The Panama Canal Expansion Project: Transit maritime mega project development, reactions, and alternatives from affected people

The direct confrontation between residents of Panamanian rural communities with the Panama Canal Authority and, indirectly, with the International Maritime Trade is the reason de entree for this study on the impact of global maritime trade on rural communities, and the dynamics of local resistance to development projects. Such aspects are the result of the Panama Canal Expansion Project. Currently, the Panama Canal Authority, the government agency responsible for the management of the waterway, is taking steps toward the physical expansion of the Panama Canal. The collateral impacts of this project would include the forced migration of whole communities, the reconfiguration of the ecological landscape of an important area of the provinces of Colon, Panama, and Cocle, and the replacement of traditional activities of rural people by other activities related to the expansion of the waterway.; The Panama Canal is an important and conflictive early chapter in the geography of globalization, especially the space-time compression considered to be fundamental to it. At the beginning of the 20th century, the construction of the Panama Canal served to the economic and military consolidation of the USA reducing the time of connection between its East and West coasts.; At the beginning of the 21st century, the increasing dimensions of the vessels that navigate some routes connected by the Panama Canal demands its widening. The magnitude of the works could be as transcendental to Panama as the construction of the waterway one hundred years ago with possible huge impacts on the human, ecological, and economic landscapes of the isthmus. This project will require the construction of a new set of locks that would require the use of colossal amounts of water, much more than the 52 million gallons used presently to move each passing ship through the waterway. As new sources of water not related to the present canal are considered as possible source of water for the new project, this alternative is creating a conflict with rural communities that claim that their water resources are going to be alienated by the Panama Canal Authority for the benefits of international maritime trade. What are the forces that drive these contradictory perspectives? How extremely opposed are they? How are these forces articulated in the national and international sphere? What are the implied criteria of development that are present in the Panama Canal expansion project? Which elements are shaping or reinforcing the agency of the resisting communities? What are the particularities and links of this resistance in the context of global resistance movements?...