During the last month, Panama has experienced a wave of unprecedented protests due to its form, the actors it involves, its duration and its results. Unlike its neighbors, the country had been spared from social instability in recent years. The current protests can be understood as the product of a series of accumulated institutional, social and economic factors that were aggravated by covid-19 and that were not addressed in a timely manner by the State, despite the recurring alerts that were reflected in reports, surveys, academic articles and sectoral mobilizations before and during the pandemic.
Although smaller in magnitude, these protests harbored south africa phone number list claims of unsatisfied basic needs related to water , food , health ( lack of basic supplies for care , availability of medicines in public institutions ), work , education, social inequality and corruption. But the mobilizations were also activated by the rejection of the reform of the Constitution presented by the government of President Laurentino Cortizo before the National Assembly, with an official majority. The social actors mobilized are heterogeneous. Although the protests began with a call from the public school teachers' unions for a national strike that began on July 1, 2022, they were later accompanied and agreed by various groups that joined both spontaneously and organized throughout the territory. from the country.
In the 32 years that followed the end of the authoritarian regime of Manuel Noriega in 1989, there had been no protests of this magnitude and duration. The protests have been carried out by various unions, some of which are grouped into two large alliances. One of them, located in the province of Veraguas, is the National Alliance for the Rights of the Organized People (ANADEPO), which represents 22 educational, livestock, fishing, agricultural, transportation, and student organizations. The other, located in the province of Panama, is the Alianza Pueblo Unido por la Vida, made up of the Single National Union of Workers in the Construction and Similar Industry (SUNTRACS), teachers' associations and various unions and popular organizations. In addition, health unions participated –both from the medical sector and from the National Association of Nurses of Panama–, workers' unions, and citizens in general.