Kenneth Darlington Did Not Kill Climate Protesters

Last month, massive protests rose up across Panama in defiance of a contract made with Minera Panama, a subsidiary of the Canadian owned mining company First Quantum Minerals, granting them generous rights to Cobre Panamá, a large, open-pit copper mine. According to APNews, the mine is the largest private investment in the history of Panama, employing thousands. The protests were a coalition between the Single National Union of Construction and Similar Industry Workers (SUNTRACS), a teachers union, students, environmentalists, transport workers, and thousands of unaffiliated citizens. Their demand is simple: institute a moratorium on mining by law.

The motivations for the protests and their demands, however, have been highly distorted in the Western press since Kenneth Darlington, 77 year-old American lawyer, shot and killed two of the protestors for participating in a roadblock. Evidently he felt entitled to take their lives for the crime of inconveniencing him. The martyrs of this American terrorist are one Abdiel Diaz, a teacher, and one Iván Mendoza, husband of a teacher from the San Carlos district. Curiously, by some sort of alchemical transmogrification, these protestors have been transformed from teachers and striking laborers into “climate protestors.” See the following headlines:

• American lawyer arrested for fatally shooting two environmental protesters at Panama road blockade, Fox, November 9 2023.
• Elderly lawyer shoots dead two climate protesters blocking highway, The Independent, November 11 2023.
• U.S. Lawyer Accused Of Shooting 2 Environmental Protesters Dead In Panama, Huffington Post, November 10 2023.
• American lawyer, 77, busted in Panama after gunning down two eco-protesters blocking highway in shocking video, New York Post, November 8 2023.

And many more. 

Curiously, environmental protections are only one of many concerns shared by the anti-mining protestors. According to SUNTRACS:

It is necessary to highlight that the issue of sovereignty is not reduced to the issue of airspace. With the new contract, a [special economic zone] is [established] where the Constitution and laws of the Republic are ignored…

Likewise, observations from social sectors are ignored. For example, the impact that the mine has on climate change and irreversible damage to the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, as well as the contamination of river water and underground sources, is overlooked; The negative effects on life, health, customs, traditions and the free movement of the surrounding communities are not addressed.

On an economic level, the supposed royalties that Panama receives from the exploitation of its natural resources continue to be ridiculous compared to other latitudes; The company continues to be exempt from taxes and continues to operate and export without a contract and without any control; As if that were not enough, it seeks to legalize the theft of more than 4 thousand hectares used by the mine for the tailings vat and the tunnels secretly built to divert and use water from the rivers, as well as the loss of historical heritage and ancestral treasures.

In labor matters, fundamental rights of workers are ignored and the word of the mining company becomes law.

Assembly ignores the true feelings of the Panamanian people, October 6 2023.

It’s certainly no accident that the class struggle here has been pushed under the rug by the corporate press; it’s no accident that this movement has been reduced from a labor struggle fighting against imperialist extraction and corporate exploitation into bourgeois environmentalism, which sees a conflict between man and nature, and not between classes. On the one hand, the radical anti-capitalist messaging of the protesters isn’t being reported. The twitter (“X”) bio of the SUNTRACs union reads: “Classist [sic?] and Revolutionary,” “Unity, firmness, and discipline in our struggles always,” and includes a hammer and sickle and raised fist emojis with the message. Saul Mendez, the Union’s director, refers to himself as a “Social, Political and Revolutionary Fighter.” Clearly the corporate press could not allow us to sympathize with these messages. At the same time, it’s an underhanded way of drumming up sympathy for the police who are repressing the protestors and the gunman who murdered them. Already not-so-darling Darlington has been canonized into a Rittenhouse-like right-wing icon. Those who, like Darlington, feel entitled to commit violence for the crime of being inconvenienced, and who are unconcerned with environmentalism, are now sympathizing with the suppression of a labor movement in the name of “common people.”

When the protests first broke out, police and rogue Americans were not the only threats to the striking workers. Tico Times, Costa Rica’s leading English language newspaper, reported that Minera Panama made the following ominous statement earlier in October: “the company said the protest represented a ‘threat’ to its operations and personnel but did not comment on the country’s turmoil.” The statement foreshadows accusations by SUNTRACS that First Quantum Minerals and its subsidiaries hired hitmen to attack Saul Mendez and his colleague, Jaime Caballero:

The true story of this conflict underscores not only the distortions of the corporate press, but the ease with which misinformation spreads on the internet. All of us in the imperial core who fight for the liberation of the working class have a responsibility to hold solidarity with the worker’s of Panama and to shine on a light on the disinformation undermining their cause.