The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2020

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2020 43 been indicted and gone to trial, where they benefit from acquittals given by corrupt judges. This is a continued source of frustration both for U.S. and Panamanian prosecutors. The Chinese Presence in Panama The government of Juan Carlos Varela (2014-2019) established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China on June 12, 2017. It was a surprising but not shocking development, given the fact that many other countries have done so recently. What was shocking and of great distress to the U.S. govern- ment, however, was the way that the Varela government turned its attention to China. President Varela visited the country twice, with much fanfare and high-level delegations, and openly supported an ill-advised project to build a $5 billion railroad from Panama City to the border with Costa Rica as part of the so-called Belt and Road Initiative. Fortunately, the project never came to fruition. Varela also awarded important government contracts to Chinese companies under questionable circumstances and tried to give a choice piece of land to the Chinese government at the entrance to the Panama Canal, but he had to backtrack in the face of U.S. pressure and rejection from many Panamanians. The award of a concession to the Hong Kong–based Panama Ports Company under very dubious circumstances 22 years ago to manage the Balboa port at the Pacific entrance to the canal has also been a source of friction with Washington. The company has used dubious tactics to prevent the opening up of Panama’s port sector, causing considerable damage to the country’s logistics plans. The United States strongly believes that the port, telecom- munications and energy sectors should be in the hands of Western countries for security reasons, which has added to the tensions resulting from the Chinese presence in the country. Recently, President Laurentino Cortizo and Foreign Minister Alejandro Ferrer have distanced themselves from the Chinese, to the great pleasure of the U.S. embassy in Panama City, which has been ably led by Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d’Affaires Roxanne Cabral since the resignation of former Ambassador John Feeley in January 2018. Illegal Immigration But perhaps the biggest current disagreement between the two countries lies in the refusal of the Cortizo government to build internment camps in the Darien region of Panama to detain and hold illegal African and Cuban immigrants who enter South America via Ecuador and Brazil and then make