheral environments – such as landfills – and peripheral peoples – such as mestizo and often-homogenized indigenous populations – are rendered external through this narrative, which ultimately does not recognize the social metabolism of the city and therefore does not connect the city’s hyper-development with environmental harm, such as landfill fires. The landfill provides a unique lens through which to understand both the neoliberal urbanization processes and the official and unofficial responses to it in Panama City. New insight is

7 given not only on the social metabolism of the city, but on the subjectivities of those who live there. In other Latin American countries, including Guatemala, Nicaragua, Mexico, and countless others, landfills become spaces of resistance (Moore 2008; Whitson 2011; Hartmann 2012). While the same conditions exist in Panama – giant landfills, which represent the utter speed and scale of development and modernization, surrounded and permeated by impoverished waste pickers – resistance to uneven development and hyper- growth seems to either be silent, silenced, or not there at all. Similarly, while the Panamanian government stands to risk its reputation on its poorly managed landfill, it could be extending its neoliberal reach to urban waste management in ways that Argentina, Brazil, and Nicaragua, among others, are. Guided by these important conceptual underpinnings, I argue that liminal spaces and people (and how/that they are seen as liminal) in Panama City have been rendered external through a socially pervasive discourse produced and defined by the city’s specific history and social metabolism, that disregards a structural analysis of the role of neoliberal development in determining planning priorities and governance strategies. Moreover, instead of the landfill being seen as a place of environmental and social governance for the sake of development or taken up by society as a place of resistance, as it often is, Cerro Patacón and its population are externalized and vilified, contributing to and promoting the naturalization of an unproblematic growth model that denies government accountability, wrongly blames certain populations, and justifies social exclusion. But further, it is a form of injustice that seemingly goes unnoticed and unquestioned. The structure of the thesis is as follows. Chapter 2 will deal with conceptualizing Panama City and Cerro Patacón, outlining the political ecological logic that binds historical, economic, and social underpinnings of modern Panama City through the lens of social metabolism. In this way, liminal spaces such as Cerro Patacón, and liminal people like indigenous and mestizo populations, are tied to Panama City. My original research questions guide this section. Guided by the revised questions, I will also explain how the externalization of the landfill and those living and working there is unexpected compared to other situations where landfills are sites of resistance and/or strategically and deliberately internalized by city officials in the name of development or social control.

Acknowledging that I did not find what a political ecological analysis would lead me to expect, Chapter 3 seeks to explain the logic that I did uncover. Chapter 4 outlines a minority alternative discourse, which contested the socially pervasive logic of externalization but ultimately through the same neoliberal governance strategies. In the conclusion (Chapter 5), I propose various hypotheses as to how the logic become so naturalized in Panamanian society. Finally, I suggest ways in which this study – and the use of social metabolism and political ecology broadly – contributes to a better understanding of environmental governance and neoliberal hyper-development.

Chapter 2: The Political Ecology of Panama City and its Waste

In conceptualizing the relationship between cities, waste, and justice, I use four main literatures, which provide various entry points for understanding particular urban processes that underlie these themes. A political ecological lens – and particularly urban political ecological (UPE) lens – is used through which to understand, analyze, and conceptualize Panama City as a place geographically and geopolitically, but also with particular governing and urbanization-related conditions that have produced the landfill and fire. UPE and environmental justice shed light on patterns, processes, and the production of social and environmental inequality. In this chapter, I will draw from my conceptual framework to interpret the relationships between Panama City, Cerro Patacón landfill, and the 2013 fire in an attempt to contextualize the fire and establish the links between the landfill and urbanization and development. Table 2 demonstrates the use of various literatures to conceptualize Panama City as a cyborg place of flows and the landfill and fire as an expression of uneven, hyper-growth. As noted in the table, these literatures will be explored in the context of Panama City in various ways throughout this chapter.

Table 2. Literatures in Political Ecology. To understand the landfill and the fire, I used an integrated framework for conceptualizing and understanding urban processes and their resulting socio-environmental injustices.

Urban Political Ecolgy (2.1) The landfill as an expression of uneven hyper- Panama City as a Cyborg place of flows (2.2) growth (2.3) Social metabolism (2.2.1) Waste in Panama City (2.3.1) The Historical Underpinnings of Panama City’s The Fire (2.3.2) Social Metabolism (2.2.2) Global, hybrid cyborg cities (2.2.3) Political ecology of waste and landfills (2.3.3)

This chapter is laid out as follows. Section 2.1 provides on overview on political ecology as a framework or lens through which to understand the political underpinnings

10 of environmental hazard associated with the landfill. Section 2.2 conceptualizes Panama City as a cyborg¸ or hybrid socio-natural city made up of particular metabolic flows and processes. The historical underpinnings of Panama’s social metabolism are also investigated here (Section 2.2.2). Section 2.3 will connect Panama City’s social metabolism to material injustices associated with hyper-growth, specifically seen through the landfill (Section 2.3.1) and the fire (Section 2.3.2). Finally, I will outline how political ecologies of waste and landfills, as well as environmental justice, provide further reference to how landfills and waste have been traditionally conceptualized in the literature discursively, as well as taken up materially as sites of extended governance or political activism.

2.1 Urban Political Ecology

Political ecology provides a framework, lens, or means of understanding the relationships between political, economic and social factors on environmental issues and changes, with an understanding of unequal power relations. Robbins (2012) describes political ecology as a community of practice utilizing specific methods and forms of analysis to better understand environmental and social processes, power relations and inequality, historicism, and the “Other” as subaltern populations. King (2009) describes political ecology as a “loosely bounded geographic subfield that offers specific theoretical and methodological contributions to research on human-environment interactions (pg. 43). Similarly, Greenberg and Park (1994) write that political ecology is a “historical outgrowth of the central questions asked by the social sciences about the relations between human society, viewed in its bio-cultural-political complexity, and a significantly humanized nature” (pg. 1). Political ecology has traditionally been focused on rural environments in the developing world, but has recently been thrust into urban or developed landscapes as well. Within political ecology, scholars have argued for greater research attention to particularly urban issues, highlighting the ways in which power, urbanization, and scale comingle (Cook and Swyngedouw 2012). David Harvey starts his 1973 book on space, social justice, and the city with the idea that the city is a “manifestly complicated thing,”

11 requiring a certain understanding of the spatial and temporal processes that are inherently social and political (Harvey 1973; 22). UPE, largely drawing from Harvey and Marxist notions of power and scale, in particular sought to address similar questions in urban landscapes. UPE was arguably coined by Swyngedouw’s 1996 paper, “The City as a hybrid: On nature, society and cyborg urbanization.” UPE highlights that power relationships shape the socio-natural configurations of the urban environment, and it illuminates the inevitable power relations and inequalities that result from extreme urbanization. Further, UPE considers the political-economic processes “involved in reworking the human-nonhuman assemblages and the production of socio-environmental inequalities” (Cook and Swyngedouw 2012; 1965). Urban political ecology scholars question and seek to understand the socio-material basis of environmental problems in urban landscapes, accepting them as inherently political. Swyngedouw relates Harvey’s and Neil Smith’s ideas about the production of nature with dualisms between nature and society. Urban political ecology considers the political-economic processes “involved in reworking the human-nonhuman assemblages and the production of socio-environmental inequalities” (Cook and Swyngedouw 2012; 1965). While political ecology as a framework or field of reference could on its own provide useful input the issues mentioned above in urban landscapes, Swyngedouw and Heynen (2003) argued that a specifically urban political ecology would “untangle the interconnected economic, political, social, and ecological processes that together go to form highly uneven and deeply unjust urban landscapes” in a more coherent way (pg. 898). UPE provides an alternative frame of reference for understanding how this uneven development has played out in Panama City regarding power relations, subaltern populations, and uneven benefit, in a city truly constituted by its material flows and processes of not only energy, materials, and information, but tourists, narco-capital, finance, cargo, etc. More details on these flows and processes will be provided later in the chapter. UPE research is often inspired by the multiple and variegated ways in which neoliberal governance impacts, shapes, and transforms spaces, places, and people (Liverman and Vilas 2006; Prudham 2007; Springer 2008; Velasquez Runk 2012). Neoliberalism is conceptualized differently in different literatures, however here I define

12 it as an economic system that prioritizes a global free market, private property rights, and free trade, and extends the economy into all aspects of society through deregulation, privatization, corporatization, and financialization (Peck et al. 2009; Harvey, 2005). Neoliberalization of the environment has resulted in the privatization and commodification of resources such as forests, water, or wildlife (Liverman and Vilas 2006), and neoliberal governance practices have resulted in the reshaping of social relations for indigenous and other populations, including in Panama (Velasquez Runk 2012). Understanding the temporality of neoliberalism in Panama City is also important. I argue later that neoliberalism cannot be periodized, as Harvey (2005) does, and instead has existed in Panama for most of its history post-colonialism. While policies do reflect neoliberal governance, neoliberalism in Panama City is not limited to a policy package or practice, like a free trade agreement (though those do exist and are important). Power – assigned through neoliberal strategies – in Panama City seems to be crystallized in the state, but also in foreign influence in the form of capital, both licit (e.g. goods through the Canal) and illicit (money laundering and drugs). Therefore, power and neoliberal governance do not necessarily or only flow downward from the state, but throughout multiple actors: an ensemble of institutions including government agencies, builders, developers, banks, and others (Sternberg 2013). Drawing from these literatures and underscored by a specific empirical understanding of Panama City’s development context, I seek to understand how Panama City’s distinct status as a global hub (and the processes that create, recreate, and reinforce its status) produces its metabolism and associated environmental ills through an understanding of the waste and fire. The following review, informed by particular political ecological tenets, helps to contextualize this research.

2.2 Panama City as a Cyborg Place of Flows

A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. (Haraway 1991)

The city and the urban are a network of interwoven processes that are both human and natural, real and fictional, mechanical and organic. There is nothing "purely" social or natural about the city, even less a-

social or a-natural; the city is both natural and social, real and fictional. In the city, society and nature, representation and being, are inseparable, integral to each other, infinitely bound up; yet, simultaneously, this hybrid socio-natural "thing" called "the city" is full of contradictions, tensions and conflicts.” (Swyngedouw 1996)

2.2.1 Social Metabolism

Metabolism, including geoeconomic flows and Panama City’s hybrid nature as a socio-natural landscape, provide a nuanced way of understanding Panama’s economy and its conceptualization as a nation-state with particular socio-environmental flows, and social consequences. Urban metabolism is a framework traditionally used in industrial ecology, energy, or engineering settings to analyze and theorize a city and the interconnectedness of its economic, political, and social processes, much like an ecosystem (Gandy 2004; Rapoport 2011). Energy, materials, and information, also make up the flows and processes that constitute urban processes. Urban ecologists use metabolism in working to make the urban landscape more efficient, working together like organs of the human body. However, metabolism has recently been applied to the explicitly social city as well (Swyngedouw 1996, 2006, 2012; Cooke and Lewis 2010,5 also see Warf 2002; Cowen and Smith, 2009; Sigler 2013). A particularly social metabolism considers questions of power and justice in looking at these processes and the ways they shape urban phenomena, but also the ways in which socio-natural dynamics constitute political or economic processes. In an urban setting, a social metabolism framework posits that environmental problems are dialectically produced through the city’s social metabolism; socio-natural processes produce particularly uneven urban spaces (Heynen 2013). More broadly, social metabolism emphasizes the ways in which socionatures produce a particular urban landscape. Urban landscapes are more than just commodity flows and metabolisms, they are historically specific social processes “with cultural practices

5 Cooke and Lewis (2010) provide one of the few specific case studies for how urban political ecology and social metabolism work together in providing a more comprehensive understanding of urbanization. However, their study focuses on Chicago, a Global city in a Global North setting. There are a number of fundamental differences between applying these frameworks to a city in the Global South (see Moore, 2008). 14 through which everyday experiences of the urban and nature gain significance” (Grove 2009; 209). Within the UPE literature, metabolic circulation, or social metabolism of a city, is defined by Cook and Swyngedouw (2012) most clearly as “the socially mediated process of environmental-technological transformations and transconfiguration, through which all manner of actants are mobilized, attached, collectivized, and networked” (pg. 1968). Social metabolism posits that “cities are constituted through dense networks of interwoven, socio-ecological processes that are simultaneously human, physical, discursive, cultural, material, and organic” (Swyngedouw 2006; 20). Geoeconomic flows transform the city and produce the urban landscape as a “continuously changing socio- ecological landscape” (Swyngedouw 2006; 20). On a larger scale, urbanization can be seen as a process of particular socio-environmental metabolisms; flows and processes constitute urbanization and modernization in Panama City. Swyngedouw offers social metabolism as a framework through which one can view “the city as a metabolic circulatory process that materializes as an implosion of socio-natural and socio-technical relations organized through socially articulated networks and conduits whose origin, movement, and position is articulated through complex political, social, economic, and cultural relations” (Swyngedouw 2006; 114). Further, he writes that the “socio-environmental metabolisms produce a series of both enabling and disabling social and environmental conditions” (Swyngedouw 2006; 118), coming from within the city and from other linked places, through humans and non- humans. In this way, he borrows from Haraway in that the city becomes a cyborg; a hybrid nature of human and nonhuman socio-ecological processes that produce the urban. Cyborgs are created through a process of “dirty mixing:” “heterogeneously constituted” through metabolic processes (Swyngedouw 2006; 113). This is important because it implies that urban environments are more than just hybrid socio-natural landscapes. Flows in the cyborg are dynamic, power-laden, contested, and constantly rearrange the human and nonhuman into new assemblages. Investigating the ways in which urban processes are socio-natural and power- laden sheds new light on environmental hazards. Environmental ills and social inequality in an urban setting can be better understood by understanding or analyzing other factors,

15 such as social issues (i.e. unemployment), global capital, geopolitical or geoeconomic flows, local power struggles, and other socio-ecological conditions. Further, especially appropriate for a city like Panama City, social metabolism draws attention to the socially driven material processes, flows, and networks that take place in a city through resources, both human and nonhuman, and consequently shape that city. Swyngedouw and Cook (2012) argue that social metabolism is an important new and future direction for research in socio-environmental systems in an urban setting, as well as urban political ecology. Turning to Panama City more specifically, a contextualized history is necessary in understanding modern development. What are the historical factors that have created the conditions for the development processes and practices taking place today? This is important because urban nature should be seen as a collage of past a present, that understanding socio-spatial phenomena with a historical perspective provides an analytic tool for understanding human-nature interaction. This section will provide an overview of the historical and neoliberal urban development patterns in Panama in an effort to understanding the modern socio-metabolic flows and processes at work. To understand the landfill and fire as an expression of Panama City’s uneven development, Panama City should be conceptualized as a specific type of place that can produce a specific type of event or process of injustice.

2.2.2 The Historical Underpinnings of Panama City’s Social Metabolism

Panama has been shaped by hundreds of years of external control or influence due to its unique geography as a thin isthmus and strategic location between oceans and continents (Galeano 1997; Lindsay-Poland 2003). Panama is an especially interesting place geographically because it exists as we know it today because of its global flows. Its geographical shape as a narrow isthmus has shaped its history; it has served as a point of transit for over 500 years. Panama’s history has been largely defined by the flows coming into and out of the country since the Spanish colonial era in the 1500s, as a transit zone mediating flows between and within Latin America and the rest of the world. Panama had a strategic geographic position and functioned as a transit zone from where expansion and conquest oriented (Galeano 1997). Panama quickly became a trade center for

16 shipping precious metals from the New World to Europe (Sigler, 2013). Mineral wealth from South America, slaves, goods, people, and other materials flowed through Panama on its way to Europe and later North America. According to the Museo del Canal Interoceanico del Panama6, up to 12,000 pounds of silver went through Portobello (a small town on the Caribbean coast) every year throughout the 1500s-1600s. In this period and throughout Spanish colonial rule, more than 60% of all silver extracted from the Americas was sent to Europe through Portobello, carried through the country via the Camino Real (the land trail across the country that preceded the Canal, used famously by long mule trains). Galeano (1997) firmly argued that “the metals taken from the new colonial dominations [and transported through Panama] not only stimulated Europe’s economic development; one may say that they made it possible” (pg. 23). During and even after the colonial period, attention began to focus on Panama more specifically as international powers such as the U.S. and Europe realized the geopolitical and economic potential of the isthmus for providing a cheap means of transporting modern goods between the Atlantic and the Pacific. The U.S. and Great Britain began vying for control of the area in 1850, signing treaties to resolve rivalries. The U.S. supported Panamanian independence from Spain in 1902 for geopolitical gain and to ensure that they maintained control of the canal and surrounding area. Colombian and Spanish troops were unable to maintain control over the territory, leaving the U.S. to finish the canal project that France had started decades prior. The Canal was completed in 1914. From a U.S. government perspective, “the Panama Canal symbolized U.S. technological prowess and economic power. Although U.S. control of the canal eventually became an irritant to U.S.-Panamanian relations, at the time it was heralded as a major foreign policy achievement” (U.S. Department of State 2015). As shown in Figure 2, the importance of the canal to the U.S. – politically, economically, and otherwise – is illustrated through the fact that the first U.S. presidential foreign trip while in office was President Roosevelt’s trip to the Canal in 1906 (Library of Congress 2014)! While the U.S. was making important national geopolitical gains through the canal,

66 I visited this museum in Panama City in January, 2014. Interestingly, the museum’s displays, photograph captions, etc. – while extensive and very impressive, one of the best museums I’ve ever visited – were only available in Spanish. I wondered if this was done intentionally, considering the fact that a main focus of the museum was Panamanian national pride in the face of a history dominated by external presence and power. 17

Lindsay-Poland (2003) writes a scathing history of the U.S. in Panama throughout the 1900s, including its military testing of bombs, chemical weapons, and other military experiments.

Figure 2. The President visits the Canal. President Roosevelt traveled to Panama in 1906, the first international trip for a U.S. president while in office. Source: United States Library of Congress.

The Canal Zone was established and controlled by the U.S., an area 5-10 miles on either side of the Canal where American expatriates lived with their families. Public services in the Canal Zone – specifically for Americans or civil and military families – included hospitals, schools, communications, cultural activities, and other amenities. Elite Panamanian military or government members and their families enjoyed special treatment throughout the Canal Zone and city. Poor Panamanians were not allowed inside, though American influence permeated the city. Customs, traditions, styles, and even names, were influenced greatly by the U.S. presence. The main avenue downtown was even named after the 4th of July, with elaborate fireworks display on that date in honor of U.S. independence, and Panamanians celebrated American holidays like

Thanksgiving. Air fields, American style malls, and old warehouses still give the Canal Zone a completely different feel than the rest of the city, though the U.S. built roads and infrastructure projects throughout the country. To this day, the buildings in the Canal Zone are reminiscent of Spanish colonial haciendas, with security gates and elaborate gardens. The Panama Canal Authority, MINSA, ANAM, and countless other government agencies now reside in the former U.S. military buildings and homes. Wealthy Panamanians and expatriates now live on the grand hacienda-style mansions found throughout the Canal Zone. Figure 3 depicts the colonial architecture, green space, and gardens visible in Canal Zone communities, within eyesight from the downtown.

Figure 3. The Canal Authority Building. This grand-looking building, sitting atop a hill, was built by the U.S. in the early 1900s and how houses the Canal Authority. Source: Canal Authority Official Facebook page, accessed April 2015.

The differences between the Canal Zone and the rest of the country were drastic and highly uneven, yet the Museo del Canal notes that the Canal has had tremendous impacts on Panamanian society, especially urban growth and the formation of a socio- cultural heritage in the Republic. Railroads, roads, and other infrastructure projects followed the needs of the Canal, but also resulted in Panama City retaining the majority 19 of the development focus and financing. The construction of the Canal thrust Panama City into a “new epoch in the geohistory of the country, one tied to a pole of diffusion and exchange in the capital city with areas of marginalization beyond it” (Velasquez Runk, 2012; 24). The city grew around the Canal and Panama City is still the country’s only main metropolitan area, with a population of more than 1.7 million people in 2010, more than half the total population in Panama (3.8 million). Colón, the Caribbean port location of the Canal, grew similarly however is a much smaller, poorer, and less developed, with a population of only 250,000. Considering the location of the Canal and the Free Trade Zone, the development (or lack thereof) and geopolitical politics of Colón is a topic appropriate for another thesis! External influence continued well into the 20th century as the U.S. maintained control of the Canal officially until 1999. Throughout the mid-1900s, the U.S. was involved in Panamanian politics through support – both public and supposedly through covert coups and assassinations – for various administrations. In 1964, a rebellion started by Panamanian students, in protest of rules against Panamanian flags being displayed in the Canal Zone, resulted in 21 dead and more than 300 injured as well as a change in U.S. Panama relations. It was seen as a major diplomatic crisis and ultimately ended with the Torrijos-Carter Treaty, signed in 1977, dictating that the U.S. would transfer the Canal and 14 army bases to Panama by 1999 (however the U.S. was granted perpetual military intervention rights as a means to preserve their assets in the country). The U.S. was also involved with the infamous administration of dictator General Manuel Noriega, leading to his in 1989. While of obvious importance, further detail on the history of Panama, the Canal, and U.S. influence can be found through multiple popular, academic, and government sources but will not be included here (see McCullough 1977; Galeano 1997; Lindsay-Poland 2003). Aside from controversial Panamanian politics, which included American involvement in dictatorships and coups similar to other Latin American countries at the time, the flows of money and goods through the Canal as well as continued external influence and power shaped the development of the country. The U.S. presence at the Canal in particular, supported by Panamanian commercial and governmental elite, created an exploitative and precarious social structure that was only further ingrained by

20 the series of dictators put in power until the 1990s (Lindsay-Poland, 2003). Neoliberal governance permeated society through the adoption of the U.S. dollar, economic treaties with the U.S., and privatized services. This epoch has hardly changed since its inception and various regulations and laws passed since the 1990s reflect this neoliberal governance structure (See Velasquez Runk 2012 for a more detailed overview of neoliberal governance in Panama). Panama City turned to neoliberal governance at the end of the U.S. invasion in 1989, and the end of U.S. involvement in the Canal in 1999. With neoliberal reforms came growth and modernization through further neoliberal reforms. This governance dangerously “creates a veneer of multiculturalism that serves to preserve the status quo” (Velasquez Runk 2012; 22). The U.S.-Panama Free Trade Agreement, signed in 2011, fed into increased growth, with gross domestic product (GDP) averaging over 8% from 2006 to 2012 (World Bank). The country experienced high growth, political stability, a newly dollarized economy, and increased investment, particularly infrastructure development, lifestyle migration, and tourism. Other countries in Latin America also pursued neoliberal economic reforms at this time, signifying a policy paradigm shift toward free trade and internationalized finance (Keeling 2004). However, interestingly, still other Latin American countries pursued an opposing economic and political future through anti-Western sentiments and an embracing of post-neoliberal politics and governance (Peck et al. 2009). Even today, the Panama Canal is central to Panama’s history and subsequent development. While most Latin American countries’ economies are based on agriculture, mining, or manufacturing, Panama’s is based on trade and services, most notably, the Canal (Sigler 2014). The Canal represents a significant portion of Panama’s GDP, having transferred over one million ships from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic/Caribbean, and vice versa since it opened in 1914. The Canal is managed by an autonomous government institution, the Panama Canal Authority (PCA). Most ships come from the U.S. and China; each can pay up to $400,000 per trip through the canal (PCA 2012). As a government authority, the PCA works underneath and within the Panamanian government; after covering its operating, investment, modernization and expansion costs, surplus funds are awarded to the National Treasury. In 2012 alone, the PCA contributed

$950 million to the state through the National Treasury. Since 2000, the PCA has contributed more than $9 billion (PCA, 2012). Currently, the PCA is undergoing a major expansion, spending 10-15% of the country’s GDP to double the capacity of the Panama Canal (the Panama Canal Expansion Program). According to the PCA, the expanded route will “maintain the Canal as the route of choice for international trade,” continuing to cement Panama’s status as a regional and increasingly global hub of trade and finance.7 Despite the strong exogenous influence in the Panamanian government, it also has a strong developmentalist philosophy, with a strong and active state and elite (Olds and Yeung 2004). In concert with neoliberal American support, developmentalist legislation throughout the 1990s provided the foundations for service industries to flourish, including banking, insurance, logistics, ship registry, and legal services (Sigler 2013). The State has remained a strong influence in Panama. Currently, local discourses of rosy capitalist development and sustainability promoted by the government are also significant, especially considering the uncertainties related to good governance, equity, and corruption (The Economist 2011). Many even say the current government is plagued by corruption, bowing to foreign influence instead of the needs of the people (Beaubien 2012). Nonetheless, neoliberal projects such as infrastructure expansion (e.g. the new metro (Figure 4), Canal expansion, and highway around Casco Antiguo) are both heavily advertised and applauded. Real estate booms in downtown (central) Panama City as well as the suburban fringe has also grown dramatically since the 1990s (Sigler 2014). Interestingly, out of 615 high rise towers, 148 have names in Spanish while 277 have English names such as “Royal Palace;” another 200 have names mixing Spanish, English, and even French (Sigler 2014). This is to say that these markets were facing international consumers even more so than Panamanians themselves. Neoliberalism, Warf notes, ends up taking shape as states surrender their authority to international corporate elites,

7Ships twice the size of original Canal goers will be able to avoid land travel through the U.S. by going through the Canal. The U.S. is already planning how to cope with the potential shipping loses; various politicians are pursuing plans to deepen both East and West coast harbors to accommodate the ships that might otherwise choose the Panama Canal instead. Both Republican and Democratic senators from various costal states are pursuing legislation and appropriations for deepening projects both as a means of accommodating ships that do pass through the Canal, as well as offering an alternative route through the U.S. (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76224.html) 22 becoming ‘hyper-globalist’ in terms of international financial flows. Investigating the social metabolism of the city, and conceptualizing it as a cyborg city, provides further insight.

Figure 4. The Metro de Panama. The new metro in Panama City has attracted international attention and is a source of pride for Panamanians. Source: Latino Fox News.

2.2.3 Global, Hybrid, Cyborg Cities

Panama has become a command point for the organization of the world economy and can even be said to have become a global city through its relational, transnational urban growth (Sigler 2013). Therefore, Panama City can be understood and conceptualized as a relational city with global city aspirations, seeking to use its geoeconomic flows to link to international markets and develop further (Sigler 2013; Olds and Yeung 2004). How does a city aspire to be seen as a Global City? Olds and Yeung (2004) argue that “it does so by using the powers and capacities of the nation-state (in material and discursive senses) to transform society and space within the city, all in the aim of embedding [the nation] within the evolving lattice of network relations that propel the world economy. Existing space and social formations are purged, razed, flattened, cleansed, restructured, re-engineered: in their place ‘world class’ infrastructure/

23 education/ legal/ financial/ healthcare systems are developed, maintained and constantly refashioned” (pg. 491). In Panama City, this is seen through the control of nature and history as well as neoliberal governance strategies. The Panama Canal is the ultimate example of urban and engineering triumphing over nature, but this even extends to the coast where debris from the Canal’s dredging was used to extend the city into the bay. Figure 5, a photograph of a poster in a government building, depicts old, decrepit-looking buildings being replaced by what is seen as progress: a large ship and Panama’s most iconic buildings in the background.

Figure 5. Government celebrates modernization. This propaganda poster shows how history and nature will give way to progress through the Canal and other modernization projects. Source: photograph taken by the author.

The expansion of the Canal also brings global attention. As shown in Figure 6 below, the scale of the Canal expansion is staggering; gargantuan cargo ships and cruises can be seen in the Gatun Lake at the top of the photo, dwarfed by the size of the new Canal expansion.

Figure 6. The Panama Canal Expansion. The Canal expansion, a gigantic, multi-billion dollar project, will allow much bigger cargo ships to traverse the Canal. Source: Canal Authority Official Facebook page, accessed April 2015.

Institutions and programs in Panama have indeed been privatized; similarly, infrastructure has been prioritized through the expansion of the Canal and even a highway around Casco Antiguo, a historic colonial town and UNESCO World Heritage Site. This infrastructure project nearly cost the site its UNESCO status and is hardly used by Panamanians, yet it – as a taxi driver explained to me – “makes the city looks modern

25 and new.” In the fight to protect the historical town, it was mostly wealthy elite Panamanians, international investors, and tourists who rallied in their effort to prevent the construction of the highway. The biggest mall in Latin America, Albrook Mall, is also located in Panama City, named according to a nearby former U.S. airbase (Figure 7). At over 300,000 square meters in size, visiting Albrook Mall is a choice activity for the majority of Panama City dwellers and the food court, containing mostly international brands like Subway, McDonalds, Dunkin’ Donuts, and countless others, draws huge crowds for meals and nights out. Interestingly, a number of important logistical points are also based at the mall, including the central bus depot, Trans-oceanic train (connecting Panama City to Colón), Marcos A. Galabert Airport (for domestic and regional flights), and city metro, signifying the importance of the mall – and consumerism – in Panamanian society. When given a choice of spending time at a park or at Casco Antiquo versus Albrook Mall, most choose the latter, as evidenced by the crowds.

Figure 7. Albrook Mall in Panama City. Albrook Mall has over 700 stores; it is located in the Canal Zone, shipping boxes and Canal-related shipping materials can even be seen in the top left of the photo. Source: Albrook Mall Official Facebook page, accessed April 2015.

Panama also hosts a number of international conferences and political events, including the recent Summit of the Americas, where U.S. President Obama famously shook hands with Cuban President Raul Castro, making international headlines. Figure 8,

26 taken from a tourism website for Panama, depicts an increase in the number of conventions held in Panama City (22 events in 7 days, for example!), tourism through cruises, and hotel stays.

Figure 8. Growing Markets. This tourism website, available in English, boasts growing tourism and economic markets in Panama. Source: www. visitpanama.com

Panama City’s emergence as a global city is also due to the ways in which its geoeconomic flows – mediated by capitalism – connect it to global economic and social systems. While some Global cities in the U.S. and Europe are understood according to hierarchical and linear systems, Panama City is transformed by capitalism in another way; it is “constituted through globally critical flows of capital, goods, and ideas, and whose economies are dedicated to intermediary services such as offshore banking, container- and bulk- shipping, and regional re-exportation” (Sigler, 2013; 612). Panama City is not simply defined by capital, labor, and resources, but by flows and nodes

27 mediating those flows. Warf (2002) argues that Panama’s recent ascent into one of the South’s Global cities can be attributed to its particular resources: a dollarized economy, the Canal, and illicit activities such as money laundering. Table 3 outlines various characteristics of a relational city versus a global city; however, Panama City sits somewhere in between.

Table 3. Key industries and institutions differ from Relational versus Global cities (Sigler 2013).

Relational Cities Global Cities

Key Industries Wholesaling, warehousing, logistics, Finance, insurance, management offshore banking, real estate consulting, real estate, accountancy, marketing, culture/arts Key Institutions Sea port/airport, free trade zone, Stock exchange, central bank, global offshore banking center governance, airport, immigration

Panama City is a key location for finance and specialized service firms. Elite-led real estate and foreign investment has also boosted the Panamanian economy significantly. Specifically, relational cities are known to have key industries such as wholesaling, warehousing, logistics, offshore banking, and real estate, and key institutions such as sea ports/airports, free trade zones, and offshore banking centers; all of these key industries and institutions are present in force in Panama City (Sigler 2013). More specifically, Panama’s economy is based largely on services (79%), including operating the Panama Canal, logistics, banking, the Colon Free Zone, insurance, container ports, flagship registry, and tourism (CIA Fact Book, 2015). Tourism has risen over 15% in the last two years alone. Real estate has also blossomed, with 107 buildings of at least 20 stories under construction in 2007; this number has continued to rise. Panama even recently signed taxation treaties with other nations, ultimately achieving removal from the Organization of Economic Development’s gray-list of tax havens (CIA Fact Book, 2015). Foreign investment contributes around 10% of Panama’s GDP. Currently, the expansion of the Panama Canal, expected to be completed in 2016 at a cost of $5.3 billion (10-15% of current GDP), will double the Canal’s capacity.

Other human and nonhuman flows are also notable, such as drugs and drug- related revenue. While the numbers are difficult to quantify, Panama is known to be a major cocaine transshipment point and primary money-laundering center for narcotics revenue (CIA Fact Book 2015). Informal conversations around Panama City show Panamanians to be fully aware that money laundering is taking place, especially within the elite real estate construction along Panama City’s coast. Finally, Panama has a significant number of Latin American expatriates, including those escaping political strife in Colombia and Venezuela. In 2012, there were over 15,000 documented Colombian refugees in Panama (CIA Fact Book, 2015). One can only imagine that the number of illegal refugees is much higher. Certain metabolisms produce socio-environmental processes that, while “shaping the choreography” of the capitalist urbanization process, also enable those in power and disable those without power. Rapoport (2011) and Swyngedouw (2006) connect social metabolism with notions of urban political ecology and environmental justice in not only understanding patterns of urbanization, but also arguing for a more just urban environment. More specifically, urban flows produce and reproduce inequality. Neoliberalism creates economic dynamism in urban areas; however this usually equates to profit from unregulated economic activities and severe social and environmental costs, especially for those who are not among the economic and political elite. This is especially obvious in Panama City, where despite the highest growth rate in Latin America, around 25% of the population lives in poverty, due in part to the second worst income distribution in Latin America (CIA World Fact Book 2015).

2.3 Landfills as an Expression of Uneven, Hyper Growth

The Cerro Patacón Landfill and fire is used in this research as a lens through which to better understand the broader processes of urbanization and governance in Panama City. Socio-metabolic processes are never politically neutral. In uneven urban settings, a metabolizing city usually experiences uneven distribution of environmental and social benefits and damages. Infrastructure networks, or socio-metabolic flows and processes, create and reproduce situations of environmental ills, inequality, and other

29 socio-economic issues (Rapoport 2011). A number of processes are occurring in Panama City which are relevant to understanding greater questions of environmental harm, justice, and inequality, that were mentioned earlier: global capital flows through the canal and through banking and finance, geopolitical or geoeconomic tensions associated with both the canal and with narco-capital and drugs, etc. A socio-metabolic understanding of Panama City’s resource and infrastructure flows provides the foundations from which inequality and environmental injustice stems. This is especially useful in understanding Panama City and Cerro Patacón. In short, the landfill grows with the city and reflects the hyper-development taking place there. In this section, I show how Cerro Patacón is not only directly connected to the city and its hyper-growth, but they are mutually co- constituting.

2.3.1 Waste in Panama City and Cerro Patacón

The Panama City Metropolitan Waste Authority (DIMA) was created in 1984 to collect, transport, and dispose of waste in municipal areas throughout Panama. However, as encouraged by the International Monetary Fund, the landfill was privatized in 2003 due to a lack of funding and capacity by the city government to maintain the site (Magid 2003). The Cerro Patacón landfill was formerly located in the east of the city, but was moved to its current location between 1984 and 1987 (sources differ on the date). The former location is now filled in, with expensive homes built on top of the site. The landfill is managed by a Colombian company, Urbalia (known in Panama as Urbalia Panama). As shown in Figure 9, the landfill is quite close to the center of Panama City; it takes only 15 minutes by taxi from the downtown to the landfill.

Figure 9. Map of Panama City. Cerro Patacón landfill, marked by the red flag, is within a 15 minute drive from the city's modern downtown. Source: Google Earth 2015

Interestingly, the landfill is located within the official Canal Zone. While the Canal Zone is infamous for its stricter land use regulations and development overall, the landfill is nonetheless sprawling and largely unregulated. It is considered an ‘open dump,’ where traditional waste management practices of soil coverings are not applied. Waste is also often dumped illegally outside the official dump area so as to avoid paying the fees associated with proper dumping. This has led to the sprawl of the rampant garbage and contamination around the landfill area. In the early 2000s, the landfill handled over 368,000 metric tons per year of garbage; this has grown dramatically as the city has continued to grow and now over 2000 metric tons of waste are delivered and stored at Cerro Patacón every day. Currently, mounds of garbage in Cerro Patacón reach over 80 feet high. According to the Municipal Panama City government, all forms of waste from the city are collected and transported to Cerro Patacón, including residential waste, construction waste, etc.; the only waste not sent to Cerro Patacón is waste associated with the Canal, which is separated, treated, and maintained on Canal Zone property. The image below (Figure 10),

31 taken from a 2007 presentation by ANAM, shows how the landfill grew through three stages to over 130 hectares. The pink area, a new expansion, is currently in the works.

Figure 10. Cerro Patacón organization. Cerro Patacón has grown over the years as the city itself has grown, and further growth is still planned. Source: ANAM, 2007.

While there is no official recycling program in the landfill, informal workers play an important role in managing the waste of the landfill. Urbalia estimates that 500 pepenadores work in the landfill, though that number is likely to be much higher. While they are currently establishing programs to formally employ recyclers, they currently have only 300 employees. It is likely that informal recycling activities still take place,

32 especially since the number of official jobs is not sufficient for the number of pepenadores that rely on the landfill for their livelihoods. While the Urbalia interviewee and local police officer mentioned private security working at the landfill, its borders are porous and people likely go in and out as they choose, whether to gather materials for informal housing or to collect recyclables and other goods to sell. While not the subject of this thesis, there is an extensive literature available on the ways in which informal waste pickers (called different terms in Spanish depending on the local context) survive as externalized in urban landscapes, self-organize, and advocate with the landscape of local government, NGOs, and other organizations (Moore 2009; Whitson 2011; Moore 2012; Sternberg 2013; Hartmann 2013). Even though it is the city’s largest and most important waste site, it was referred to as simply an “attempt” at a landfill by Panama’s environmental authority, ANAM.8 The landfill is a source of multiple forms of pollution and contamination on a daily basis, not including larger, more newsworthy events such as landfill fires. According to a professor of watershed management in the University of Panama, the unmanaged waste from Cerro Patacón contaminates both aquifers and rivers, such as the nearby Cardenas River. As Guna interviewees described to me, nearby rivers were now too contaminated to use for bathing, drinking, or washing, and wildlife had all but disappeared from the area. However, while Guna do not use the rivers, others must use it for basic needs (Figure 11).

8 http://www.prensa.com/impreso/panorama/patacon-es-un-%C2%B4intento%C2%B4-de-relleno- sanitario-anam/172262 33

Figure 11. Contaminated river near Cerro Patacón. Though water is said to be contaminated, nearby residents still rely on it for drinking, bathing, washing, and leisure. Source: photographed by the author, August 2014.

A number of communities border Cerro Patacón. These communities are made up of both migrant Panamanian mestizo populations (Panamanians who have moved from the interior of the country to find employment opportunities) and various indigenous populations. Guna Nega, a community of the Guna indigenous group who traditionally live along the Panamanian coast in their autonomous region, was formed in the area prior to any landfill activity. Andrea Iglesias, one of the founders of Guna Nega, came to the area in 1974 to allow her son to study in the city’s university. After she was evicted from her home in a nearby village, she and other Guna rallied together to form Guna Nega in 1980. In the Guna language, Guna Nega means “house of the Guna,” while Gunayala – the autonomous Guna territory near the coast – means “country of the Guna.” The Guna are a famously well-organized people who have been traditionally very assertive about their rights (Howe 2010; Velasquez Runk 2012). As they described to me during interviews, they are largely responsible for the development of and services available in Guna Nega. When government services were not available, Guna men worked together to build schools, a health center (Figure 12), community centers, and other amenities.

Figure 12. Guna Nega health center. The health center was built by the Guna to serve their community. Source: photographed by the author, August 2014.

However, a sign in front of the health center, which read that (former) President Martinelli had in fact supported the completion of the building, was seen by community members with disdain (Figure 13). Many Guna were of the opinion that the government simply paid lip service and rode the coattails of their hard work. According to community members, the government did not help with construction but MINSA does send doctors to the clinic a few times per week.

Figure 13. President’s plaque for the health center. A plaque, posted outside the health center, gives credit for the building's construction to President Martinelli, though the Guna argue that they themselves deserve the credit for its construction and maintenance. Source: photographed by the author, August 2014.

Figures 14 and 15 below depict two very different signs also seen in Guna Nega. The government sign (Figure 14) describes the construction of a sports complex in Guna Nega, dated 2011. According to community members, the complex was never built. The sign instead seemed to mark garbage disposal, as a heap of litter sat at its base. Figure 15 is a sign seen inside the Guna community center, written in the Guna language. A Guna college student described efforts by Guna elders to maintain traditions through a community center. However, most Guna youth do not partake in traditional activities like dress or language.

Figure 14. Government sign in Guna Nega. The most recent government project (evidenced through signage) in Guna Nega was marked 2011. Source: photographed by the author, August 2014.

Figure 15. Community sign in Guna Nega. Guna elders try and maintain a community center, offering games and an otherwise safe place for youth in the community, yet Guna culture is said to be rapidly fading. Source: photographed by the author, August 2014.

Despite Guna Nega’s homogenous population of Guna people, other communities near Cerro Patacón are made up of other populations and ethnicities. A Guna interviewee noted that the indigenous populations of the area are often homogenized as all Guna, while in fact each community is made up of differing indigenous and non-indigenous populations. The Guna differentiate themselves from nearby populations in multiple ways, including ethnicity, local economy, and the relationship to the dump. His own homogenizing aside, a Guna elder argued that the Guna do not work in the landfill and keep their communities cleaner and safer than other communities, resenting the ways in which communities of indigenous people were jumbled together and homogenized by the government, the media, and society in general. Indeed, multiple interviewees referred to those living near Cerro Patacón solely as Guna, and many, including interviewees from government agencies, mistakenly identified Guna is working as pepenadores, while they claim they do not. While there are pepenadores working in the landfill, indigenous groups largely do not participate (as noted by Guna interviewees, Urbalia, and local police officers). While the pepenadores are indeed difficult to homogenize, they are supposedly largely Panamanian mestizo migrants from other areas of the country. One Guna interviewee noted that many Panamanians move from their farms in the interior of the country to live and work in the city; however when jobs and homes are difficult to come by, many resort to informal waste picking, which can often be quite lucrative. Driving or walking through Guna Nega, it was obvious that informal recycling operations are at work throughout the area. I did not investigate who owned or operated these businesses or operations. Figure 16 depicts smoke rising from burning garbage at an informal sorting business. Figure 17 shows well-kept Guna homes while Figure 18 depicts an informal home, built from materials scavenged from the landfill.

Figure 16. Informal business in Guna Nega. Smoke rises from burning garbage in an informal recycling business. Source: photographed by the author, August 2014.

Figure 17. Homes in Guna Nega. Guna homes are built with cement and other permanent materials. Source: photographed by the author, August 2014.

Figure 18. Homes near Guna Nega. Other homes belonging to more transient populations are built of materials scavenged from the nearby landfill. Source: photographed by the author, August 2014.

I found disagreement among public officials regarding who settled in the area first, communities or the landfill. According to Urbalia, the landfill was established in 1985, though other sources cite 1987 as the year of establishment. MINSA interviewees also claimed that the landfill was established prior to communities. Regardless, Guna Nega was established in 1980. In fact, Andrea suggested that the landfill was not there in 1993 (or perhaps more likely, it was not yet bordering Guna Nega so closely). In a recent interview with Andrea published in Panama City’s main newspaper, she describes how the government moved the landfill from an area across the city to Cerro Patacón, bringing tons and tons of garbage to Guna Nega’s doorstep.9 As the years went on, the landfill continued to expand. The image below, taken in May 2004, depicts the landfill in the South West, with Guna Nega marked. There is still a forested barrier between the landfill and the community.

9 http://laestrella.com.pa/panama/nacional/mujer-fundo-guna-nega/23847644 40

Figure 19. Cerro Patacón, 2004. In May 2004, nearby communities, including Guna Nega (marked as Kuna in some places; spelling with G is more traditional according to the Guna themselves) can be seen in close proximity to the growing landfill. Source: Google Earth 2015

The next satellite imagery, Figure 20, taken in January 2013, shows the diminishing natural barrier between Cerro Patacón and Guna Nega. Cerro Patacón can be seen extending more toward the North East, closer to Guna Nega. The photograph also shows the growth of Guna Nega and of other nearby communities; however Guna Nega does not extend any closer to the landfill.

Figure 20. Cerro Patacón, 2010. In January 2010, the landfill's growth is obvious, as the barriers between it and the communities nearby continue to decrease in size. Source: Google Earth 2015.

In the most recent photograph, Figure 21, taken in March 2014, the growth of the landfill is even more obvious. Guna Nega can now be seen surrounded on the entire Western border by the landfill.

Figure 21. Cerro Patacón, 2014. While this image is somewhat distorted, it is still obvious that in March 2014, the landfill had continued to grow even closer to Guna Nega. Source: Google Earth 2015.

In sum, whether or not communities preceded the landfill, both have grown into very close proximity.

2.3.2 The Fire

The March 2013 landfill fire burned for almost two weeks with uneven impacts on Panama City’s residents. The fire started on March 18 and though the government establishes that it was put out by March 22, many state that it smoldered until April. Since garbage in Cerro Patacón is not separated or treated, it is likely that the smoke held toxins from burning metals, plastics, and other chemical substances. MINSA’s director of environmental health noted that the smoke could sometimes be clear, making it exceptionally hazardous to human health as it could not always be identified. Particulate matter is often impossible to detect but still has detrimental health impacts. Though small landfill fires are actually commonplace, smoke covered the entire city and was called the worst fire in a decade (Vega Loo 2013).

Figure 22. Panama City during the fire. A "toxic cloud" engulfed the city during the Cerro Patacón landfill fire. Source: Infobae America, 2013.

The satellite image below (Figure 23), taken from Google Earth and dated March 2013, clearly shows the smoke drifting from Cerro Patacón. Smoke is a different color than clouds; it is a darker grey color, while the clouds are white. While a change in wind direction supposedly helped, it took nearly 10 days, international assistance, and fire- combatting chemical substances from the United States to finally put out the fire.

Figure 23. Cerro Patacón during the fire. Smoke (seen in darker grey) can be seen coming from the burning landfill. Source: Google Earth 2015.

The official government response was to measure and monitor air quality and provide information through MINSA. During the air quality workshop, a MINSA representative noted that it was MINSA’s director’s responsibility to speak about the event and direct action. MINSA took measurements of air quality officially; however, they largely expected that the media disseminate the data and information to the public. Numerous local residents noted that this message was not only selectively received, but inadequate for residents who could not simply “stay inside” or get access to masks.10 While some schools were canceled, others were not. Even if some Panamanians stayed indoors, a lack of air conditioning prevented true protection from poor air quality. Most interesting though, is that while some were emphatic in their assertion that the event was severe and the impacts uneven and unjust, many Panamanians, including some Guna themselves, thought it was mundane, commonplace, and/or handled appropriately. Instead of residents, including those in Guna Nega and surrounding areas, organizing or protesting

10 This information is based on an informal conversation with an ANAM employee, October 2013. 45 the uneven government response, there seemed to be little response, organized or otherwise.

2.3.3 Political Ecology of Waste and Landfills

Literature I read of political ecologies of waste and landfills predisposed me to see the dump in a particular way. Landfills and waste have traditionally been seen in the literature (academic and popular/technical) as well as in society in multiple ways, all different than the ways in which Cerro Patacón is seen and conceptualized in Panama City by city officials and others. This section outlines commonly held conceptualizations and materialities of landfills and waste in academia but also in technical literature like that of the UN, and the ways in which those differ from the findings in Panama City. Landfills have been taken up as sites of political meaning for political activism by residents and Geography scholars, both in terms of protesting poor environmental and health conditions as well as access to waste as a resource for livelihoods. However additionally, governments in Latin America have also recently begun to incorporate landfills into urban governance and biopolitical projects. In the literature and materially, landfills and waste can often take on broad political meaning. This is inevitable, considering the number of people moving to and living in urban areas, and the connected flows of commodities and goods and their associated “flows of waste and remainders” (Moore 2012; 781). Because of this, waste has become a lens through which to understand or explore environmental politics, urban history, social behavior and movements, modernity, risk, and governance (Moore 2012). Solid waste reflects urban politics and its political economy speaking to the “uneven quality of life produced throughout urban environments” (Njeru 2006; 1048). Social metabolism emphasizes the political, economic, and social forces that intertwine urban systems with their outputs, including waste. Therefore, municipal waste sites are also “significant nodes in the transformation of materials produced by urban landscapes” and intertwined with the flows and processes that make up the metabolism (Hartmann 2012; 145). Within these linkings of waste and waste sites and their role in urban politics and metabolism, waste can be taken up and conceptualized as a hazard, object of management, a

46 commodity, resource, filth, risk, governable object, etc., but produced through urban economies, vis-à-vis systems of political unevenness. Whitson (2011) outlines how waste crises in Buenos Aires opened the possibilities for the transformation of social relations through pursuing formalization of employment. She explains how “the cartoneros [the local equivalent to Panama’s pepenadores] and their work moved from being clandestine and strongly stigmatized to being a ubiquitous, hyper-public expression of individual need, community survival, and national crisis,” leading to changes in policy and discourse toward social and political inclusion (Whitson 2011; pg. 145). The cartoneros were able to organize, pursuing policy changes that formalized and legalized their work. However what is most notable is that “these laws not only represent momentous changes in the policy that directs the management of urban waste, but also signal a new state approach to those associated with informal garbage collection; rather than being criminalized, they are re-envisioned as vital to the operation of one of the city’s most central functions (Whitson 2011; pg. 145). In addition to the example of landfill works organizing in Buenos Aires above, landfills have also served as sites of political activism, where both residents and waste workers protest their externalization or exploitation in many other Latin American cities. Moore (2009) argues that garbage becomes “an effective political tool because it exploits the fraught relationship between city managers and urban waste” (pg. 427). Garbage workers, informal and formal, are able to use waste as a leveraging tool for gaining rights and recognition. In a different way, Hartmann (2012) describes the ways in which informal pickers in Managua, Nicaragua protested access to waste (as their means of employment or livelihood support). However in both types of cases, waste becomes a tool for political gain, and waste sites become important but unexpected sites of political activism. Landfills have also commonly been sites of local and national governance and extensions of development. The United Nations, in its 2010 technical report for policy makers on waste in urban areas, writes that “the quality of waste management services is a good indicator of a city’s governance. The way in which waste is produced and discarded gives us a key insight into how people live. In fact if a city is dirty, the local administration may be considered ineffective” (UN-HABITAT 2010; forward). The report argues that waste management is a key responsibility of city government. They not

47 only argue that waste management falls under urban governance, but is even an indication of successful urban governance. Waste processes, or a lack thereof, are therefore a reflection of a city’s status, extending even into its ranking in the lists of global cities. For this reason, it is ironic that Panama City – with its global city aspirations – does not seem to recognize a need to govern its waste more closely and in fact sees the landfill as external to city governance or urban development. Interestingly, informal waste picking is seen in the report as key to the success of formal waste management and recycling programs; in some cities, if informal recyclers were to disappear, the city would suddenly be in charge (in other words, need to pay) for the management of hundreds of additional tons of waste per year. With this reasoning, it seems logical that Panama City officials may want to formalize recycling positions or increase their capacity to access waste and facilitate recycling. This will be discussed further below. In these ways – pursuing improved waste management in the name of global city aspirations – one would expect Panama City to aggressively pursue improved waste management and inclusion of the Cerro Patacón area. Some cities have officially begun to enact programs of inclusion regarding municipal waste sites. In Sao Paulo, Brazil, a city plagued by poverty and poor health in slum areas, the government began programs in 2000 to improve conditions, partly for the sake of protecting watersheds and environmental resources in the area (Gutberlet and Hunter 2008). In Nicaragua, Managua’s waste site has been brought under the reach of the local and national government in an effort to improve health and well-being for its citizens, similarly formalizing previously-informal recyclers (Hartmann 2013). Sternberg (2013) similarly describes the ways in which neoliberal governance in Buenos Aires has extended to previously peripheral people and spaces through urban waste management policies. Cartoneros were granted formal positions, their livelihoods recognized by the state, not as a means of providing them a voice in waste management, but to regulate and discipline them into “legal and well behaved workers” (pg. 187). In fact, she writes about the ways in which “recycling policy articulated with current and evolving neoliberal urban governances’ goals and agendas, i.e. the drive to discipline and control cultural forms, identities and physical spaces to make them acceptable, attractive and even sellable to capital investment” (pg. 189). As implied by the UN-HABITAT report

48 mentioned above, local governments stand to save extensive amounts of money by using “formalized” labor in recycling operations. Besides the conceptualization of waste and landfills as sites in which to explore particular (uneven) urban assemblages, landfills have often been seen as a site of environmental injustice. Geographers and sociologists find rich examples of the ways in which waste disproportionately threatens subaltern populations living and working nearby, contributing to questions of environmental justice (Heiman 1996; Carruthers 2008). Environmental justice research is the nexus of race, class, and environment across many contexts, including “challenges of indigenous community knowledge to dominant power/knowledge frames of risk, community empowerment and self-determination vis-à- vis larger pressures such as globalization and economic restructuring, and basic physical questions, framed in terms of distributive justice, of the differences in pollution and land use across built environments and, therefore, across human populations” (Schweitzer and Stephenson, 2007; 321). Conceptualizing waste as a hazard implies the relevance of environmental justice literature, which provides a more nuanced analysis regarding the patterns and material effects of inequality on populations, as well as alternatives to those ills. Environmental justice seeks to understand how waste becomes a hazard, and for whom, in particular who has exposure or risk: for example, this includes the uneven inter and international distributions of waste disposal, racial politics, pollution, etc. For this reason, environmental justice literature is often situated in waste-oriented landscapes, such as landfills. Informed by this literature, I expected that conversations about waste in Panama City would turn, almost naturally, to these issues. As I outline in the next chapter, they did not; unlike what many have documented in other Latin American cities, the landfill of Panama City, though ripe with the conditions for civil unrest or worker/resident organization and seemingly calling for the extension of neoliberal governance in a city seeking to make its claim as a global city, remains a place excluded from government or public attention and without collective resistance.

Chapter 3: The Logic of Externalization in Panama City

3.1 Political Ecological Assumptions

Upon my arrival in Panama City for my last installment of fieldwork, my collaborators at the University of Panama organized for a Panamanian student from the university’s Geography program to help me, as my guide, translator, assistant, and cultural broker. On my first morning, I had breakfast at my hotel, tied up my sneakers, and packed a back-pack with sun screen, granola bars, water, and my research supplies – note pads, camera, and voice recorder. I went downstairs, thinking and planning in my head how the day might go. First, we’d go to Cerro Patacón and start preparing for my interviews and participant observation. Maybe we’d organize meetings for the days ahead. Maybe we’d have lunch in the village nearby the landfill, Guna Nega. I’d probably be able to interview the café’s owner… As I turned the corner, I spotted Liz sitting in a chair, legs crossed delicately, looking down at her phone. She wore a stylish, perfectly coordinated outfit – pink high-heel sandals, studded watch, matching purse, and diamond-looking earrings. I knew we were not going to Cerro Patacón in heels. Liz explained that she was a Geography student but in the tourism and culture program; she was in training to become a tour guide, learning both about Panama’s culture and its biology so that she could lead tourists through Panama’s jungle. Admittedly, she wasn’t really interested in the city and said her dream was to stay out in the jungle all day. Nonetheless, I figured a Geographer is a Geographer, and I proceeded to explain my project. I speak Spanish well enough to get by, but I found myself struggling to explain my project. Liz’s expression of complete and utter confusion didn’t help my confidence. She didn’t understand why my study, about urbanization and development in Panama, would take any interest in inequality, and even less why it would lead us to Cerro Patacón. As I explained my intent to learn about the structural processes at work in the city that lead to such a disorganized and dangerous landfill as Cerro Patacón, with people living so close as to not be able to escape smoke from the 2013 landfill fire, her expression gradually changed from confusion to tension. I immediately took a different approach, and explained how inequality was present in the US, as well. I tried to explain that inequality existed all over the world, but I wanted to know about it in Panama. She still didn’t understand, or seemed dismissive. It was frustrating, but I figured I must not be explaining it correctly. She probably figured I had no idea what I was talking about. She did comment that Guna Nega was very far away, and far too dangerous for two females by themselves. She insisted that we would be robbed. I gently explained how once I went to New Orleans, and the tourist guide insisted I stay in the French Quarter and not drive to the 9th Ward. I explained to Liz how I went anyway, and found it was just ugly (in trying to use simple terms), not dangerous: a reflection of the worst of New Orleans, that that tourist guide immediately did not want me to see. I

50 thought of Liz and her hope to become a tourist guide, and I tried to show her that the same thing can happen in Panama, and that I wasn’t trying to uncover some embarrassing part of her country; I wanted to see the worst and I knew it was the worst. Her demeanor eased a little. I quickly looked up a map of Guna Nega on my cell phone, taking advantage of the Wi-Fi in the hotel lobby, and she still insisted that it must be hours away. I didn’t know enough about the geography of the city to say otherwise. Guna Nega is always in the news, she said, for negative reasons. I didn’t push; it’s only the first day, I thought. My Spanish will get better and I’ll bring it up later.

I didn’t think much of this initial, awkward conversation. At the time, I simply told myself that the confusion must stem from the language barrier; Liz didn’t speak English and my Spanish was informal and conversational, only potentially sufficient for research purposes. However, I include this anecdote here because it ended up foreshadowing and mimicking what I would experience as I sought to understand the links between urbanization and waste throughout my participant interviews. To my surprise and dismay, I found similar confusion in each interview that I conducted across a broad range of actors. As alluded to earlier, this was the moment in which I understood that my political ecological assumptions of socio-natures and the connectedness of the landfill and the city through social metabolism were not widely shared. Unlike Nicaragua and other cases, the landfill was not seen as an extension of the city where urban development and official policies extended their reach. If my interviewees did not see these connections, how did they define Panama City, development, governance, etc., and where did the landfill fall? In other words, what did I find instead, and what does this finding say about environmental governance in Panama City? Based on my semi-structured interviews in these Panamanian government agency offices, the private sector, academia, NGOs, and even Guna individuals themselves, I found that despite the impacts that the fire had on the city – and specifically the uneven impacts it had on its population – the fire was seen as irrelevant, unconnected, and immaterial to a discussion about Panama City and development. No one understood why I would be asking about development in Panama and Cerro Patacón. When I asked about the supposed plight of the Guna people, next to the landfill, I was told that they chose to live near the landfill and that they likely started the fire themselves anyway. This narrative seemed to be socially pervasive; I heard it from Liz, from the tightly-lipped Ministry of health, and from some Guna individuals themselves. In each interview, the

51 participant would sit up in their chair, ready to go through what seemed to be a script about the hyper-development of Panama City, however when I would insist that I wanted to talk about inequality, and particularly how it was symbolized in the landfill, they would sit back again, and similar to Liz, their demeanor would change. At worst, I was laughed at in a polite but completely dismissive way – at best, the individual would casually negate my questions and continue to speak about their agency. I learned that the interviewees’ responses to my questions were not just evidence in what they said, but how they said it and what they did not say became evidence as well. While the previous section explored Panama City and the landfill, providing theoretical assumptions for better conceptualizing the landscape and the fire event, this section will use three themes to explore this ‘landfill-as-separate’ logic and how through it, the landfill and fire were rendered external to development and urban governance. These themes appear through key passage points and via a number of different actors, where techniques of externalizations are reasserted over time and space. I argue that the logic is characterized by the externalization of the landfill and its residents, where those living there are not seen as citizens and governance is not necessary – save for during a hazard, when those very populations become the villains and the site become an object for regulation and fixing. Using evidence from interviews, policy and grey literature analysis, and other sources, I will show how this happens discursively and materially through specific techniques of externalization: 1) neoliberal governance strategies of individualization and victim-blaming, and 2) technocratic, superficial responses based on a discourse of monitoring and analysis, and finally, 3) promoting non-metabolic thinking through dualisms such as “urban” versus “rural” or “non-urban.” Promoting these techniques of externalization serves to render external Cerro Patacón and its population, contributing to and promoting the naturalization of an unproblematic growth model that denies government accountability, wrongly blames certain populations, and justifies social exclusion.

3.1 Unpacking the Logic: Neoliberal Governance Strategies

3.1.1 Targeting Individuals and “Others” Neoliberalism has influenced the ways in which city officials deal with environmental hazards; individualized, ‘responsibilized’ citizens, who must take it upon themselves to both protect themselves and respond to hazards, are created. In the same way that individual had to take it upon themselves to adapt or protect themselves, individuals could likewise be blamed for environmental hazards. In Panama City, an individualized approach to protecting citizens and the generalized victims was chosen over a society-wide response, such as legislation or sector-related regulation that sought to limit or control growth (e.g. the structural root causes of the hazard). A health- centered, individualized approach was taken to control the landfill and address those at fault. Encouraging people to wear face masks, stay inside, etc., places responsibility for adaptation and health on the individual. Social development-focused programs emphasize ‘fixing’ the people (the immediate problem), not the landfill (or root causes). Neoliberal governance strategies therefore take shape in two ways: 1) individualizing the response so that citizens must deal with the problem themselves and 2) placing blame on subaltern populations, in this case indigenous and mestizo populations that live and/or work in or around the landfill. While the cause of the fire remains largely unknown, numerous possible sources were cited by the media and by government officials: pickers working in the landfill intentionally set the fire, pickers unintentionally set the fire while working, the landfill simply caught on fire from years of mismanagement, or the landfill caught on fire due to methane build-up (e.g. the fire was natural; methane buildup is a natural occurrence in landfills). However, both during and after the fire took place, a discourse of blaming the “other” was found consistently among government agencies, NGOs, academia, citizens, media, and even some of the “others” themselves. Local populations living and working in and around the landfill were homogenized into a population of “others” that did not belong within the urban imaginary. While there was no consensus on whether the fire was started intentionally or not, the majority of my interviewees suggested that pepenadores started the fire. This is possible – and not the subject of this paper. The likelihood is that the fire started from any or all of those reasons, however this will never 53 be known. Instead, unpacking the response to the fire sheds light on how the socially pervasive narrative of non-socio-natural thinking extends into the far reaches of government, health, and even adaptation. A number of ministry officials exclaimed that individuals were at fault for their own poverty or poor health, placing blame on people themselves. When I asked an architect from MIVI about the conditions in Guna Nega, she remarked that if people are poor, it’s because they don’t find jobs and they don’t work. “The poor want to stay poor anyway,” I was told. Regardless, she insisted that if people found jobs, they could take care of themselves, further excusing a lack of services available outside the city. She continued that pepenadores put themselves at risk and should seek employment elsewhere if they truly cared about their health and safety. The Urbalia seemed to agree that multiple risks faced recyclers working in the landfill. However, she also emphasized that the country is “blessed with prosperity and opportunity” and that those who do not find jobs don’t want to work. She even quoted what she said was from the Bible: “if you don’t work, you don’t eat!” She also noted that though the landfill does subject those living nearby to a number of health risks, including exposure to gases and pollutants leading to infection and respiratory issues, Urbalia offers vaccinations and other medical care for exposure risk. However, she noted, people do not have time to go to the clinic and do not use the services provided. The paradoxes are rife; communities who have been on that land longer than the landfill, have been increasingly subject to health risks as the landfill has grown, yet they must find access to adaptation and better health through the very organization that put them at risk in the first place. Of course again, individuals bear the brunt of the responsibility for their role in the hazard as well as for adapting, regardless of the source of the risk or the adaptive solution. Interviewees from both MINSA and Urbalia emphatically insisted interviews that the Guna people chose to live in the dump. The Urbalia interviewee, while boasting social and environmental programs offered to area residents (one of which will be discussed later), argued that the Guna chose to settle in a contaminated area. MINSA echoed this sentiment of blaming the Guna for moving to what was already “a contaminated, unhealthy landfill.” However, it’s important to note that this is completely inaccurate. Guna Nega was formed in 1980, while the landfill was established in the late

1980s, as mentioned previously. The Guna interviewees with whom I spoke confirmed this. Again, this indicates either a conscious or subconscious denial of the history of the region. The architect from MIVI said that Indigenous people (in an obvious oversimplification and generalization) do not want to mix and integrate with the city and do not want to accept city services. She said that they even refer to non-indigenous as “Latinos,” signifying that that they see themselves as separate and different. With this she implied that they do not want services from the government. Further, multiple interviewees insisted that if the Guna feel they have no services, it’s their fault for settling near Cerro Patacón. The MINSA interviewee laughed when I asked about the effectiveness of the response. “Definitely,” she said. She emphatically noted that in her opinion, it was the job of local people to find information and go to a health center if they needed to. “Stay inside and don’t go to work if you want to stay safe and healthy” she said, despite the obvious limitations that many had in heeding that advice. Urbalia, while eager to tout their social benefits and sustainability programs, also emphasized individualized approaches versus regulatory change. I was given a brochure with bright pictures of planet Earth, recycling cartoons, and photos of the landfill before and after their involvement. The brochure explained the Plan de Componente Social del Relleno Sanitario de Cerro Patacón – a plan for formalizing employment in the landfill so that the informal (and “illegal”) pickers could retain their “human dignity, health, security, and the health of the environment.” A new social responsibility program formalized over 150 workers, however left hundreds more informal and “illegal.” Interestingly, while still an effort to target and formalize individuals (and ignoring structural issues), Urbalia’s program connected environmental and social issues with waste more so than government agencies did. The program included health services and vaccinations, “celebrations of Christmas and New Year’s,” and other community- building activities. The Urbalia interviewee even boasted about improving the lives of nearby communities through offering job opportunities. The interviewee explained as follows: We know we have a social responsibility we need to help these people in these communities. A lot of the recyclers belong to these communities. So we give them a license to work in the landfill – for their own consumption or to sell – we are contributing to the wellbeing of the families. We give

them vaccinations, licenses to extract materials; we try to give them job positions if they have the capacity. If they’re good, we find them a job. Like a company, we are helping them a lot just giving them the license. A lot of them depend on the recycling activities. One of the biggest contributions is our group of recyclers – a big group that work in the company. We employ them like security guards, manual labors in the cars, truck drivers, etc. We give them the opportunity to improve their lives through their jobs. We don’t reject them from the area. We know they depend on us. A lot of them have lived here their whole lives, so we give them jobs and they can feed their families. We help the communities in the construction of roads, water tanks, we want to do more, but we try for kids’ days, mother’s days, we give them gifts for Christmas, extra money during the holidays. Christmas parties and activities. We feel like we contribute to improving their lives. They don’t feel like they’re part of the waste or something like that. To make them feel like they’re accepted and recognized – they’re doing a contribution to the environment! We try to elevate their self-esteem, many of them were forgotten. We relocate some people, where they lived in horrible conditions, to places where they have bathrooms, roofs, with services, social areas, when before they were just eating in the garbage.

The brochure included a workflow similar to the one below, which I have translated:

"Ambito Social" "Economico" "Salud"

•Training in • Economic • Mechanisms for human relations development healthier lives •Improved •Recycling • Medicine literacy programs • Disease •Access to • Funnel reclycing prevention dignified housing jobs to those •Communication who need them plans

Figure 24. Urbalia outreach. Urbalia emphasizes social and economic perspectives of health but in an effort to further organize labor. 56

Urbalia’s discourse provides some connection from human/social relations to the economy and to health. The Urbalia interview participant also spoke of programs related to social development, improved operations, environmental sustainability, etc. Figure 25 below are photographs of the brochure, further touting their recycling programs and commitments to cleaning up the landfill. The Urbalia official described the role of Urbalia as a manager maintaining the landfill, while also helping the community by providing formal jobs and improving the environment. She described Urbalia as constantly considering development through their social outreach programs, operations, and environmental sustainability.

Figure 25. Urbalia brochure. Photographs of an Urbalia brochure depicts new efforts to recycle and be more sustainable.

However, Urbalia’s outreach programs and employee formalization programs, while disguised otherwise, are still neoliberal governance strategies that target the individual as the means of governance. These connections and programs are made in an attempt to “fix” recyclers as if the environmental hazards associated with the landfill are their fault.

Figure 26. Urbalia brochure. The Urbalia brochure advertises the benefits of employee formalization initiatives.

Both inside and outside the landfill, the Urbalia interviewee argued that Panamanians do not have a culture of recycling, again placing blame for the poor management of the landfill on individuals (along with other interviewees and

58 international consultants). In fact, she went as far as to blame the lack of organization and mismanagement in the landfill on individuals who did not recycle. She said: The big challenge for the company is that the people don’t have a good management system for the waste. They throw the waste wherever they can. There is no culture of recycling. Waste is money – the challenge is to try to make Panamanians conscious. They need to separate waste from the source, like in their houses. They’re the ones providing the garbage. They’re generating their own garbage, their own challenge. It’s us. It’s estimated in one study –written by a foundation –that each person generates 5 pounds of garbage per day. I don’t remember the study. So we don’t have a culture of recycling, so our landfill is going to be like this – open – everyone can throw garbage here however they want. So there won’t be good management, they’re just not conscious.

A Professor of Geography similarly blamed environmental problems in Panama on individuals who do not recycle or contribute to a sustainable society. He said that among Panamanians, “there is no interest” and the government should emphasize environmental education more. ANAM shared this sentiment, blaming environmental problems on a lack of education. The professor even named a few environmental and sustainability-related NGOs as means through which environmental education could be reached. However, the organizations he mentioned focus on issues such as rainforest conservation or energy use, or more “natural” themes outside the city. The Urbalia program and rhetoric of education fit into the neoliberal discourse of social responsibility seen in many corporate and government operations, relying on blame and individual change. In the case of Urbalia, the image of the company may improve however management of the landfill does not change. In conclusion, Urbalia and government agencies sought to identify a villain for the fire, but also for landfill mismanagement altogether, instead of look to the structural causes of environmental hazards or crises. That villain became the recyclers, pepenadores, residents of nearby communities, and even the Panamanian people. That said, the role of pepenadores in the fire is probable. They work informally and formally in the landfill and maintain a major role in its management (or mismanagement) just by being there. However, their role in the landfill fire, while not irrelevant, should not be the focus. Why did interview participants focus on blaming pickers and those living nearby? The ways in which they may be blamed for an environmental hazard or some form of

59 exploitative behavior is consistent with Robbins’ (2012) Degradation and Marginalization theory, providing some explanation to make sense of this logic in the narrative. In this argument, Robbins argues that blaming the “other” is largely simplistic and should instead be seen as part of a wider geography of accidents (Robbins 2012). This theorem argues that exploitative behavior is the result of “state development intervention and/or increasing integration in regional and global markets…, leading to increasing poverty and cyclically, increasing overexploitation” (pg. 159). Therefore while pepenadores may indeed have played a role in the fire, it is simply a part of a larger assemblage of activity that led to the fire. More importantly, their actions likely reflect a history of marginalization through a lack of work, services, and support systems through the government.

3.1.2 Technocratic Solutions

Another response to the fire centered on the bureaucratic or technocratic logic of calculating, measuring, and reporting: creating state spaces of control and order. Here I focus on two examples, or sites, where this logic of technocratic solutions was extended: the air quality workshop and a report on waste in Panama commissioned by the Panamanian government in 2006. The workshop, organized by IEA and paid for by NASA, was an obvious example of technocratic approach at an environmental hazard. Interestingly, the workshop was planned so as to take advantage of funding left over in the NASA project. This further shows how even for NASA, IEA, and international NGOs, the fire was another mundane event, a reason sufficient enough for hosting a workshop. NASA simply stipulated that a topic related to air quality be the focus, and the Cerro Patacón fire provided an example for the organizations to use as a case study for air quality monitoring. IEA is a very technical, scientific research organization. While funded by NASA, the workshop was organized by IEA, including setting the agenda and inviting participants. Over 60 participants were invited to what was thought would be a very well attended and exciting workshop, however less than 30 participants came. Of those were participants from ANAM, MINSA, SINAPROC (Emergency Management office), media, and IEA

60 representatives. IEA had ultimately hoped that the workshop would spur conversation on how air quality (e.g. data and measurements) was relayed during and after the landfill fire, and what roles the media and various ministries had. They expected presentations with lively discussion and interaction. IEA designated the following agenda items:

 An overview of particle pollution (PM10 and PM2.5),  Using the Air Quality Index (AQI) to communicate air quality conditions,

 Ambient PM2.5 measurements during the Cerro Patacón fire,  Using aerosol satellite data to monitor and track particle pollution,  Government efforts to protect human health during the Cerro Patacón fire, and  Using public participation to improve air quality communication.

The first four topics are obviously quite technical, a nod to NASA as the workshop funder. IEA’s representatives, as well as the American NGO collaborators, were scientists, some with PhDs in meteorology and air quality chemistry. Their presentations spoke to each other more than to anyone else, showcasing how satellite data or air quality data was captured and utilized in measuring the air quality impacts of the landfill fire. Complicated graphs and charts filled the PowerPoint slides. While many looked forward to what MINSA’s presentation would include, theirs was noted as one of the least beneficial in the workshop evaluations. Taken from the official workshop summary: [The MINSA representative] presented efforts that her organization took during the landfill fire to protect public health, which involved mobile monitoring and evacuations of affected areas. She described collaborative efforts between the Ministry, local governments, universities, and civil protection authorities to monitor air quality conditions and disseminate information to the public. [She] noted that the Minister of Health was the only person authorized to tell the public to take specific actions regarding the fire, which included directions to stay indoors and not exercise outdoors during the fire’s duration. During a brief discussion after her presentation, workshop participants questioned the effectiveness of the role of the Ministry of Health in communicating the air quality hazards during the event. For example, the Ministry claimed to have statistics about the air quality effects and health impacts of the fire, but when pressed, could not produce the statistics. Workshop participants encouraged all involved to learn from this experience and to communicate accurate air quality information and health impacts more effectively in the future.

This was actually quite a diplomatic summary of the representative’s presentation. In reality, she seemed completely detached and disinterested. During her presentation, where she described the public engagement and outreach efforts put forth by MINSA during and after the fire, three ANAM representatives in the back giggled and whispered to each other, looks of disbelief and anger on their faces. The MINSA representative was hesitant in answering questions and simply emphasized that she was not impacted personally; and those who were impacted should have taken care of themselves. She left the workshop soon after her presentation ended. The 5th topic on government and human health in fact did not take place, as the participant canceled their presentation at the last minute. The final presentation, how government or media officials might use the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) handbook on public participation, seemed to be lost on the participants. This may have been useful if in fact they had data to disseminate, and means with which to communicate. In a tense discussion after the presentation, it was noted that certain neighborhoods received no notice whatsoever, while others didn’t know what to do with the information regardless. The second half of the workshop, meant for discussion about information dissemination, turned into an argument between members of the media and MINSA about whose responsibility it was to share information. Journalists described that that they did not understand the technical reports. They emphasized the need for linking scientists to the media, but ultimately still suggested ways in which the public could seek out information themselves through increased education and awareness. Individualized responses were emphasized again. The workshop concluded with the following list of suggestions and closing remarks:  More seminars should be scheduled  The media and NGOs should participate more so that they can better relay information to the public (though the public bears the brunt of the responsibility for obtaining the information once published)  Establish procedures for communicating  Disseminate technical information and data through social media, brochures, etc.

Truly, the workshop ended as it started. While increasing communication and using alternate forms of communication may be beneficial, what is being communicated? Is it helpful to publish data? The workshop ended without asking – what started the landfill in the first place? This workshop is just one example of the ways in which technical solutions, measurement and reporting in particular, were applied superficially to the landfill fire, without attention to any structural factors. However, it also shows how the landfill was continued to be seen as something mundane, to which a discussion of reporting and technicalities was sufficient. The workshop took place simply because of a need to use funding. It became an example for discussing air quality communication, not discussing how to prevent air quality hazards from starting in the first place. However, what’s more, as mentioned earlier, no data or reports could be found! ANAM and MINSA, both offices which claimed to have reports, were found to have none. An interactive website created by CATHALAC, the technical research NGO interviewed and mentioned previously, advertised GIS and satellite data layers of smoke and other impacts of the fire, but the site was never found to work. So while technical solutions were tacked onto the landfill fire response, voices suggest that there is more evidence than there really is; data and reports are alive in the imaginary, but librarians in the ANAM and MINSA libraries would say otherwise. Another striking example of simplistic analysis and technocratic solutions can be seen in a 2006 report commissioned by the Panamanian government. An American market research consulting firm was hired to conduct a study on how government officials in Panama City might address waste issues. Waste was seen as a growing problem, but because of the impact that it was having on economic sectors of the city, most notably urban development and the Panama Canal. The purpose of the report, as included in the report abstract, was as follows: The Panamanian Government wants to spur economic development along the shores of the Panama Canal, but inadequate waste disposal capabilities discourage substantial investment. Squatters and scavengers now also live on the largest landfill in the area and their living conditions pose serious public health risks to the entire region. Unchecked trash disposal actually threatens the physical operation of the Panama Canal, essential to the country's and world economy, because clogged rivers and

streams prevent the flow of water required to move ships through this passageway connecting Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. A governmental task force is charged with addressing these problems and they have summoned a team of American consultants to recommend an action plan for modernizing and improving the waste management system of the entire inter‐oceanic region.

A number of important observations can be made from the report. First, the report was requested not because waste was impacting resources or human health, but because waste was seen as impeding upon development. The report sought to provide the government with suggestions as to how they might attract international investors to a “tropical paradise,” despite improper, poor, or nonexistent waste management (Linowes and Hupert 2006; 228). The report describes how in 1998, an American company wanted to build an eco-resort in the Canal Zone which would have resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars in leasing fees for the Panamanian government. The project was canceled because the developers deemed waste pick-up and disposal unreliable and haphazard. Waste comes to the forefront of governance only when it threatens development and economic profit. Waste is conceptualized here not as a risk for those living around it or working in/with it, but as a risk and threat for the economy. Further, the report demonizes those living and working around the landfill, describing how “squatters and scavengers” built homes and communities near the landfill so that they could work illegally within the landfill collecting recyclables and other goods. The report states that “not only were these communities impeding development in the area, but also their impoverished, unhealthy living conditions had been publicized in the local media when [the government] tried to remove them to make way for development” (Linowes and Hupert 2006; 227). It is obvious that those living in and near Cerro Patacón are being homogenized into a single population of “squatters.” This is an observation shared by many. There are a number of problems with this. First, as established previously, many of the communities around Cerro Patacón were formed before the landfill; therefore, calling these populations squatters is not only incorrect but inflammatory. Worse, a supposed objective, unbiased research organization takes up these terms. Second, the communities around Cerro Patacón are not homogenous but vastly different populations of indigenous and non-indigenous communities, as described

64 previously. Third and finally, through these statements, the risk to those populations is again not identified as the problem; instead, the risk to the economy and reputation of the government is at stake. In conclusion, while data is useful for many applications, a strict reliance on technical solutions fails to address the root, structural causes of environmental problems and injustice and therefore does not fully contribute to the ultimate prevention of that problem. In this case, there was no structural analysis that may have identified landfill mismanagement or unplanned and unregulated growth as likely root cause(s) of the fire. Even an international consulting firm – held at a high scientific standard – placed blame on so-called “squatters and scavengers.” While not only harmful to the populations it wrongly represents, this logic will result in failed policies and ultimately a continuation of the same problems and injustices – which it already has. Important questions about social metabolism and the links between waste and development go unasked and unanswered by those in positions of power and intellectual esteem, from Panamanian academics and bureaucrats to scientists and international consultants.

3.1.3 Non-metabolic Dualisms

As the previous sections showed, the city had a very specific, commonly-shared system or discourse with which to deal with the fire. Seen throughout, however, is the ways in which the landfill itself was not seen as a metabolic problem, and even less a social metabolic one. I argue that underpinning this disconnect – and contributing to a lack of substantive response mechanisms that address the fire through planning and development questions – were a number of dualisms. The first was consensus that that which is considered “urban” – meaning Panama City itself – is separate and apart from everything else, including that which is considered “natural” or “rural.” For example, Panama City is “urban” while the rest of the country is something else – “the interior.” Second was the dualism between what is “natural” and “urban” or “not natural.” The jungle or the beach is “natural.” The “environment” still remains fenced off in parks (e.g. Parque Metropolitano, a Central Park-like destination in the urban core). In this way, Liz was eager to work in the jungle but did not want to go to the landfill. She saw the landfill

65 as something dirty, dangerous, and off-putting, something separate from the city and separate from what she saw as Panama’s “nature” or “environment.” More broadly, the landfill was not urban in that it was completely separated from the city discursively but also materially. Interview participants dismissed questions relating development to waste or the landfill in the same way. This non-metabolic thinking propagates dualistic thinking and removes the social from the material of metabolism. Drawing from political ecology’s socionatures theory, I argue that the logic observed through multiple interviews, and the strategies seen in the sections above, extends and promotes a dualism in not only “nature” and “urban” but in urban and rural, and that this dualism promotes non-socio-metabolic thinking. Interviewees felt the city was separate from the landfill; the dump is seen as alien to the city. It falls between “urban” and “natural,” making it a liminal space of in-between-ness. Likewise, waste and people associated with the waste are rendered external to the city and that which is “urban.” Political ecologists argue that a dualism or binary wrongly exists between what is natural and what is urban (Wachsmuth 2012; Robbins 2012). This dualistic logic posits that there are natural places – like vast wildernesses – and urban places – like cities, streets, and neighborhoods. This dualism is at its core what makes up the narrative or discourse at work in Panama City. As is the problem with any binary, that that exists in between is rendered invisible – or external to both categories. Places fall between what our imaginary tells us is “natural” or not. Socionatures imply a breaking down of the distinction or binary between what is nature or natural and what is social or urban, or the idea that there is no pure nature. Robbins’ 2012 work on the American lawn provided a useful example for understanding socio-natural thinking, especially in terms of urban landscapes. He wrote that “a growing body of urban history has come to emphasize the way cities are nothing but nature – metals, glass, and water – flowing through political and economic conduits. These previously free materials become “fixed” in the built environment but are very much part of a social and political life of urban areas” (pg. 12). Robbins goes on to say that an urban landscape – or lawn in his text – is really a “crystallized form of these raw materials and ecological forces, tempered, constrained, and spread across” landscapes (pg. 12). In addition, landscapes are actually particular assemblages or networks of

66 political, cultural, and historical conditions (Gabriel 2014). In this way, the dualism or binary between society and nature is de-emphasized, with the realization that both produce and constitute each other. Similarly, Mansfield et al. (2014) argue that the environment is fundamentally socioecological, versus a more traditional sense of environmentalism, dominated “by the idea of nature as a domain external to human society, whether as wilderness of resource” (pg. 2). Nature is actually inherently a political process, with environments actually power-laden places. Certain people have access to the benefits while others experience harm. Grove (2009) additionally notes that urban landscapes are constituted by socio- ecological relations, ultimately defining modern life. These literatures argue that the landfill and the city are indeed all part of the same assemblage that is the urban landscape. Socio-economic processes are at work in any natural environment, and natural processes are present in any urban landscape (Swyngedouw 2006). What is important about the political ecological tenet of socio-natures is that the binary should be blurred. A city landfill is neither urban nor natural; thinking in a dualistic way would exclude the landfill from city planning, environmental protection, or perhaps even thought at all. Likewise, indigenous populations who leave their idyllic, natural homes and move to the city are also neither natural nor urban. They live and exist in the periphery. Socio-natural thinking allows that people and places that would otherwise not qualify for one side or the other of the binary suddenly become visible. Furthermore, a social metabolism would entail a governance structure that relied on actors across networks. In this way, the liminal spaces and people found in Cerro Patacón become a part of the conversation about development in Panama City. I found this distinction between the “natural” (or rural) and the “urban” to be corroborated by my ANAM interviews; politics, society, and the environment seemed to be specifically separated. One interviewee from ANAM refused to answer my questions about the landfill because she was “not political.” She did not want to comment on something to which her work did not apply; she also seemed to feel that it was not an environmental issue. She felt entirely uncomfortable with the questions I asked and simply told me to “talk to the boss” if we wanted to know more. Even though she and

67 other ANAM participants agreed that land use, pollution, and litter were challenges facing Panama, this did not extend past the city limits – Cerro Patacón was a different issue entirely, irrelevant to ANAM. A professor from the University of Panama Geography Department was similarly uncomfortable with questions about the landfill yet expressed frustration with privatization in the government. When asked about the fire and its impacts, he said “I don’t know, I don’t live there,” as if the impacts stayed within Cerro Patacón boundaries. I interpreted this as dismissing the problem and its relevance to him, his life, and perhaps his work as well. However, he noted that the landfill was incredibly disorganized, which contributed to the event. While he did not explicitly connect waste to development, he said that privatization – a characteristic of neoliberal governance – was partly at fault. The concession of Cerro Patacón to Urbalia was part of the problem; he said, “That’s the problem in Panama. The government does whatever it wants and does not respect the citizens. They hire companies, these companies come and sign a contract, but in the long run, they do whatever they want. Why? They don’t care about the risk. They just want to get paid. That’s what’s happening.” The landfill was seen as a liminal space in terms of policy and government responsibility, as well; no government agency interviewee could identify whose responsibility it was to govern the landfill, or environmental hazards that originated with waste. The Geography professor simply stated that “no one pays attention to that place.” When asked about the fire in the most general sense, an interviewee from MINSA noted that ANAM took care of the fire since it was an environmental problem. She noted that MINSA’s responsibility was to create health-related laws and to monitor things like chemical usage or vaccinations, not to deal with environmental problems. The interviewee proudly described the chemical conventions that MINSA has joined, and their mission to protect the public’s health. However, she noted that MINSA is not really concerned with Cerro Patacón because “many other organizations work there,” and their job was only publish the reports. She did acknowledge that dealing with the fire was difficult because of the logistical dilemmas related to regional versus state versus local government authority, but overall she noted that “so many groups worked there after the fire, there was no clear plan and no progress.” While this response hinted at the lack of

68 responsibility, leadership, and planning in relation to the fire, she still emphasized that MINSA’s job was imply to check for risk and then publish reports and protocols. Contributing to a void in responsibility of the landfill, supposed reports and data were commonly cited but never produced. When asked about the fire, an ANAM interviewee simply told me to talk to the university group in charge of scientific analysis (IEA, the group in charge of the air quality workshop mentioned previously), that they would have the “air quality impacts I needed.” They noted that it was a spontaneous fire and emergency management took care of it. Another official told me to check the online statistics; he said he “could not provide opinions, but the internet should have what [I] need anyway.” Though many said that ANAM published reports, an extensive search of their library, assisted by their own librarians, found nothing. In total, 5 different ANAM officials referred me to their library or online database of reports. In addition, “check online” was a common phrase heard in interviews. Interviewees assumed I was looking for statistics or reports containing air quality measurements, which they insisted were online. However, like the ANAM library, searches online produced no results. Despite MINSA’s claim that ANAM should know more about the landfill, when visiting ANAM, three different interview participants, in three separate interviews, continued to laugh at questions related to the landfill and the city. One interviewee, from the Emergency Management sector, said that the analysis was done by IEA. She said ANAM did not have the authority to act during the landfill. Interestingly, ANAM is not a government ministry and therefore does indeed have less acting authority as other organizations such as MINSA. Created in 1998, its focus is on pollution, natural resources, wildlife, preservation of natural areas, conservation, forest protection, biodiversity protection, etc.11 ANAM is therefore largely seen as a conservation and natural resource-related agency. Questions of contamination due arise in its charter – cargos por contaminación urbano o rural – anthropogenic contamination in urban and rural areas. However, where does the landfill fall? It seems that through policy documents as well, the landfill is rendered external and in-between what is seen by both official and public discourses of “urban” versus “nonurban.”

11 http://www.anam.gob.pa/images/stories/normasambientales/Ley_general_del_ambiente_panama.pdf 69

While a survey of Panamanians would have been of interest to better understand additional mindsets, Figure 27 illustrates the extension of dualistic thinking into Panamanian pop culture. The top right shows how Panamanians living in the capital see the rest of the country – either just “the interior” or other derogatory names. Similarly, even the world, as shown in the top left, sees Panama as either Canal (e.g. urban) or forest.

Figure 27. Panama Cartoon. This cartoon expresses the following: top left: “How the world sees Panama – jungle, canal, more jungle,” bottom left: “how Panamanians see Venezuelans and Colombians: Money!”, top right: “How those from the capital see the rest of Panama: the interior, (other derogatory names), and Dubai/Miami/New York as the capital”, and bottom right: “how someone from Northern Panama (i.e. Colón) sees Panama: Switzerland, Indigenous and Black people, and Haiti.” Source: twicsy.com

In conclusion, various neoliberal responses and strategies categorized the actions after the fire, ultimately contributing to and defining the externalization of the landfill and those living and working there. This is compounded by Panama City’s history and modern governance, which has and continues to emphasize modernization and hyper- growth at the sake of history and social services. The dualisms between “urban” and

70 otherwise have therefore been a constant thread in Panama, characterizing Panamanian environmental and social governance.

Chapter 4: A Different Discourse? Resistance and Subjectivities

While I did not expect to find road blockages or strikes, as have taken place in other cities, I did expect to encounter a discourse (among government workers especially) that at least recognized that waste management was a problem in Panama City not just in terms of inconvenience, but in terms of its uneven impacts on people through the landfill and fire. What’s more, I expected to see an opposing discourse in Guna Nega especially to what I saw as obvious technologies of externalization, which have led to the conditions for injustice and social exclusion. However, as shown in Chapter 3, the majority of interviewees – across multiple stakeholder types – did not share my view of waste as a political and social problem, and instead shared a discourse that privileged neoliberal governance strategies, technocratic solutions, and overall dualistic thinking in regards to development and waste in Panama City. While there was indeed overall consensus around the logic of externalization, I found this was a complicated issue. In this chapter, I outline an alternative discourse uncovered (through only a few interviews), but how even it was laced with neoliberal governance strategies. Drawing from the literature on resistance and subjectivities, I will explore various hypotheses as to why I found so little evidence of an alternative discourse and even less of resistance.

4.1 Alternative Discourses

Through a few interviews, I did uncover a sense of frustration through an alternative discourse that did indeed recognize social and/or environmental justice. However, while two college-aged Guna males expressed frustration at their sense of externalization from the city, they still saw some of the problems in the community through a neoliberal lens. Nonetheless, the two Guna students clearly had strong feelings that differed from the casual contentment found among older Guna interviewees. Professors at the University of Panama also expressed an alternative discourse however similarly called upon neoliberal governance strategies in order to achieve them. In this 72 section, I will outline what this alternative discourse was, and how despite its rhetoric, it still called upon neoliberal governance in the end.

4.1.1 Contesting the Discourse of Externalization…

Some interviewees did implicitly highlight uneven development in Panama City and Guna Nega. One Guna interviewee (called Juan here) said that he “sees development, but not in the areas where we need it most. [The government] develops places where people with more money live. Here in the town, there is no development because we have violence, drug addiction, and alcoholism. We don’t see the development.” Another interviewee [called Fernando here] expressed something similar: “we see development and infrastructure in Panama, it seems excellent. It’s the best part of this country, something distinct. But it’s not integrated; we miss a lot in the communities. The development is concentrated in the city, for tourists. It’s centralized but not for those who need it.” In this way, Juan and Fernando expressed that while the development of the city is impressive – making Panama a comparatively good place to live and be proud of – they do believe that the urbanization and modernization projects defining its development trajectory are equally shared by all Panamanians. A professor of Geography emphasized that there is little order in Panama City’s development, leading to uneven benefit and unequal impact. He said the hyper-growth is disorganized and profit-led; he noted that “there is no good planning; they’re only thinking about getting rich – thinking about that the families benefiting from the building, more than the families who will occupy them.” He argued that the government prioritizes economic growth, infrastructure development, and construction. Fernando said that the government prioritizes anything that has to do with influence and power, most notably physical aspects of the city such as construction. Juan said he felt proud of Panama City in part, but on the other hand, saw “a disconnect between the development of the city versus development of areas and people where they need it most.” Juan drew attention to a different, more critical perspective about Guna Nega through the militarized police presence. He pointed out sarcastically that area policemen were “watching” them. Interestingly, besides tourist attractions like Cinta Costera

73 downtown where tourist police maintained a presence for the sake of “protecting” visitors (or rather, making them feel safe), I had never seen police officers – in full riot gear save the mask – milling about in a central residential plaza where there were no tourists. The young man’s frustration seemed palpable. Indeed, when I spoke to one of the officers, he spoke with disdain that the residents of the area were “cochinos,” or “pigs” who bathed in the dirty rivers and threw garbage everywhere. Of course I didn’t mention that an open landfill was within eyesight; how could that not be related to the litter. In addition, those bathing in the river were not Guna but poorer mestizo migrants who lived and worked informally. I had to wonder; why did the police monitor this area? To maintain peace and prevent crime? According to the urban imaginary of Guna Nega as a dangerous place where I would trip over bodies, one would assume that a police presence was necessary. Juan mentioned that the Guna Nega organization kept crime in the immediate vicinity very low, but bordering areas were not as lucky. I also wondered if it was not to stifle any rebellious tendencies, if those thoughts were ever present. Juan and Fernando also noted that the fire’s cause was broader than just pickers. Fernando argued that “It started with the company that runs the landfill, Urbalia. Since they’re taking care of the landfill, they should control who goes in, who comes out, and how it’s run and managed. It starts with them. They have half the fault of what happened there because they don’t care what happens there or what happens to the communities nearby. They don’t care about the smell or the kids here. It was also the fault of the government because they allow them to administer the landfill in that way where they do whatever they way. If it was a government worried about the people, they would have put limits on the company. Also, they could visit us, see how we feel, see how the landfill impacts us, and visit Urbalia to see if the garbage is managed. So it’s both Urbalia and the government.” While Urbalia boasted about corporate responsibility and employment opportunities, Juan said that for them, “garbage is profit. They make money off the landfill and that’s all they care about.” Juan and Fernando described how the landfill fires are “a habit;” they happen consistently but area residents have grown accustomed and adapted in their own way. Juan noted that “when people say they aren’t affected, it’s only because they’re used to it.” Fernando described that for his entire life, he’s lived with Cerro Patacón. He said

“We’re used to this. Since the fire was so big and on TV – people got sick, but it’s always the same. We’re accustomed, even to the sickness. No one knows the difference. Since it was on TV, everyone found out about this situation. Now that the fire is finished, we still live the same. Nothing changed. Nothing is different. We are still the same. Since the fire, during the fire, but after the fire, it’s all still the same. People talk and talk about there is never a change. I’m accustomed to living the same way.” The Geography professor – who did not want to comment on his own experience and instead relied on stories seen through the media – said that “it is not a finished issue, there are still little fires. They still feel the consequences of the fire in the region.” Juan led us around Guna Nega, describing the lack of opportunities and fading culture, explaining how Cerro Patacón was expanding. He almost became emotional talking about Guna Nega; “I remember when I was a kid – I used to walk around these places, and [the landfill] was never here! We never saw it. It wasn’t like this. It was after that they started to come. They moved it here. Before, Guna Nega was the only neighborhood here. This was all forests, pure mountains. We were living in the middle of the forest. So it’s a big lie that they said they were here first. We were here before them.” Juan even suggested that developers want to build in Guna Nega – wealthy developments are closing in on one side of the community while the landfill borders the other side – and continues growing as well! These voices also expressed pride in the community, describing how they build Guna Nega themselves. Juan was surprised and seemingly taken aback when Liz casually mentioned that she had never been to nor really understood Guna Nega. Though when he became too cynical about Guna Nega, explaining how the Guna language is dying and culture is being lost, an older community member scolded him for being negative. He scoffed and said he was “only being honest, not criticizing.” Her intervention mirrored what older Guna seemed to relay – a sense of pride in Panama City and similarly in Guna Nega, and a sense of denial or dismissal of any injustice associated with the waste, the landfill, or the development of the city.

4.1.2 Through Neoliberal Means

Despite contestation of the discourse, neoliberal governance responses were still implicit in many of the explanations given regarding environmental hazards and externalization broadly. Even when rhetoric of vulnerability and social inclusion permeated a government agency interviewee’s response, he still nonetheless expressed implicitly the externalization of the landfill. This gentleman, from MIDES, spoke to me for two hours about social inclusion despite government inefficiency. He explained that previously, MIDES was combined with another ministry to form the Ministry of Economy and Social Development; this was best for the country in that it fulfilled this important notion of political economy, providing “economists with a better vision,” as he argued. He then noted what his office does: provides responses and alternatives to specific priority, vulnerable, and marginalized groups: children, youth, women, indigenous populations, afro-descendants, and developmentally challenged. These populations deal with challenges like a lack of jobs, lack of services, and a general lack of “social guarantees” as he called them. He described that social exclusion is important – government should consider the poor, vulnerable, marginalized, etc. He noted that MINSA directs all that he does in his job, which include monitoring and evaluation impacts of development, and generally trying to improve quality of life for certain populations in need. However, provide various explanations as to why the issues occurred and how they might be resolved. He explained how ministries did not communicate and were largely ineffective in programming due to the change in staff with every new government administration. He noted the indigenous are the most poor and the most in need of services. At this point, I asked about environmentally vulnerable groups of people, and how he thought it related, such as those who did not have access to resources, or alternatively, lived in dangerous or contaminated environments. He did not answer. In all, despite his rhetoric of social development and inclusion, the projects he did boast focused on employment and formalization and the conversation avoided Cerro Patacón and structural causes of inequality entirely. Many of the Guna interviewees who did acknowledge uneven development impacts were not able to discuss responses without also blaming individuals. Juan

76 explained how the Guna were very organized and had rallied together in the past, but it was “just words.” He said that it was “the fault of the leaders. [Guna Nega] is the principal community. There are others, but this has the most power because we’re so organized. The other communities depend on this one. This one has been here longest and has the most influence. If we don’t do anything, they don’t either. Since we didn’t do anything, no one else did either. Everything stays the same.” In this way, he saw fault with the community itself for the injustices he described. Nonetheless, he also saw fault in the government: he said “it ended quickly so no one cared what happened. We only got help during those few days.” He argued that campaigns or more information would have helped, however, implying that this was the problem with the fire, and not the fire itself. In this way, he also ignored the structural causes at play. Fernando seemed to agree, noting that Guna Nega already has an organization for dealing with community issues, but changes comes “little by little.” But Fernando also resorted to the same “blame the victim” narrative as described above. He said Panamanians “have a culture where we don’t take care of things. Parents don’t take time to teach the kids. There is a lot of sicknesses and malnutrition because of society, they don’t teach anyone how to eat better or live better. People don’t use their time wisely; they eat whatever and live however. There are too many people in one place, it causes sickness. It’s a lack of education. We need to change the culture and tell the leaders in the government that they need to create groups to teach the people in the village how to live better and do better in these ways.” In all, both Juan and Fernando – while seeming to contest the dominant narrative in their understanding of development and exclusion – relied on the same neoliberal responses. Another Guna community member explained that he was looking to raise the voices of Guna dissenters. He explained efforts to organize meetings between the Guna, another nearby community, and representatives from Urbalia, MINSA, and ANAM, in regards to the possible expansion of the landfill as well as the river contamination. He hoped that through the meetings, Guna people could raise their voices. He said the community needed to come together, but also needed means through which to elevate their concerns. He said I could help by publishing reports or sharing photos. However, participating in meetings with Urbalia could simply legitimize their effort to formalize

77 employees, when as some said; this is superficial in light of their overall goal to profit over commoditized landfill operations. Interestingly, even the Urbalia interviewee expressed a hope that the pepenadores would organize. She noted that in her travel to other landfills around Latin America for her job, she found that recyclers were organized and even unionized. She said: I always wanted the recyclers to get organized in a cooperative. We have traveled to different countries in Latin America and South America, in some places they’ve had the chance to get organized, do recycling in a more formal way. Some of them here, they don’t want to organize. They don’t have help from the government, either, to help them organize. So last year, we had a meeting and chose a representative from the recycling group so that they could get organized and improve their quality of life and work, and to formalize the work. We wanted to tell the communities what to do, how to work together, and what they would receive, how they could get a better life. I wanted them to organize; I wanted them to have a collection center. We don’t want the garbage coming here so mixed, like it was before.

I found this incredibly ironic. Why would Urbalia want recyclers to organize? This brings up an important distinction: organization for the facilitation of labor versus political organization. Most likely, she meant organization simply for the sake of efficiency regarding work. This organization is perhaps similar to the type of organization that the Guna experience: social organization that facilitates communication or social relations, but not political organization. Through the social – but NOT political – organization of pickers, Urbalia can continue to formalize and “fix” pepenadores, placing further blame and now responsibility on workers. She may see pepenadores and the surrounding communities as key to improving the landfill and developing the area further. Regardless, she sees the individuals as needing to respond and take responsibility. In her mind, Urbalia has done its part and the pepenadores should organize for the sake of improved work, as they seemingly have in other cities.

4.2 Resistance

The discursive contestation discussed in the previous section raises the question; is this resistance? Was there resistance? Why or why not? But first, what is resistance?

Resistance can take many forms at various scales but is broadly the notion that people will ‘push back’ against perceived injustice (Sparke 2008). For some, it can be coordinated and outright, like revolution and confrontations such as protests, riots, or marches, but overall acts that resist primitive accumulation and displacement (Harvey 2005; Crossa 2009). Others would argue that everyday resistance can be diffuse, localized, and ubiquitous (Picket 1996; Crossa 2009). Nonetheless, while landfills are often the site of organized resistance throughout Latin America, my fieldwork did not uncover resistance. Why did my fieldwork – while limited still a total of one month – not uncover any outright forms of resistance? Here I will outline various hypotheses as to why the unusual urban politics in Panama may be contributing to a continuation of the status quo, or a lack of collective resistance and internalization of dominant discourse. Further, I argue that the ‘status quo’ has actually produced neoliberal subjects, where political ecology would – perhaps wrongly and quite problematically in this case – otherwise assume subaltern subjects.

4.2.1 Panamanians as Neoliberal Subjects

Foucault (2005) wrote about the subject – the being with unique consciousness and personal experiences – and the ways that subjectivities can be formed “fostered through the positive, catalytic qualities of spaces, places, and environments” (Crampton and Stuart 2012; 195). Through particular environments and power relations, subjects can take up or internalize what is around them, their subjectivities defined through reflexivity of the self (Foucault 2005; Grove 2009; Crampton and Stuart 2012). Subjectivities are then a reflection of the discourses and power relations at work around (and through) them. Subjectivity becomes wrapped up in a new identity and new ways of understand one’s self according to processes, conditions, objects, or other forms of meaning (Grove 2009). Hardt and Negri (2009) describe the ways in which power (e.g. state or corporate power, mediate through neoliberalism) can biopolitically reach down into the “ganglia of the social structure and its processes of development” (pg. 24). This quotation powerfully describes the ways in which a subject can be produced to the very essence of their being. In this way, subjectivities are produced by the particular social, economic, and political

79 conditions in particular ways and at particular points in time. These conditions – or system, what Hardt and Negri actually call the “capitalist imperial machine” – creates subjects who feel and act in particular ways. They explain that “what appear as local identities are not autonomous or self-determining but actually feed into and support the development of the [system]” (pg. 45). Subjects are therefore not sovereign and do not have autonomous agency over their consciousness (Foucault 2005). Drawing from this literature and that of political ecology, UPE would assume that the Othered, externalized populations in Panama would be made up of subaltern subjects but with subaltern subjectivities. While they may indeed be subaltern subjects – individuals who are subaltern by definition – I argue that Panama City – through its political ecology and social metabolism – produces specifically neoliberal subjectivities. They see themselves in particular ways, mediated through their surroundings. This becomes especially important for the question of resistance because individuals or citizens of a society, mediated through their subjectivities, are the critical component (and actor) in resistance efforts. Therefore, in order to understand resistance, or a lack thereof, one must understand the Panamanian subject.12 Antonio Gramsci (1971) referred to subaltern populations (and hence subjects) as social groups who were socially, politically, and geographically excluded from hegemonic power structures. As excluded, subaltern populations were seen as having no voice in society and lacking representation. Political ecology was largely founded as a means of understanding environmental change and injustice in a way that does not demonize or wrongly blame subaltern populations (see Chapter 2) and therefore necessarily imposes subaltern subjectivities on assumed (and likely) subaltern populations. In this way, political ecology is concerned with the assumed subaltern subject – the subject whom has internalized, naturalized, and taken up their subaltern nature. The subaltern subject must also then desire change through resistance, whether coordinated or diffuse. However, as I’ve shown, the assumed subaltern populations in Panama City largely do not seem to contest their externalization. I argue that this is because they are not actually subaltern subjects but neoliberal ones. I now propose a few

12 I write about “Panamanian subjects” with Spivak’s critique in mind about the danger of homogenizing entire populations (1988). I engage with this idea strictly as an experimental, hypothetical, analytical exercise. 80 hypotheses as to why and how this has occurred in light of the specific Panamanian context – most notably the ways in which its geography, history, and social metabolism have produced neoliberal subjectivities. The neoliberal discourses associated with hyper-growth, modernization, and Western influence may have produced Panamanians’ subjectivities in such a way as to internalize and accept otherwise obvious forms of injustice or harm. The state’s consistent emphasis on hyper-growth may have reached so far down into society that it has become a part of the Panamanian psyche; Panamanians may internalize hyper- growth, it sculpting their subjectivities for pro-hyper-growth sentiments. Panamanians may then feel proud of infrastructure and real estate booms in their country, despite the fact that they don’t benefit them. Previously, Western influence may have been so paternalistic for so long, that Panamanians stopped caring about political issues that felt out of their control. It’s possible that the neoliberal, externally-focused development trajectory further produces subjectivities. The history and social metabolism of Panama may have been internalized over decades of particular political and economic events. Dictatorships and corruption may have continued to suppress any feelings of activism or political interest. Many interviewees expressed a fear or hesitation of protesting or speaking out against the government for fear of retaliation or loss of their job. In fact, I spoke to one ANAM employee at the air quality workshop who was the first person to tell me about Guna Nega and the injustice that she believed to have taken place there. Her politics were much more critical than the other government officials with whom I spoke. She was ultimately let go from her job at ANAM when a new administration came into the presidency. Considering her PhD in water resources and fluency in Spanish, English, and German, it’s difficult to believe that this was due to technical failings. While admittedly I do not know the intricacies of her case, perhaps she was out of favor with the government or perhaps her more critical stance put her into sticky situations. It does potentially contribute to the idea that Panamanians are careful about their speech. Further, I was unable to record interviews with government agencies. Interviewees told me that they did not want their opinions recorded in case the recording was used against them in the future. MINSA interviewees were honest with their fear of retaliation should they say

81 something about which MINSA did not approve. I also found that government interviewees constantly prefaced their statements with phrases like “this is just my opinion” or “this does not reflect my organization.” Figure 28, a cartoon from a local media site, further depicts the potential fear of speaking out or potentially uncovering political issues.

Figure 28. Government cartoon. This cartoon depicts soldiers, on behalf of the government, chasing journalists away. Source: Vamaganews Blog, 2013.

In addition to fear of speaking out for political retaliation, Panama is notorious for illicit drug-related activities, including money laundering and drug-related activities (Sigler 2014), contributing to a potential fear of speaking out at all. General (and President) Noriega was said to have been involved in money laundering and drug activities, allowing Colombian cartels to have free reign in both cities and Panama’s jungles (Youngers and Rosin 2005). Confidentiality in the context of illicit activities was of high importance as Panama served as an offshore banking center for illicit capital (Sigler 2014). Panama still serves as a regional ‘safe haven’ for capital, both licit and illicit, though quantifying these numbers is difficult (Sigler 2014). Indeed, when asked about illicit capital in Panama City, I was never able to obtain even an opinion, from government agencies to locals. A ‘drug-culture’ of sorts may have been adopted, such as

82 a “don’t-ask, don’t-tell” mentality that further suppresses political interest and activism. This has perhaps resulted in the externalization of certain sectors on the part of the Panamanian government materially, but perhaps in the minds of Panamanians discursively as well.

Chapter 5: Conclusion: Social Metabolism and Subjectivities for an

Urban Political Ecology in Context

5.1 Review of Main Arguments

Like many rapidly growing cities, Panama City is faced inequality, environmental degradation, and the inevitably uneven impacts of development. What is uncommon about Panama City, however, in addition to its physical geography, is its hyper- developing economy, produced by a particular history and at play with issues of governance and uneven development impacts: broadly, its social metabolism. A central argument to this research is that Panama City is a very unique place; a modern, (aspiring) Global City, with a unique geography and social metabolism that has defined its history since the earliest moments of human involvement. Understanding that history, including its turn to hyper-development and neoliberalism, is critical to understanding development and urbanization but also social justice and resistance. Panama City has prioritized particular forms of governance and combined with its social metabolism, has produced particular subjectivities. Ultimately, guided by important conceptual underpinnings through the UPE literature, I have argued that liminal spaces and people (and how/that they are seen as liminal) in Panama City have been rendered external through a socially pervasive discourse produced and defined by the city’s specific history and social metabolism, that disregards a structural analysis of the role of neoliberal development in determining planning priorities and governance strategies. But further, it is a form of injustice that seemingly goes unnoticed and unquestioned. I argued this as follows. In Chapter 2, using concepts in UPE such as social metabolism and socio-natures, I reviewed the history of Panama City and the ways in which the Cerro Patacón landfill – and the environmental and social problems associated with it – is an assemblage of geography, political economy, subjectivities, and other social metabolic processes

84 associated with the city historically, economically, politically, and socially. The fire was, as Prudham (2007) and Robbins (2012) called, a “normal accident” or geography of accidents produced by certain conditions but also producing poverty, environmental degradation, etc. Further, I argued that the Cerro Patacón landfill is deeply and foundationally connected to the development of the city. As the city grew in uneven and haphazard ways, so did the landfill, ultimately leading up to the culmination of uneven, neoliberal, hyper-growth: the fire. The fire, therefore, is an expression of the uneven distribution of development and the dangers of neoliberal, hyper-growth. I also reviewed the ways in which landfills have been taken up both by governments and by populations for means of extended governance and resistance, respectively. In Chapter 3 I reviewed the specific technologies that were used in the name of the socially pervasive logic of externalization. Cerro Patacón and its population are externalized and vilified, contributing to and promoting the naturalization of an unproblematic growth model that denies government accountability, wrongly blames certain populations, and justifies social exclusion. In the moment of burning – the ‘becoming visible’ of the landfill, a source of temporary anxiety – the landfill suddenly and temporarily becomes the object of fixing and environmental governance and regulation. It is suddenly forced into sight, rendered visible by smoke. In this moment, the fire was temporarily addressed but in neoliberal ways, further externalizing the landfill through a discourse of technocratic solutions (that fails to truly uncover the cause of the fire) yet a lack of published reports, encouraging the public to adapt yet failing to ensure that the message was received, and seeing the fire simply as a result of wrongdoing on the part of the Other. Discursively and materially, the landfill was seen as external to the city, in-between urban/social and rural/natural, in terms of governance as well as in imaginaries held by the public and officials. Officials charged with developing the city in a representative and even way, took the “social” out of social metabolism. However, as I discussed in Chapter 4, I found resistance – both coordinated and diffuse – to be either largely nonexistent or hidden. Instead of the landfill being taken up by society as a place of resistance, as it often is, even the minority voices of contestation called on neoliberal explanations and recommendations for the existence of and solutions

85 to environmental hazards. Even in quiet moments of contestation, the same technologies of externalization and neoliberal governance arose as means of adaptation To explain why, I provided various hypotheses as to how neoliberalism and the ways in which hyper-growth, modernization, and other metabolic characteristics have produced certain subjectivities. Hyper-growth and neoliberalism have permeated Panama City’s social metabolism and produced expressly neoliberal subjectivities, resulting in Panamanians internalizing and accepting what I would otherwise see as injustice, instead of contesting it as subaltern subjects might. Issues of development, governance, and environmental and social justice can be uniquely understood through the lens of the Cerro Patacón landfill and the 2013 fire. Uneven governance in Panama City has manifested itself in a logic of externalization and therefore a lack of governance. I have argued that this narrative renders the landfill and those working and living there external to the purview of urban governance and development through a socially pervasive discourse produced and defined by the city’s specific history and social metabolism, that disregards a structural analysis of the role of neoliberal development in determining planning priorities and governance strategies, contributing to and promoting the naturalization of an unproblematic growth model that denies government accountability, wrongly blames certain populations, and justifies social exclusion.

5.2 Outstanding Questions

This study relied on thorough yet limited fieldwork, both uncovering exciting and interesting findings but also presenting many questions. This research has left me with outstanding questions that might be relevant for future research. The first and perhaps biggest remaining question deals with resistance, but inversely why so many Panamanians, both official and nonofficial, seemed to fall in line with a neoliberal subjectivity. Though I have presented various hypotheses as to why there is not coordinated resistance or even more obvious examples of everyday resistance, additional research could focus on this question further. Something else is at work in Panama City rendering my hypotheses plausible yet incomplete. For example,

Colombia is also a country that has experienced significant U.S. involvement through the U.S.-led Drug War, yet vocal and internationally-recognized workers movements have originated there, such as Via Campesina. Therefore, the influence of the U.S. is relevant yet not the only factor to consider. What is it about Panama in particular that has produced the kind of externalization that I viewed there? Sigler (2014) provides an explanation, guided by globalization and the incorporation of other global, regional, and local forces; however he still sees neoliberalism as undermining its growth and he does not consider the implications of governance (and how its produced by Panama City). His narrative does not address how certain sectors are externalized, including how and why governance is what it is. He argues that Panama is “neither a Global City, nor a ‘Singapore for Central America’” (pg. 15), however conceptualizing Panama City seems to necessitate another explanation of its governance. While I have argued here that neoliberal governance is at the heart of the logic of externalization, perhaps it is not only externalization driven by a produced neoliberal subjectivity; perhaps a kind of outlaw capitalism – a complete lack governance – is actually driving externalization. It’s possible that it is not neoliberalism in Panama City at all, but nonneoliberalism that in fact does not externalize through a certain governance structure, but does not govern at all. If it were neoliberalism, the landfill and people living and working there would be enveloped into the realm of governance. However this question can be further investigated by looking at the formerly unquestioned flows that also constitute Panama City’s social metabolism: shady and even invisible flows of off-share banking, laundered money, and other illicit capital flows. Other cities around the world have previously served as off-shore banking havens, however recent crack-downs on their legality has left a void in the market. Panama has provided a new alternative for off-shore banking and other suspicious financial activities due to its lax regulations. Money laundering similarly brings unknown sums of money in the capital with no paper trail and little formality. How have these flows contributed to a different type of capitalism, as I have suggested: nonneoliberalism or outlaw capitalism? Perhaps it is not neoliberal subjectivities produced by Panama’s social metabolism, then, but a completely different type of subjectivity that naturalizes in government the mentality of looking away, turning one’s back, and otherwise ignoring

87 otherwise illegal or even external activity. In this way, it is no surprise that some sectors of society go ungoverned, not just externalized. Further research into the true governance of Panama City – neoliberal, nonneoliberal, or otherwise, would therefore shed light on not only governance, but on society and injustice through produced subjectivities. Resistance can also take shape through mobility, “constructing new alliances to gain leverage” (Crossa 2009; 55). The Guna activist coordinating between communities to meet with Urbalia, ANAM, and MINSA may achieve different results since multiple populations are now participating in the conversation. Indigenous populations in Panama are known to have autonomy in their own regions throughout the country, though no or few rights when they migrate elsewhere (McSweeney and Arps 2005; Velazquez Runk 2012). The Guna are no different, enjoying self-governance and full rights in Gunayala but not outside, including Guna Nega. If the surrounding communities, made up of other indigenous and non-indigenous populations, consider the Guna as a leader in the area, as a Guna interviewee suggested, perhaps mobilizing alliances will precipitate change or at least attention. However, changing demographics of indigenous populations throughout the region will continue to keep these questions in flux (McSweeney and Arps 2005). Further, perhaps it is more than just one means through which subjectivities can be produced or co-opted in the first place, but multiple. This question demands further intensive ethnographic, archival, and/or discourse analysis. Additionally, this issue is multi-scalar and concerns a number of different populations. Further research might focus on the perspectives and lived experiences of pepenadores, the Guna in more detail, mestizo or other indigenous populations, as well as non-indigenous Panamanians living in Panama City. Though collective resistance was not uncovered through my limited yet thorough fieldwork, the conditions seem ripe for political activity for multiple reasons. As Urbalia continues with programs to formalize employment, preventing access to some informal pickers, will Panama City be faced with similar activity as Managua, Nicaragua, where waste pickers organized in protest to the lack of access to resources that made up their livelihoods? As contamination worsens, will the Canal Authority, in an attempt to protect the watershed in the Canal Zone, get involved? What will happen to communities living in the area then? Further, will the Panamanian government take seriously the idea that

88 improper or poor waste management could threaten economic growth? If so, the landfill and surrounding communities may be incorporated into city governance with potentially violent implications. For example, would communities near the landfill be demolished? Would informal workers be further excluded from the landfill? Finally, various routes are threatening business through the Canal. In an era of climate change, the Canal might be threatened by new shipping lanes opening up in the North Pole. With Chinese support, a new Canal through Nicaragua might also attract business away from Panama. Changes to this critical pillar of the Panamanian economy will have important reverberating impacts on the Panamanian economy and society, including therefore questions of justice and resistance. These questions can direct further research in multiple ways. Foucault argued against the idea of a single site of resistance (Foucault 2005); perhaps resistance in Panama (and Guna Nega more specifically) is so diffuse that one month of field work would never uncover it. There may be any number of forms of everyday resistance that my fieldwork did not uncover. Hardt and Negri (2009) argue that “what needs to be addressed… is the production of locality, that is, the social machines that create and recreate the identities and differences that are understood as the local.” While social metabolism and UPE helps conceptualize a place for a more comprehensive understanding of the geography, development, and subsequent uneven power relations at play there, it reaches only a particular scale that may not fully inspect subjectivities or locality. Therefore further study on these questions, in this scale, may be warranted.

5.3 Theoretical Implications and Contributions of the Study

This project has highlighted the complicated ways in which urbanization; development, history, injustice, and resistance relate to and even constitute each other. Development history and trajectory (including and defined by social metabolism) produce uneven impacts, all the while working within specific governance mechanisms, all the while being contested or not (officially and/or publically) depending on the subjectivities produced by the particular social metabolism. In order to truly understand an urban landscape, each of these components requires a unique conceptualization. In

Panama City and even more broadly, this ‘system,’ while theorized by a number of Geographers referenced here, is so far still inadequately understood. My study, while still in need of further research, provides unique contributions especially to the study and understanding of Panama City as a unique place, but also for other urban landscapes. Using social metabolism as a framework and waste as a lens through which to understand Panama City and the fire that took place in 2013, I uncovered that the landfill is externalized through various technologies, seen at different scales and through various actors, despite Panama’s efforts to be seen as a global city and the ways in which other states have used landfills as spaces of extended governance and development. Theoretically, these findings have multiple implications for understanding urban landscapes as assemblages of socio-natural forces. Social metabolism, geographies of waste, environmental justice, and other UPE literatures are not new and have already been utilized in multiple ways. However, they still provide relevant and timely ways in which to understand governance and environmental hazards, especially as the world becomes more urban, as cities grow spatially and in population, and as globalization and neoliberalism takes further hold. In addition, using these literatures, my study unpacks the especially unusual urban politics in one of the fastest growing cities in the world, Panama City. Nonetheless, considering the questions already raised by this study, my research provides important theoretical implications for both urban governance more practically and both urban studies and UPE theoretically. First, at the urban scale, this study addresses the gap in research on hyper- development and inequality in cities and how they connect to larger geographic and socio-metabolic processes. Sigler (2013) notes that academics and international institutions alike challenge simplistic views of cities as unaffected by larger-scale processes or operating in a vacuum. Acknowledging this requires a more “nuanced treatment of how cities can be conceptualized within a global economy” (Sigler, 2013; 416), and how metabolized cities produce inequality. Even though Panama City is the fastest growing economy in the Western Hemisphere, there is little research on the nature of its development, and even less research connecting to environmental or social inequality. This work provides a much needed case study in support of using socio- metabolic transformations as an entry point to better understanding urban political

90 ecology and urban environmental justice, especially in the Global South and in a unique city geographically and metabolically (Zimmer 2010). Social metabolism can be utilized by urban planners (i.e. practitioners) and theorists alike, considering the ways in which it explores the inner workings of urban landscapes in light of power and the uneven impacts of development and urbanization. In fact, practitioners would do well to utilize social metabolism to better understand the impacts of policies and programs in urban spaces. Scientists and otherwise data-focused practitioners might also incorporate a socio- metabolic framework into their understanding of data in order to obtain a more complete picture of the landscape in which they are conducting their analyses. In addition, opening the possibilities for just development depends on a thorough understanding of the particular urban processes at work, as Hardt and Negri (2009) argued; therefore the research will provide a foundation for a more just urban development process based on the intricacies of local conditions. The crash of urbanization and environment is becoming more obvious and important as Panama is further thrust into the Global market. As globalization and other issues hasten urbanization throughout the region, waste and landfills in particular will also continue to provide an interesting lens through which to understand these issues, considering the role of waste in an urban ecology or social metabolism. This study also provides an important bridge between economic geography and political ecology, showing that both are critical ways in which to understand cities. Many city planners and Economic Geographers attend to the spatial changes occurring in cities, with particular socio-economic and political implications such as inequality, representation, and environmental contamination (Taylor and Lang 2004; Shatkin 2007). They argue for a particular form of understanding and analyzing global and world cities, such as through actors, institutions, partnerships, economic function, etc., and categorizing them accordingly. However, these kinds of quantitative data points and rankings may not truly reflect the politics and metabolism at play in any given urban landscape. Therefore, those scholars and practitioners who may not be fully engaged with UPE and related literatures can learn that while their analysis inputs are important, they make up only parts of a social metabolism which provides important contextual links to human and nonhuman flows, with an eye toward power relations. Since metabolic

91 processes link directly to inequality and uneven impact, planners and geographers should be concerned with these processes; social metabolism can provide a more comprehensive and holistic way of understanding cities and the ways in which social inequality and uneven development take place. Understanding cities requires a very broad research framework that includes the types of questions uncovered through a social metabolism framework; anything less would leave important processes unquestioned. Likewise, Panama City shows that political ecology and social metabolism can also be insufficient for understand urban landscapes. Social metabolism must be underwritten by the important characteristics that economic geography and World Cities literature contributes. While social metabolism provides critical perspectives on the necessarily uneven impacts that development (i.e. flows and processes) has on populations and spaces, economic geography and urban studies provide a foundation of markets, flows, processes, etc., upon and with which power and capital act. Therefore in this way, this study shows that each framework is alone insufficient, but together, provide a comprehensive understanding of both Global cities and the environmental and social implications of the uneven development that comes with hyper-growth. Lastly, this study also shows that micro-scale context matters. Conceptually, my findings suggest that Panama City troubles a number of implicit assertions within political ecology. First, this study troubles the assumption of subaltern subjects in political ecological studies, especially as political ecology ventures into urban landscapes and in particular hyper-developing ones through UPE. But second, it troubles political ecology’s implicit discursive production of an environmental or social ‘problem’ (and hence the subaltern subject) and the assertions of the inevitability of resistance and contestation of what it perceives as injustice. It questions injustice but also opens the possibility that neoliberal governance has extended so deeply that it has rendered so- called subaltern subjects unable to see the conditions of their supposed subjugation. Spivak (1988) famously challenged post-structural thinkers such as Foucault and other political activists and academics who not only homogenized subaltern populations but sought to speak for them. She saw this as an imperial effort that defines subaltern subjects through the “orchestrated, far-flung, and heterogeneous project to constitute the colonial subject as Other” and speak for them (Spivak 1988; 24-25). Political ecology

92 necessarily imposes subaltern subjectivities on assumed (and likely) subaltern populations. In this case, I extend this to political ecology in its assumption an “Other” and further, that that Other is a subaltern subject. Political ecology seems to also speak for subaltern populations in their supposed quest for justice. In addition, political ecologists base their work on the assumption that their analyses will “enhance the democratic content of socioenvironmental construction by identifying the strategies through which a more equitable distribution of social power and a more inclusive mode of environmental production can be achieved.” (Swyngedouw and Heynen 2003; 898). While noble and often entirely politically appropriate, these notions of equity and justice seem to fall flat in Panama City. Therefore, in light of Spivak’s critique, this study also challenges the broad ways in which political ecology not only assumes a homogenized population of subaltern Others but also assumes their subaltern subjectivities and desire for social change through resistance. A political ecology more in tune with subjectivities and the individual ways in which people grapple with their urban landscape seems necessary. The lack of coordinated resistance begs the question: is this environmental injustice? Do residents of Guna Nega believe they are the “subaltern” populations on which UPE and political ecology more broadly focuses? How can political ecologists, academics, researchers, or practitioners seek to understand and enact just development (if such a thing exists) if perceived injustice goes uncontested? In this way, the findings suggest that UPE, specifically social metabolism, is an important framework with which to understand the power relations and economic and social flows that constitute urban landscapes: a worthwhile way to study and understand cities. However, a look at the subjectivities actually taken up by populations, as produced by a city’s social metabolism (versus the supposed (or imposed) ‘subaltern subject’), may reveal that these frameworks are incomplete for understanding injustice and therefore resistance in particular places.

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Appendix A: Semi-Structured Interview Questions, in English and Spanish

Questions for Residents about Panama City’s development - to learn about the ways in which Panama City’s aggressive neoliberal growth discourse has been taken up, contested, or not contested at all. How do official discourse and street discourse differ? Is there resistance? What form does it take?

PREGUNTAS PARA LOS RESIDENTES ACERCA DEL DESARROLLO DE LA CIUDAD DE PANAMA-PARA APRENDER ACERCA LAS DISTINTAS FORMAS EN QUE EL AGRESIVO CRECIMIENTO DEL CAPITALISMO EN LA CIUDAD DE PANAMA SE HA TOMADO LA GENTE,LA GENTE ESTA A FAVOR O EN CONTRA DEL ARGUMENTO?O SE IGNORA.COMO SE DIFERENCIAN EL ARGUMENTO POLITICO DE LA OPINION PUBLICA? HAY RESISTENCIA? QUE TIPO DE RESISTENCIA ES? Y COMO SE PERCIBE?

 What do you think about Panama City’s modernization and development during the past 5 years? QUE OPINAS ACERCA DE LA MODERNIZACION Y DESARROLLO DE LA CIUDAD DE PANAMA DURANTE LOS ULTIMOS 5 ANOS?  What does the government seem to prioritize? A QUE LE DA PRIORIDAD EL GOBIERNO DE PANAMA EN SU PERSPECTIVA? EN QUE CAMPOS SE PUEDE NOTAR UNA MAYOR AYUDA DEL GOBIERNO.  Are you proud of the city’s rapid-pace development? SE SIENTE ORGULLOSO DE EL RAPIDO DESARROLLO DE LA CIUDAD DE PANAMA? PORQUE? EN QUE ASPECTOS?  Do you have issue with the city’s rapid-pace development? TIENE UD ALGUN PROBLEMA CON EL RAPIDO DESARROLLO DE LA CIUDAD? EN QUE LO AFECTA? O EN QUE O BENEFICIA?  Do you feel that you benefit from the development, or more specifically the profits made in various industries (e.g. Canal, banking, finance)? SIENTE UD ALGUN TIPO DE BENEFICIO DEL DESARROLLO DE LA CIUDAD O MAS ESPECIFICAMENTE DE LAS GANANCIAS CAPTADAS POR LAS INDUSTRIAS LOCALES ( EJEMPLO CANAL DE PANAMA, BANCOS,GRUPOS FINANCIEROS,SECTOR DE LA CONSTRUCTION)  Do you perceive any kind of public health, social, economic, or environmental problems in Panama City? VE UD ALGUN PROBLEMA SOCIAL CON LA SALUD, LA ECONOMIA O ALGUN PROBLEMA AMBIENTAL EN LA CIUDAD DE PANAMA?

Questions for City Officials – to learn about the priorities in both the discourse and in practice related to Panama City’s development. Do these interviews reflect a developmentalist, neoliberal ideology? Are the responses out of touch with street voices?

PREGUNTAS PARA LOS OFICIALES DE LA CIUDAD: PARA APRENDER ACERCA DE LAS PRIORIDADES EN AMBOS CAMPOS, EL DISCURSO (TEORIA) Y LA PRACTICA EN LA CIUDAD DE PANAMA.SON ESTAS ENTREVISTAS UN REFLEJO DE LA IDEOLOGIA CAPITALISTA? SON LAS RESPUESTAS DIFERENTES A LO QUE LA GENTE PIENSA EN LAS CALLES?

 What are some of the goals of the agency for which you work? CUALES SON LOS OBJETIVOS DE LA AGENCIA PARA LA QUE UD TRABAJA?  What do you do in your job? QUE HACE UD EN UN DIA NORMAL DE TRABAJO O QUE ROLE DESEMPENA UD EN SU TRABAJO PARA LA CIUDAD DE PANAMA?  What kinds of activities are associated with your job day to day? QUE CLASE DE ACTIVIDADES ESTAN ASOCIADAS CON SU TRABAJO DIARIO?  What are the biggest challenges facing Panama today? CUALES SON LOS RETOS MAS GRANDES QUE TIENE LA CIUDAD DE PANAMA AL DIA DE HOY?  What is the role in your organization in the modernization of Panama City? CUAL ES EL ROL EN SU ORGANIZACION Y QUE CONTRIBUCCIONES SON HECHAS AL DESARROLLO DE LA CIUDAD DE PANAMA?  What challenges does the city face? How do you personally feel about these issues? QUE PROBLEMAS PRESENTA LA CIUDAD? Y COMO SE SIENTE UD EN LO PERSONAL ACERCA DE ESTOS PROBLEMAS?

Questions about the Cerro Patacón Landfill – to connect the discourse to practice and understand why resistance is not obvious in Panama City.

PREGUNTAS ACERCA DEL EL RELLENO SANITARIO DE EL CERRO PATACON.PARA CONECTAR EL DISCURSO A LA PRACTICA Y ENTENDER PORQUE LA RESISTENCIA NO ES MAS AGRESIVA EN PANAMA.

 How has this landfill come to be? COMO HA SIDO EL DESARROLLO DE ESTE RELLENO SANITARIO DESDE SUS ORIGENES? COMO FUE CREADO Y PORQUE LO CREARON? PORQUE EN ESTE LUGAR?  Why do you think the landfill is so big? What have you heard about it? PORQUE PIENSA QUE EL RELLENO SANITARIO ES ASI DE GRANDE? QUE SABE UD ACERCA DEL RELLENO SANITARIO? QUE HA ESCUCHADO UD AL RESPECTO?  How is the landfill managed? COMO ES EL RELLENO SANITARAIO DIRIGIDO ? QUIENES LO DIRIGEN? QUE GESTION HACEN? BUENA O MALA?

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 How is the landfill spoken about? QUE PIENSAN LA GENTE DE ESTE RELLENO SANITARIO?  How has the area nearby changed? COMO CREE UD QUE HAN CAMBIADO LOS ALREDEDORES DEL RELLENO SANITARIO?  Is anyone making money from the landfill? Are there subsidies or payments to those living nearby? ES ALGUIEN HACIENDO DINERO CON ESTE RELLENO SANITARIO? SABE UD SI EL RELLENO SANITARIO PAGA ALGUN TIPO DE SUBSIDIO O RENTA A AQUELLAS PERSONAS QUE VIVEN CERCA?  Do people work and live illegally in the landfill? What do you think of them? SABE UD SI LA GENTE TRABAJA Y VIVE ILEGALMENTE AQUI EN EL RELENO SANITARIO? QUE CLASE DE GENTE VIVEN EN LOS ALREDEDORES? QUE PIENSA LA GENTE DE LAS CONDICIONES DE VIDA DE LOS ALREDEDORES DEL RELLENO SANITARIO?  What health risks exist due to the landfill, if any? Are there any resources to help with these risks? QUE RIESGOS Y ENFERMEDADES EXISTE DEBIDO AL RELLENO SANITARIO? MENCIONE ALGUNAS ENFERMEDADES O QUE RIESGOS HAY? EXISTE ALGUNA ENTIDAD QUE AYUDE O PROPORCIONE RECURSOS PARA DISMINUIR RIESGOS Y ENFERMEDADES?  What were the circumstances around the March 2013 fire? EN QUE CIRCUNSTANCIAS SE PRESENTO EL INCENDIO EN MARZO DEL 2013? o How did you respond after the landfill fire? QUE HIZO UD DURANTE Y DESPUES DEL INCENDIO DEL RELLENO SANITARIO? o Was it a big problem for you? Did it have an impact on your life? FUE ESTE INCENDIO UN GRAN PROBLEMA PARA UD? TUVO ALGUN IMPACTO EN SU VIDA? o Did you feel the city’s response was adequate? CREE UD QUE LA RESPUESTA INMEDIATE DE LA CIUDAD FUE OPORTUNA Y ADECUADA. o Who’s fault was the fire? POR CULPA DE QUIEN O QUE SE OCASIONO EL INCENDIO? o How was the fire put out? Who put it out? QUIEN COLABORO PARA EXTINGUIR EL INCENDIO ? COMO LO HICIERON?

Questions for other voices: the media, unions, churches, activists – to understand Panama City and social issues from a different perspective: how space is governed, policed, etc. around Cerro Patacón

PREGUTNAS PARA OTROS MEDIOS: LAS NOTICIAS,ASOCIACIONES , IGLESIAS ,ACTIVISTAS-PARA ENTENDER LA CIUDAD DE PANAMA Y LOS PROBLEMAS SOCIALES DESDE DIFERENTES PERSPECTIVAS: POR EJEMPLO COMO EL TERRITORIO ES GOBERNADO Y CONTROLADO POR LA POLICIA..ETC ESPECIALMENTE EN EL RELLENO SANITARIO DEL CERRO PATACON.

 Zoning - LEYES ACERCA DE LA GEOGRAFICA DE LAS AREAS.

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 Taxes - IMPUESTOS  Conflicts and scandals - CONFLICTOS  Policing - POLICIA  Resistance-RESISTENCIA  Spatialization of the police, the wealthy, the poor - DISTRIBUCION DE LA POLICIA,LOS RICOS, LOS POBRES,INDIGENEAS EN EL TERRITORIO PANAMENO  How is the city run? QUIEN GOBIERNA LA CIUDAD Y COMO?  Who has healthcare? A QUIENES SE LES BRINDA BENEFICIOS DE SALUD  Security and crime SEGURIDAD Y CRIMEN  Health – e.g. asthma records near the landfill? SALUD..ENFERMEDADES DE LOS ALREDEDORES DEL RELLENO SANITARIO.

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