The last few months have not been easy for Panama’s government and its efforts to build a hydroelectric station on the edge of the 988,000-acre (400,000-ha) La Amistad International Park near the country’s border with Costa Rica. If opposition by human rights and environmental organizations to the US$560-million, 223-megawatt power station on the Changuinola River was heated before construction began in Sept. 2007, it has become more intense now that nearly half of the work is completed. In May, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on indigenous people issued a report that concludes Ngobe Indian villages—totaling nearly 4,000 inhabitants in Bocas del Toro province—had not been “previously and adequately consulted” about the dam’s construction. Nor, it says, had they... [Log in to read more]