This is a very scary but true story of a land grabber here in Panama and the threats to the region caused by exploitation of our natural resources.
The road being opened through the mountains of Veraguas was planned in the mid 1970s, during the regime of General Omar Torrijos.
The commander of a country occupied by United States military bases and cut in two by a canal that was not theirs, Torrijos thought these mountains would feed the national riches. These were not the times of climate change or environmental apocalypse. Deforestation was not a suicidal decision, but one of hope: the expansion of the agricultural frontier could be the engine of development.