Crisis? Under Whose Authority?! 045

Are we stuck in a parallel reality running on a crappy 1960s script?

This week I woke up to a thought.

I was brewing my coffee one morning, just scrolling the news like any other Tuesday. And when the smell hit me, for some reason it reminded me of Cien Años de Soledad. But this wasn’t the poetic, enchanted Macondo.

This felt like a poorly written parallel universe where Gabo never learned to write…

And then a train of thought, unconscious, uninvited…popped into my head:

Is Changuinola becoming our modern-day Macondo?

What would Gabo think of all this?

Is it just me… or are La Prensa’s writers not even trying anymore?

Anyway, this is where the story begins.

Honoring one’s Commitments

“Uncle… is that mate? The same thing Messi drinks? Can I try?”

When you’re trying to teach a 10-year-old how to play guitar, especially a kid whose playlists are built by TikTok and reggaeton, you learn to be flexible.

“Yeah, let’s finish our lesson first, OK? Then I’ll warm up some water so you can try it…”

“So what are we playing today? Same as before?”

Axel asked, already picking out the guitar pick he liked best.

To be honest, I’ve never given him proper lessons. We’ve just jammed. A few riffs here and there, nothing serious. The classics, of course: Smoke on the Water, Back in Black… the kind of songs you can simplify, learn quickly, and just have fun with.

But that day, I had something else in mind.

A video had popped up on YouTube earlier that morning. Ozzy Osbourne at The End, his final tour. Great sound, big crowd, and yeah, it looked epic.

The music starts. That flat A at the beginning… (yeah, Tony was using a half-step down tuning).

“Uncle… that sounds like a horror movie.”

I thought I lost him.

“Cooool!!”

Excellent. He was hooked.

We started with some warmups.

“Yep, that’s what my teacher does,” I said, so he followed my lead. Some simple finger warmups with a drumbeat at 60 bpm.

And for the first time, I saw real interest in his eyes.

Time to try the song.

We listened to it again. Then I said, “Now let’s just sing it…”

Taaa…raaaa… ra ta ta… duruduruhduruh … duh tat tat…

Ok, now let’s play the notes. Just one finger. Check it out.

A couple of tries later… I lost him.

He started to get bored. He wasn’t feeling like he was achieving anything. And then he saw my mate. I’d been sipping it all day, so it was already mild.

He remembered our deal. After the lesson, he would try mate for the first time.

“Alright, back to it,” I said. “Now that you know where the notes are, let’s number them. Positions 1, 2, 3, and 4. We’ll sing it with the numbers.”

1… 2… 2… 3… 3… 4… 4… 4… 2… 2… 3… 3…

After more than 20 tries, it started to sound like something.

He was starting to lose faith.

“You got it!” I told him. “Want to film it?”

He got energized by the idea.

I pulled out my phone and started recording. On the 10th try, he nailed it. Not perfect, far from the real thing, but for him? He was rocking.

Now… Time for Mate

I had to fulfill my promise. He deserved it.

I started heating up some water and began telling him how I’ve been drinking mate for ages. But honestly, it wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago that I finally learned how to do it right.

We were hanging out with one of Mafer’s friends and her husband, he’s Argentinian, and very particular about the mate tradition. He walked me through it step by step, schooling me gently on how I’d basically been doing it wrong this whole time.

That day, I learned how to brew a proper mate…how to serve the leaves, shake them, press them… Now I’m learning to “cebar el mate” the right way. Thanks, Nico!

So now, I was passing it on. Or at least whatever portion of the process he keeps.

His eyes lit up. He was about to try the same thing his hero, Messi, drinks. For him, this was a big moment. One step closer to being like Messi.

I served the warm water, tasted it to check the temperature, then handed it to him.

“OK, now you try.”

His face frowned immediately.

“How was it?” I asked.

“Amazing, Uncle…” he said, but his face said otherwise.

I laughed. He laughed too. Then we carried on with our day.

It Started as a Lazy Weekend

I didn’t touch my laptop much. SiMPL was finished and ready to go. I had errands to run, but the rain gave me the perfect excuse to be lazy.

We stayed in. Watched movies. Took it slow.

Around 7 p.m., our peace was broken. A post from Donald Trump on Truth Social was spreading fast. The U.S. had launched a bombing strike on Iran.

“Shit. I need to see this…”

Mafer and I had been watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall, just something dumb to fill a rainy evening. But now the alerts were coming in fast, and Trump had just announced a press conference.

My attention went there.

The Calm After the Scroll

The next morning, the news kept coming.

I still didn’t open the laptop. The iPad was enough.

We went out for a hike. I needed air. Headspace. Something to clear out the noise from the night before.

After that, dim sum at Lung Fung. A little routine to bring things back to normal.

Then back home. I picked up the guitar.

While tuning, I noticed the YouTube tab still open from the day before, the one I used to show my nephew Black Sabbath.

I hit play again.

Is he alive or dead…

I started jamming over it. Just warming up. I let it keep rolling in the background while I practiced.

At some point, I stopped paying attention.

And then the next song started.

I kept warming up, letting the riffs guide me. I wasn’t really paying attention to what came next.

Then the next song started.

And it felt like it was written for that exact moment.

Generals gathered in their masses

Just like witches at black masses

Evil minds that plot destruction

Sorcerer of death’s construction

I stopped playing and just listened.

In the fields, the bodies burning

As the war machine keeps turning

Death and hatred to mankind

Poisoning their brainwashed minds…

Shit. That was written in the 60s, during the height of the Vietnam War. And it still lands like a warning flare.

And the song just keeps going:

Politicians hide themselves away

They only started the war

Why should they go out to fight?

They leave that all to the poor, yeah

Time will tell on their power minds

Making war just for fun

Treating people just like pawns in chess

Wait till their judgment day comes, yeah

I’ve listened to it so many times. Sung along to it. Even screamed it in karaoke more than once.

(Those of you who know me…I’m not a karaoke person… but on one of those rare karaoke nights, you know this is one of my go-tos.)

And still, right there, it clicked differently.

It clicked with something else too. Something I’d read just a few days before.

A book called Abundance, written by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler.

I won’t get too deep into it here…I’m working on a couple of newsletters just about that, but one of the key ideas in it stuck with me…crises don’t really exist until we name them.

The authors explain how most crises are created not just by the event itself, but by the moment we decide to call it a crisis. That act of naming changes everything. It shapes how institutions respond, how fast we move, and how willing we are to break the rules to fix things.

COVID is the example they use. The virus was real, yes, but it only became a global crisis the moment governments and health institutions called it that. Naming it triggered something…urgency, funding, fast decisions.

And out of that urgency came something extraordinary.

In the U.S., they launched Operation Warp Speed. A massive public-private push that delivered a vaccine faster than anyone thought possible. What normally takes a decade was done in under a year.

It started under President Trump in mid‑2020, right in the middle of the chaos. And the idea behind it was simple: speed up everything. Science, manufacturing, approvals, distribution, in parallel, not one after the other. The government took on the financial risk so vaccine makers could build production capacity before even knowing if their product would work.

Everyone involved knew the goal by heart: 300 million doses by January 2021. It wasn’t vague. It was a target. A mission.

And it worked.

Not because the science was brand new…mRNA research had been brewing for years…but because crisis made people move. Made systems cooperate. Made silos collapse.

(I’ll talk more about the science part in a future post, I promise.)

So yeah, sometimes crisis speeds things up. Forces collaboration. Pushes the boundaries of what we thought was possible.

But sometimes, it breaks everything.

But not every crisis comes from a virus. Or from B‑2 bombers dropping MOPs.

Sometimes, crisis comes from something quieter.

A law.

A policy.

A decision buried in paperwork that, on the surface, doesn’t even affect you… until it does.

Back to the story.

That morning, after reflecting on Bocas del Toro, with my coffee in hand, I kept scrolling.

Then the headline hit me:

Protesters stripped, arrested, and flown out of the province.

It felt… otherworldly.

Like something out of a dystopian script where due process is just a memory.

For context, a group of banana workers in Bocas del Toro had joined the protests against the government’s pension reform. They walked off their jobs… and basically lost everything.

What should have been a discussion…a dialogue, maybe even a negotiation…turned into one of the most intense labor conflicts we’ve seen in decades: thousands laid off, over $75 million in losses, an airport shut down, entire communities frozen in uncertainty.

And it all started with the Law 462.

Passed in March 2025, it was supposed to fix Panama’s broken Social Security system. Politicians called it urgent. The pension fund was empty. The math didn’t work.

They blamed the 2005 law—Law 51. But the truth is, it wasn’t just the law that failed. The institution itself had been ignored for years.

Experts raised their hands, submitted recommendations, rang the alarm bells. But no one in power listened; not the General Director, not the Board, not the National Assembly, not even the President. 15 years of neglect.

And of course, no accountability.

So when the numbers finally came out, the hole wasn’t just deep, it was swallowing everything.

So the government moved fast. Law 462 raised payroll contributions and introduced a new system. But in places like Bocas del Toro, it didn’t feel like a fix. It felt like a decision made somewhere else, by someone else, for someone else.

I remember when we (yes, I was there) proposed Law 17, years ago, a more sustainable plan. It wasn’t popular. Too honest, too technical. We compromised with Law 51, and now here we are.

This time, they didn’t just propose change. They staged it. Public forums, scripted listening sessions, and a president who mocked dissenting voices.

Some groups walked out: teachers, construction workers, banana workers. The pantomime of participation was obvious, and the president’s mockery of alternative ideas came off as more arrogant than clever. Sure, these groups are known for opposing just about everything. It was messy.

But still… it felt like déjà vu.

The strike started small, but soon ports slowed, containers stacked up, and Chiquita started bleeding cash. One of Panama’s top exports had ground to a halt.

This wasn’t just about pensions anymore. It was about voice. Dignity. Maybe even stubbornness. The fact is…it escalated.

To me, talking about Social Security isn’t just about numbers. It’s about the kind of society we want. What we’re willing to protect. The future we’re investing in.

But maybe… that’s just me.

That’s why I liked the book Abundance. It helps us think about these things with a different lens. One that’s not just about fixing what’s broken, but about imagining something better. More on that in future newsletters.

All the Eggs in One Basket… What Can Go Wrong

But let’s get back to the issue.

In Bocas del Toro, there’s a town called Changuinola. It’s built around one thing: a banana plantation. It’s been there for decades.

It’s been maybe 15 years since the last time I spent time there…walked around, ate a great rondón (a crab and shrimp soup with coconut milk, sometimes meat, yuca, plantain… it’s delicious), had some icing glass, brought back journey cakes and plantain tarts. It was just as you’d imagine: a Caribbean port city whose soul, and income, comes from bananas.

While sipping my rondon at a fonda in the middle of town, I couldn’t stop thinking about Macondo.

I imagined Changuinola in the early 1900s…it could’ve easily passed for one of the towns García Márquez had in mind when he wrote Cien Años de Soledad.

As he tells it, when the Banana company arrived, everything changed: jobs, roads, movement. But when it left? Just silence. A ghost town scented with overripe fruit and broken promises.

“La ciudad se llenó de forasteros que hablaban un idioma incomprensible, que compraban las cosas sin regatear, y que llevaban un ritmo de vida tan acelerado y difícil, que hasta los mismos empleados de la compañía acabaron por perder su identidad.”

“The town filled with outsiders who spoke an incomprehensible language, bought things without haggling, and lived at such a hectic, difficult pace that even the company’s own employees ended up losing their identity.”

And now, 15 years later, I can just imagine it as his other description in that same book…after the company left:

“La huelga grande estalló. Los cultivos se quedaron a medias, la fruta se pasó en las cepas y los trenes de ciento veinte vagones se pararon en los ramales…”

“La ley marcial facultaba al ejército para asumir funciones de árbitro de la controversia, pero no se hizo ninguna tentativa de conciliación.”

“The great strike broke out. The crops were left half-finished, the fruit overripe on the stems, and the trains with one hundred and twenty cars came to a halt on the branch lines…”

“Martial law gave the army authority to act as an arbitrator in the dispute, but no attempt at conciliation was made.”

It hits differently when the fiction starts to feel like memory.

After two months of strikes, Chiquita, the multinational conglomerate whose name is almost synonymous with bananas, pulled out. They left. Millions of dollars in infrastructure, equipment, and logistics… left behind.

Meanwhile, the strikes spiraled. What started as a protest became anarchy: kidnappings, infrastructure sabotage, even sports arenas and airports got dragged into the chaos. Violence took over. It got out of hand.

And the government? They doubled down. Stick over carrot. Crackdowns, not conversations.

Why?

Well, that’s a good question.

Let’s start with the facts:

Chiquita officially halted operations in Changuinola in May 2025, after strikes erupted on April 28. It started with 5,000 workers walking off the job in protest of the pension reform…and quickly spiraled.

The company fired nearly everyone. Field workers, admin staff…gone. By June, the plantations were empty. Over 900,000 boxes of bananas…worth more than $10 million…were stuck, rotting. Panama lost at least $75 million in the chaos.

And remember…bananas aren’t just a fruit here. They make up 17% of our exports, second only to the Canal. This wasn’t just a strike. It was an economic shockwave.

Crisis?

Let’s break it down. Panama exported $273 million in bananas in 2023. Then we shut down the Cobre Panamá copper mine, which made up 5% of our GDP, roughly $3.8 billion in a ~$76 billion economy. That’s hundreds of millions gone. Thousands of jobs, too. Not just direct losses, add the ripple effect: truckers, port workers, local shops, and small businesses. The hole goes deep.

And we’re not talking just about field laborers or short-term contractors. Between Chiquita and Cobre Panamá, more than 11,500 direct jobs have been lost, and over 85,000 indirect ones are on the line, from truck drivers and customs agents to engineers, geologists, agro-specialists, and well-paid union workers. These were trained professionals, people with mortgages, families, degrees. People who paid taxes, moved economies. Losing them isn’t just about employment, it’s a brain drain, a social rupture, and a blow to future productivity.

So, how big is our financial problem, really? Are we already in a crisis? Can we call it that yet?

Well… we’re Panamanians, we like to believe we can pull off anything, right? “Just reopen the plantation!” some might say. Easy fix.

Except it’s not.

While the strike dragged on, the banana plantations managed by Chiquita were abandoned. No maintenance. No fumigation. No pruning. And bananas aren’t like sugarcane or rice…you don’t just bounce back in a few weeks. Without that care, the plantation’s gone. Done. No buyer in their right mind would touch those exports.

So sure, we could rush to “solve” the crisis. Call in some investors. Offer incentives. Patch it up with duct tape and optimism.

But what if…just for a second…we stop and rethink?

Why do these kinds of crises keep happening?

In Why Nations Fail, the authors argue that concentrating resources into a few key sectors—like mines, canals, or bananas, leads to extractive economies. Economies where wealth is pulled out, not built in. Where decisions are made by the few, for the few.

Inclusive economies, on the other hand, are built on pluralism, shared decision-making, innovation. They tend to grow faster, distribute wealth better, and resist corruption more effectively.

So maybe this isn’t just about Changuinola.

This is what I think.

Maybe this is about how we define crisis in Panama, how we focus through it and how we define progress.

Because yes, this town has been run like a company town. Some even say like a mafia state. Corruption scandals aren’t a surprise here, they’re part of the news cycle.

One of the most questioned politicians in the country, is from Bocas del Toro. He’s always there…behind the curtain. Sometimes a puppet master, sometimes just the guy who knows which team to back. But always present.

So is he behind this?

Maybe. Maybe not. But we’d be naïve to think this is all just about the workers and their pensions. There are other forces at play. Global ones.

China is now a major player in the banana trade, and in maritime logistics. It’s no secret they’re in an economic cold war with the U.S. Could pulling Chiquita out of Panama be a strategic play? A response to losing ground in the Canal?

Who knows.

What’s clearer is this: when the government resorted to force, it wasn’t because negotiations failed. It’s because they never really planned to negotiate in the first place. That’s the playbook.

So now what?

Do we define Changuinola as a crisis…and go looking for a quick fix? A new loan? (The government just signed a $1.3 billion credit agreement with Citibank…by the way..why? because the government needs external funding to operate.)

Or do we see this as a turning point?

An opportunity to rethink how we create value. To stop concentrating our economy in three massive projects… and instead, open the door to a more plural, more resilient future.

Or is it a mix of both?

After all, we’re a small country with solid GDP and real growth. Maybe it’s time we stop copying someone else’s model and start cooking our own recipe. Much like the rondon… I bet it started with: “OK, what can we make a soup out of? We’ve got shrimp, crab, smoked meat, plantain… well, that’s it.”

“Oh wait…what if we add coconut milk? Huh? Huh?”

Boom. A brand-new recipe…or at least a bold adaptation, was born.

It’s a hard call. And I’m just one voice.

But what do you think?

Should we keep betting on the Canal, the Mine, and the Banana?

Remember, “crisis” is just the label we slap on moments like this. But sometimes, crisis is exactly what forces us to stop and figure out things we weren’t even planning to tackle.

And let’s be honest…this crisis overdose on Social Media feels scripted. The violence? Very real. But the reports, the so-called solutions… those are the parts we need to read between the lines.

One thing keeps bugging me. Could it be that most of today’s world leaders—Trump, Putin, Xi, the Ayatollah, Netanyahu… even Mulino here in Panama—are all products of the 60s and 70s? Maybe that’s why they lead like it’s still that era. Maybe that’s when they saw their “heroes,” for better or worse. And now, they think that’s the only way forward.

The same decades that gave us Cien Años de Soledad and “War Pigs”… maybe it’s time to re-read, and re-listen. Don’t you think?

Just some food for thought.

And hey, if you’re feeling overwhelmed by all the crisis noise—here’s what worked for me: take a hike, grab some dim sum (or whatever food makes you smile), teach your kids or nephews something new, learn a riff, write it out… or channel that energy into solving something that actually matters.

If this made you think, feel, or laugh…subscribe, and share it with someone who might be cooking up their own version of the future.