Petaquilla Gold turns Coclesito Into a great mining town

April 2011

That dream which General Omar Efrain Torrijos Herrera, Joaquina’s son, had of achieving the incorporation of the Panamanian Atlantic (really the Caribbean geographically speaking), into life and national economy; and dream that would make him say to himself, ”put your feet on the ground”, begins to take shape, when nowadays, there are only 20 kilometers missing to join the community of Miguel de La Borda in the district of Donoso, province of Colon, with the rest of the country. This is so, when traveling on the road that takes you from Penonome-La Pintada to Llano Grande and from there to Coclesito, residence and small town of the General, to cross the mining projects with their new bridges over the Coclesito and San Juan de Turbe rivers, which come to conclude part of the five-centuries dream, because these communities on the Panamanian Atlantic were never integrated to the rest of the country.

However, it is not only the road and bridges, it is the generation of jobs and riches, it is the construction of more, bigger and better housing for the countrymen, it is the opportunity of receiving a better education and everything that it includes, it is the access to medical centers and the most important, access to a better quality of life.

The huge tragedy of remote communities of any country and Panama does not escape this phenomenon, is this same isolation, which prevents the programs and projects of the States to reach all citizens, that infrastructure and resources absence needed to face the growing needs that the modest families of those regions face daily. Today, on the contrary, this dream of General Torrijos of “the conquest of the Atlantic”, is closer every time, more real, more tangible, for which it is very interesting to analyze how the known generational change-over has started to operate among the Panamanians again.

The struggle for the canal and the nearby zone, which took the lives of many patriots, the incorporation of the most important asset of the national economy and the sense of belonging to a free and sovereign nation, was the first big proof, but this nation is big, its geographic dimensions do not matter, it is big because of its men and women, it is big because its capacity to work and its commitment to the dreams and conquers, it is big because contrary to the constant calling of the “disaster prophets”, as a prestigious banker from Cocle nicknamed him, this country has learned to get up and get into the concert of free nations and has shown its capacity and responsibility, now there is Petaquilla Gold, turning Coclesito into a great mining town in Panama and tomorrow there will be Minera Panama, with its copper project, turning the country into a new production actor in international mining.

All of this wouldn’t be possible without the competition of those men and women of the nearby communities to the projects, of those young people that afterwards departed on the other side of the seas, responding to General Torrijos’ call to be formed as geology and mining specialist (a couple of days ago the president of the Republic, visited the projects and the creation of a new scholarship plan for the young people of Cocle and Colon was announced there, so that they can study these careers and be part of the generational change-over), all of this wouldn’t have been possible without that great vision of the statistician that immortalized Joaquina’s son, whose feet was always on the ground.

Omar, the generational change-over worked again and the Atlantic is ours, it belongs to all Panamanians.